Taurine Brand

[kittums]

Hi, total newbie here looking for some advice! Last month I found the catinfo.org recipe for homemade food and I'm still working up the courage to start making it. Not being from the US, most of the supplements are quite hard to find and way pricer where I am. I've decided to get some, if not all, the supplements on amazon UK which will then be passed to me by a relative living in London. I have been comparing prices and while I would like to keep costs down, I don't want to compromise the health of my 2 kitties.

I have found similar products to the ones in the catinfo recipe, but the only one I'm worried about is taurine. The one I picked out is cheaper than Source Naturals, but I'm not sure if it's ok to use for cats. Here is the link -  

Any advice/cheap recommendations would be much appreciated! Thank you for reading.

 

[orange&white]

Most all Taurine is manufactured in China, so it's hard to really tell the quality based on brand labels or pricing.

The Amazon question and answer on the brand you are buying says it is 100% pure taurine, so you should be fine.  Also, that is $11.20 in US dollars for 500 grams.  That 500 gram bag contains 222,000 mg of taurine, so it should last you a very long time (depending on how many cats you have)!  It is a bulk bag.

I bought the generic store brand from The Vitamin Shoppe here https://www.vitaminshoppe.com/p/taurine-500-mg-100-capsules/vs-1237. for $6.29.  100 capsules is 50,000 mg of taurine (less than 25% of the brand you are buying), so no bulk price, but I expect to only use 76 capsules per year for my two cats.  (I'm also using the catinfo.org guide on the supplements.)

The supplements seems pricey when you start out, especially picking them all up at one go, but they last a very long time. 

Good luck on your raw food adventure!

 

[kittums]

 
Most all Taurine is manufactured in China, so it's hard to really tell the quality based on brand labels or pricing.

The Amazon question and answer on the brand you are buying says it is 100% pure taurine, so you should be fine.  Also, that is $11.20 in US dollars for 500 grams.  That 500 gram bag contains 222,000 mg of taurine, so it should last you a very long time (depending on how many cats you have)!  It is a bulk bag.

I bought the generic store brand from The Vitamin Shoppe here https://www.vitaminshoppe.com/p/taurine-500-mg-100-capsules/vs-1237. for $6.29.  100 capsules is 50,000 mg of taurine (less than 25% of the brand you are buying), so no bulk price, but I expect to only use 76 capsules per year for my two cats.  (I'm also using the catinfo.org guide on the supplements.)

The supplements seems pricey when you start out, especially picking them all up at one go, but they last a very long time. 

Good luck on your raw food adventure!

Wow, I too have 2 cats and I hadn't realised that amount would last me a couple years! Thanks for the perspective. It sure is expensive starting out (and that's without buying a grinder) but I figure it's the right way to go in the long run. Thanks again for the advice

 

[orange&white]

I never have purchased a grinder either, but I often wistfully daydream about a grinder while I am crushing/cutting chicken bones with a pair of kitchen shears. 

  Maybe some day, I'll make the investment.

 

[kittums]

You can still use the bones without a grinder?? I was trying so hard to find a way of using the bones but I gave up and decided on substituting with eggshells. Do you half bake your chicken meat and bones and then slice them up? I read somewhere that cooked bones are brittle so it's dangerous to give to cats? Also what size do you cut the bones to? From the catinfo article I got a bit scared giving bones to them that arent finely ground, even though I've seen my cats demolish whole bones before!

 

[LTS3]

See this post by @Columbine for UK sources of raw pet foods: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/335667/raw-food-in-uk-any-tips-or-experience#post_4229607

Any brand of 2,000 mg taurine in powder form or capsule form (you pull the capsule apart to use just the powder) will work as long as it is unflavored and has little to no other filler ingredients.

 

[orange&white]

I serve completely raw, no cooking.  Back in 2008 when I started, Dr. Pierson was serving the same recipe, but completely raw.  I notice that she has changed over the years and is partially cooking the meat, but not long enough to cook the bones.  I'm sticking with the original raw diet that I learned.  I've never had a cat or dog get sick from the bacteria in raw meat.

I have broken a few pair of scissors cutting up chicken thigh bones, but haven't gone through enough scissors to equal the cost of one grinder.  I cut thigh bones at an angle, and the scissors sort of crush them instead of cutting a clean line across.  With thigh bones, I crush them down to 1/4" - 3/8" pieces, so pretty small.  It is tedious work.  My closest grocery sells stripped chicken frames (breast and back bone only) for 79 cents a pound.  Those are easy to cut and the cats like crunching little 1" x 1" squares of what I call "baby back chicken ribs".  lol

You most definitely do not want to serve brittle cooked bones, but you can cook bones for so long that they literally turn into mush with no splinters or brittle pieces whatsoever.

Powdered eggshell is a great source of calcium and easy and cheap to make at home.  Bones and bone marrow do have a lot of minerals in addition to calcium which you won't get from eggshell.  If I were using eggshell, I'd probably try to add some sort of mineral supplement.  But since I am using bones, I have not researched it so I'm not the one to advise on that.

 

[Columbine]

Hi K kittums ! Welcome to TCS

Are you in the UK? Your saying that you have a relative who can pass supplements on to you makes me think you're elsewhere. If you let us know where you are it'll be much easier for us to help you with suppliers etc

Zooplus have a supplement called Fellini Complete, which is a premix designed for homemade raw (or cooked) food. It's by far the easiest way to start out making your own, as it's all you need Fellini make a Taurine supplement too, if you want to go that route.

Zooplus also stock Grau bone meal - an alternative to eggshells if you're using boneless meat. The other easy way to feed bones is to buy ground meat for raw feeding that has the bone already in it. A large number of manufacturers do this now. If you can't find it for cats, look for it for dogs. Raw feeding is more established and more widely available for dogs, especially in Europe, and any plain ground meats (bone in or boneless) are equally suitable for cats or dogs

Zooplus have a range of ground raw meats listed under raw dog food. So long as you're getting the pure, unsupplemented ground meats, you can use them as the base of your cat food too

(And no, I don't work for Zooplus They're just the most accessible Europe-wide site I know of )