Want to start raw feeding!

[dave the brave]

Hello!

I'm so excited to have found these forums as it seems you can get some really useful information here ^_^

I have just got a nine week old kitten and although he is on a mix of dry and wet food kitten food at the moment, I'd like to begin his transition to raw food as soon as possible so I was hoping to get some advice!

Yesterday I went to the supermarket and bought:

Chicken Thighs (Bone-in AND Boneless)

Chicken Wings

Rump Steak

Turkey Breast Steaks

Chicken Liver

Lambs Kidneys

Chicken Drumsticks

Which possibly sound a lot for starting out but I figured I could just chop it all up and freeze it. So! My Questions are:

- Should I start without the bones and if so when should I introduce the bones?

- What size chunks of meat should I give? I have read that they should not be so small that they can swallow without chewing but too big and they could try to swallow it all anyway and choke! So, is there an optimal size for these pieces of meat? The turkey and beef steaks are quite thin so they're going to end up more in strips that chunks. Should I buy some thicker pieces of meat instead?

- Do I need to add some sort of calcium to the food until he's eating bones? What would this be and how much of it?

- Should I give the internal organs at separate meals to the flesh?

- Do I need to add Taurine to anything?

- Should I start giving him Salmon Oil and if so, what do I put it on?

- Is there any other supplements that I will need to start him on immediately?

- If I get him some feeder mice would these be ok to give him occasionally? Do I need to remove their digestive tract first?

- What are gizzards and where might these be found?!

Well, I think that's enough for now! Sorry it's a lot, I have SO many questions and really want to raw feed him but probably like most beginners am scared of doing something wrong and making my new lovely kitten unwell, or to see him choke. My boyfriend is worried and wants to stick to cat food from the store but I am convinced he will be healthier on raw if I can get it right

Thanks for listening.

 

[ritz]

Welcome to The Cat Site forum and congratulations on feeding raw.  You're right that raw feeding is much better for a cat--and often cheaper than good/high quality wet food, and infinitely better than dry food. I too was a little intimidated when I first started Ritz on raw, but initially I didn't sweat the details, just the overall guidelines, like ratio of meat/organ/bone.

If you haven't already, do read the (many) links and articles referenced in the raw forum, in particular the sites dealing with how much to feed your growing kitten. 

In response to your questions and in no particular order:

You can certainly give your kitten some feeder mouse, and no, you don't have to remove anything. 

Check the package of turkey breast steaks:  look specifically for amount of sodium.  If more than 100 mg per serving, the meat has been "enhanced", often with sugar (!) and salt.  You should not feed your cat any meat that has been enhanced.

Until he is 100% on raw, I don't believe you need to feed bone or supplement.  You could try giving him a tiny piece of bone from a chicken wing Turkey thigh bones and chicken drumstick bones are probably too hard for even adult cats.  I give Ritz bones from quail or rabbit.

You do not need to add taurine to anything, although next time you go grocery shopping, pick up some hearts.  They count as meat, but have lots of taurine in them.  I would start adding Salmon oil to the food; I give Krill oil to Ritz about three times a week (500 mg per tablet). I simply put it on her food.  She eats/licks it right up.  You might also start giving your kitten probiotics, it helps the digestive tract get use to the new type of food (look for the kind that has 10 billion active cell units).

Gizzards are the innards of animals' digestive tract, the part that grounds the food so the animal can digest the food, and count as a meat (not organ).  Apparently they are popular in the south; being from Annapolis/Washington, DC I sometimes have a hard time finding them.  BUT they would be a great way of introducing your kitten to the concept of chewing--gizzards are tough.

Some cats love organs, some cats hate liver and will only eat freeze-dried liver.  It all depends on your cat--and to a degree, your schedule.  Too much kidney at one meal can lead to soft stools.  Myself, I give a little kidney/liver each day, but other people who feed raw give organs a few times a week.  (I wish I could find lambs kidney.....)We like questions--and pictures !

 

[dave the brave]

I just had a thought! I fed him some raw chicken thigh at midday and he seemed to like it!

But now, he's hungry again. He's always hungry, greedy boy! So can I go back to giving him his regular wet food now today? I'd like to just raw feed him one meal a day to begin with. Would that be alright?

 

[vball91]

Yes, you can feed him wet food as well. At his age, he's going to be constantly hungry, so I would feed him as often as you can.

 

[chevs]

If you live somewhere with a pretty good population of Asians, you should be able to find an Asian grocery store. They tend to always carry chicken and pig hearts, and chicken gizzards even the small ones. I live in Massachusetts near Boston, so there are lots of Asian groceries near me that carry those things regularly, as well as pig uterus, duck and turkey gizzards, chicken necks and feet, and chicken and pig liver. If you feed your kitty heart everyday like I do, I don't think you should need to supplement with taurine. 

 

[harleydiva]

Pig uterus???  That's a new one.  I think that might go on my NO list next to pizzles.  

 

[ldg]

You might really benefit from reading information at some of the links in our resource thread: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/240809/raw-feeding-resource-thread, and one of the links is particularly helpful for prey model raw, http://www.CatCentric.org

I bought a kitchen scale to weigh meals for my cats. I found it to be easier. They would eat one 5.5 ounce of canned food a day (after I'd transitioned them to only canned from kibble/canned - not a necessary step, I'd done that a year before even thinking about raw). They now eat one 1.5 ounce meal three times a day, and that's enough to keep them satisfied and keep their weight steady at healthy weights.

It also makes it easier to manage the organs. Organs should not be fed as a separate meal; it's usually too much ... something... for most cats, and they'll just throw them up. Most feeding prey model raw balance the meals over the course of a week. So, for instance, my cats eating 1.5 ounce meals three times a day means they eat 31.5 ounces of food a week. The guideline for prey model raw is roughly 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, and 5% other secreting organ (usually kidney as it is easiest to source for most). So that means that each week, of the 31.5 ounces, about 25 ounces should be meat, a little over 3 ounces should be bone, and about 1.6 ounces should be liver, and 1.6 ounces should be kidney or spleen or some other secreting organ. So what you can do is feed four meals a week that are .75 ounces meat and .8 ounces organ - so a meal that is half meat/half organ.

Here is a sample feeding schedule: http://catcentric.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/My-Feeding-Schedule.pdf