Wild Coast Raw: Good For My Cats?

[She's a witch]

Can you please help me assess if Wild Coast Raw food for cats is of a good quality? I am new into the raw feeding and have very limited trust in commercial raw but it was recommended to me, but Icant find any opinions about it in the internet. I think it looks pretty good.
The ingredients are following:

Pasture Raised Beef:
Beef, Beef Heart, Beef Kidney, Beef Liver, Beef Bone Broth, Organic Kelp Powder, Powdered Egg Shell, Organic Psyllium Husk Powder, Vitamin E Supplement.

Guaranteed Analysis:
Crude Protein (min) - 14.45%
Crude Fat (min) - 9%
Crude Fiber (max) - 0.8%
Moisture (max) - 72%
Ash (max) - 1.5%

Their website: https://www.wildcoastraw.com/treats

Is there anything else I should ask the company? I asked about taurine and they say they don’t supplement it because they add heart.

Also, Natural Pet Pantry was recommended so if you know that one, let me know.
Thanks!

 

[kittyluv387]

I'm not really comfortable with it not having extra taurine. It's great that they add heart but the perfect cat food, a mouse has much more concentrated taurine compared to other hearts. Maybe you can email them and ask them if their food meets AAFCO standards? If that's the case maybe you don't have to worry about the taurine. I personally would supplement this food with omega 3 fish oil.

 

[She's a witch]

thank you! I gave it to my cats this morning and one loved it, the other really wanted to eat it and was being crazy around her bowl, but decided not to. I think the texture was a problem or some of the supplements etc. For now I am going to feed it as addition to the cans, if I decide to give it exclusively I'll add supplement you mentioned of will find something better (if it exists...)

 

[Tobermory]

I'm not familiar with either Wild Coast Raw or Natural Pet Pantry, but I've read that beef heart is low in taurine. If I were feeding Wild Coast Raw, I'd add taurine. I add taurine to my homemade raw food: 2,000 mg. of taurine per three lbs. of muscle meat and 3-4 ozs. of liver. It's my understanding that taurine doesn't accumulate in the body so any excess is shed when they eliminate.

 

[lisahe]

That sounds like great food! I would definitely give it a try if I lived on the other wild coast!

Just for comparison, I took a quick look at Rad Cat's site: they used heart only for taurine, too. (Link) If I were feeding only Wild Coast, I'd probably check into the numbers and check about meeting AAFCO standards but if you're starting off small, with just a meal a day, I think you're more than fine.

 

[She's a witch]

I have just read the packaging again and they indeed say that This recipe is formulated to meet AAFCO standards so I guess that’s good.
Now I just need to make one of my cats like it she normally loves pieces of raw meet she used to get before I moved to USA so I know she likes raw, but not this particular one. Either texture, organs or supplements make her suspicious.
Once the raw formulas are thawed in the fridge, can they be frozen again?

 

[Tobermory]

Once the raw formulas are thawed in the fridge, can they be frozen again?

Yes, you can refreeze. I thaw in the fridge just enough so I can cut off the amounts I need, and then refreeze the remainder. If you're getting chubs packaged in plastic from a place like Hare Today, put the chub in a plastic bag because they often leak when they start to defrost. But it looks like Wild Coast Raw comes in containers so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[daftcat75]

This is how I did Rad Cat. The two biggest challenges I had with Krista going raw was cold food and old food. If you zoom in on the picture, I marked off “mouse temp” on my sink with two halves of a yellow sticker. I stuck a candy thermometer into the water stream. Line up the sticker and that’s the temperature I thaw her meals with. Without a candy thermometer, body temp is just cooler than how you like your bath water.

Now for old food. Krista wasn’t finishing a tub on the tub’s time. By the time we got to the end of the tub, it was maybe a day too late for her. She’d give it back immediately and that’s how I knew it was too old and not an IBd puke which comes much later after a meal.

To solve the old food, I run a sealed tub from the freezer under cold water for 15 minutes. Then I open it up and carve the still frozen food like a turkey and portion to ice cube trays. Those long “bottle cubes” thaw faster than the square ones. Three of those made a meal for Krista. I’d pop them out of the freezer and into a baggie and run it under my mouse temp water until it was also mouse temp. Another option I’ve done is to weigh and portion them directly into baggies, squeezing the contents as flat as possible. That made thawing go quicker.

For Krista, she was going through a tub every three days. I eventually rotated in a canned food to stretch that to every four days. That’s longer than it would keep in the fridge. But the only time I keep raw in the fridge now is leftovers which are thrown out the next day if she doesn’t eat them. Or her next meal when she wasn’t moody about food and raw. Back when I could always count on a clean plate, I sometimes put a meal or two in the fridge to cut down on the thaw and serve time.

