This might sound crazy but...

[scottp]

....everything I have read about cat nutrition seems to indicate that mice and small birds are perfectly nutritionally balanced for cats. Why has no cat food company started raising their own mice and small birds and grinding them whole into canned food? If this really is the perfect diet why is it being completely ignored? I mean even the "raw food" vendors stick to animals that a human would be more likely to eat than a wild cat. It seems to me that "Sparrow and Mouse Feast" would be perfect for the normal house cat to eat.

Many people even raise their own mice for snake food, so would anyone ever consider doing this for their cat? They would of course probably still want to grind it rather than let it run loose until the cat killed it, but it would probably be more cost effective than some of the canned foods out there and more nutritionally balanced to boot.

 

[minka]

It's the 'ick' factor.
Most pet owners don't want to think about Fluffy eating a can of brains, guts and feet. Especially from a source they consider to be vermin. They think their cat needs the same kind of food as their dog, or even themselves. It's the same reason why cat owners are tricked into thinking the healthiest foods are those with pictures of fruits and veggies on the front. (Just my opinion)

 

[scottp]

Originally Posted by Minka

It's the 'ick' factor.
Most pet owners don't want to think about Fluffy eating a can of brains, guts and feet. Especially from a source they consider to be vermin. They think their cat needs the same kind of food as their dog, or even themselves. It's the same reason why cat owners are tricked into thinking the healthiest foods are those with pictures of fruits and veggies on the front. (Just my opinion)

I agree but people need to get over themselves when it comes to what carnivorous pets eat. I guess it doesn't bother me because growing up my grandfather raised cattle and always kept a cat in the barn of each of the pastures he raised on. Their sole purpose was to eat the mice.

I do wonder though if someone started a cat food company to make mouse based food, if anyone would actually buy it.

 

[Willowy]

I don't really think it's the squeamish factor. I mean, they used to sell big cans of "horse 'n' liver feast" dog food at the grocery store and people still bought it. I'd buy "mouse and sparrow dinner" cat food. But I'm guessing that something makes it not commercially viable. Maybe it's just too expensive to raise mice and small birds. Or maybe there's no good way to process them for canning.

 

[auntie crazy]

Originally Posted by Willowy

I don't really think it's the squeamish factor. I mean, they used to sell big cans of "horse 'n' liver feast" dog food at the grocery store and people still bought it. I'd buy "mouse and sparrow dinner" cat food. But I'm guessing that something makes it not commercially viable. Maybe it's just too expensive to raise mice and small birds. Or maybe there's no good way to process them for canning.

It's all about money. Without getting too deep into pet food manufacturing processes, I'll tell you that what goes into pet food is the leftovers from the human food chain and the spoiled products that are subsequently kicked out of our food chain. The relationships between big agriculture, rendering operations and the pet food industry are tight and convoluted.

If you want to know more about it, these books make for both fascinating and revolting reading: Buyer Beware: The Crimes, Lies and Truth about Pet Food (2011); Not Fit for a Dog!: The Truth About Manufactured Dog and Cat Food (2008); Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food (2009); Protect Your Pet: More Shocking Facts (2001). According to reviews (I have the book on order but haven't read it), the 2011 book is the most detailed.

A couple of sites that touch on the same subject are The TruthAboutPetFood.com and the Pet Food Products Safety Alliance, or pfpsa.org (the PFPSA publishes testing results done on foods submitted by the public which you might find interesting, if not shocking). The Feline-Nutrion.org site also has a few articles, including one titled, "Feeding Ring Dings and Krispy Kremes."

Don't start down this road unless you have a strong stomach, though.

AC

 

[sweetpea24]

There is a raw food called Feline's Pride which claims to have the same nutritional makeup of a mouse. I don't know what the meat is as I can't seem to get into the website. However, it looks like they had a recall last year due to salmonella.

I would imagine it would be a volume issue. How many birds and mice would it take to make a bag or case of cat food? And as Auntie Crazy said, the relationship between rendering plants and others is "Convoluted". Money drives the business, not our cats.

 

[ducman69]

Originally Posted by ScottP

....everything I have read about cat nutrition seems to indicate that mice and small birds are perfectly nutritionally balanced for cats.

Which study was that, and what was the control that they compared the results of the trial to? If what you read were just random people talking about how cats in the wild seem to eat a lot of rodents, while certainly true that doesn't mean that a cat would just live off a particular type of mouse or live healthier or longer because of it. Paleolithic humans surely didn't have a large varied nutritious diet as available today, and fossil records indicates they were much smaller and lived shorter lives accordingly.

From a commercial aspect, you need to watch some documentaries on poultry farms and the like, to see how efficient (albeit unsavory) the process is. There is simply no way you'd be able to breed, grow, process little wild birds and mice at a scale to keep it remotely cost competitive with domesticated farmed chicken/fish/cattle etc IMO.

And from a palatability standpoint, if you were to just throw a rat with some water in a can and then pop the lid and flop that on a plate... I just know that Wesley would look at it, then back to me, then back at it, then back to me and be like "uhhh, oh heck no!!!".

 

[minka]

Originally Posted by Ducman69

And from a palatability standpoint, if you were to just throw a rat with some water in a can and then pop the lid and flop that on a plate... I just know that Wesley would look at it, then back to me, then back at it, then back to me and be like "uhhh, oh heck no!!!".

You realize what you are saying right? Cats Should think plain meat is delicious.

 

[furryfriends50]

Originally Posted by SweetPea24

There is a raw food called Feline's Pride which claims to have the same nutritional makeup of a mouse. I don't know what the meat is as I can't seem to get into the website. However, it looks like they had a recall last year due to salmonella.

I would imagine it would be a volume issue. How many birds and mice would it take to make a bag or case of cat food? And as Auntie Crazy said, the relationship between rendering plants and others is "Convoluted". Money drives the business, not our cats.

Feline's Pride doesn't list the percentages of meat/bone/organ on their site. However, it may have the same nutritional make-up as a mouse, but they do not use mice in their food. Flavors include: Chicken, Cornish Game Hen (which is just a small chicken), Turkey, Duck, and Rabbit. They list the carbohydrate as 3% DMB for the chicken formula, which would be close to what a mouse is (if the cat actually ate the whole mouse, instead of doing the normal thing of leaving the intestinal tract/stomach).

 

[ducman69]

Originally Posted by Minka

You realize what you are saying right? Cats Should think plain meat is delicious.

There is a big difference between the excitement of killing and eating a live 110% fresh mouse (which many fed cats still even then won't bother with eating after killing and will wait for their prepared yummy meal), and flopping out some long dead, bloated, soggy, canned whole mouse/rat. You have to have a means of preserving it though to make it economically viable, and freezing is more expensive to do and distribute with a shorter shelf life and still impacts flavor some by breaking cell-bonds in the meat, and requires the customer to dethaw prior to serving (can't apply heat after all or it would destroy the taurine for one). That cost is already pretty well known, as that's how feeder mice are distributed... chaching! Just like with raw zoo feeds though, its not likely to be nutritionally complete in and of itself, and so would require vitamin/mineral supplementation as well, adding to the cost. Acceptance by most cats even w/ freezing is likely to be poor, as even w/ snakes it can be difficult for them to accept the feeder mice w/o first dipping them in something tasty like chicken broth.

And after all this extra work and cost, the question still remains that there really aren't any studies that indicate that cats are living healthier or longer on feeder mice compared to say By Nature Turkey canned meals, so what's the point.

 

[minka]

I don't think anyone was suggesting putting whole mice in a can. The op said 'grinding whole mice'. So they would be the same familiar texture as other cat foods, and yes it would have vitamins and taurine added but it would be more 'species specific'.