Speaking of time, portioning a tub generally took 45 minutes. Thawing a meal: about 2-3 minutes.

 

[lisahe]

One thing about refreezing: some cats have preferences on how many times food has been frozen and thawed. Ours both prefer (soon to be "preferred"!) Rad Cat after it had been frozen and thawed twice. One has a very definite preference that way! I guess what I'm saying is that it pays to be flexible on that (as with so many other things related to cats!) if you can be.

 

[She's a witch]

This is how I did Rad Cat. The two biggest challenges I had with Krista going raw was cold food and old food. If you zoom in on the picture, I marked off “mouse temp” on my sink with two halves of a yellow sticker. I stuck a candy thermometer into the water stream. Line up the sticker and that’s the temperature I thaw her meals with. Without a candy thermometer, body temp is just cooler than how you like your bath water.

Now for old food. Krista wasn’t finishing a tub on the tub’s time. By the time we got to the end of the tub, it was maybe a day too late for her. She’d give it back immediately and that’s how I knew it was too old and not an IBd puke which comes much later after a meal.

To solve the old food, I run a sealed tub from the freezer under cold water for 15 minutes. Then I open it up and carve the still frozen food like a turkey and portion to ice cube trays. Those long “bottle cubes” thaw faster than the square ones. Three of those made a meal for Krista. I’d pop them out of the freezer and into a baggie and run it under my mouse temp water until it was also mouse temp. Another option I’ve done is to weigh and portion them directly into baggies, squeezing the contents as flat as possible. That made thawing go quicker.

For Krista, she was going through a tub every three days. I eventually rotated in a canned food to stretch that to every four days. That’s longer than it would keep in the fridge. But the only time I keep raw in the fridge now is leftovers which are thrown out the next day if she doesn’t eat them. Or her next meal when she wasn’t moody about food and raw. Back when I could always count on a clean plate, I sometimes put a meal or two in the fridge to cut down on the thaw and serve time.

Speaking of time, portioning a tub generally took 45 minutes. Thawing a meal: about 2-3 minutes.

View attachment 271162

thank you for tips! To be honest I'm afraid to thaw food outside of the fridge. but I know nothing about meat handling so I guess I need to read a lot about what is safe and what is not.
With the container of the Wild Coast Raw I did the following: when I brought it home I placed in the fridge, after it thawed a bit I took it out and tried to portion it with the knife and a hammer I was able to portion it enough and put into small plastic containers (I will steal the idea of ice cubes in the future). When I'll be serving it I am going to take it out the previous night so that it would thaw overnight, and serve in the morning. There is no way they would eat it cold, so I'd do what I sometimes do with cans, I'd place the food in ceramic plate and warm it up a bit over the mug with hot water. Can I do this with raw food or it doesn't really make any sense or is not safe?

One of my cats, the one that didn't want to eat Wild Coast Raw, will not eat food that she considers old. She won't eat canned food that is left in her bowl 15 minutes after it was served. Her food must be really fresh. That's why I have doubts if she is going to accept thawed food in general...

Tonight I am going to give them Natural Pet Pantry I managed to buy, as they have her favourite flavours, venison and rabbit. Fingers crossed she'll accept it, especially that it's more local to me than Wild Coast Raw.
It's ingredients:
Venison (boneless): venison, venison heart, venison liver, egg yolk, eggshell powder, montmorillonite clay, psyllium, green lipped muscle powder, nutritional yeast, kelp.
I hate clay in the ingredients list, I want to escape from the ingredients like this. But let's see. They also say they meet AAFCO standards.

 

[daftcat75]

We’re lacking a good boneless commercial raw option down here.

But Krista’s not eating on a schedule anymore so I leave plates of Rawz out for her and let her eat buffet style when she gets hungry.

I don’t let the meat thaw. I use the cold water to thaw it just enough to get a carving knife through it. Easier than using a hammer. Still very much frozen. The only time I want to thaw completely is to serve.

The best way to thaw it is to seal a portion in a baggie and run it under body temp water (100F if you want to use a candy thermometer or just cooler than you like your bath water if you want to wing it.). This ensures that no part of the food ever gets hotter than body temperature. No vitamins or enzymatic activity will be lost. If you use a plate over a mug, the water will exceed body temperature (160-185F) which could very well bring the surface temperature of the plate and the food that contacts it over body temperature.

 

[She's a witch]

Thank you for explaining, I understand now. I am not really a hammer person so any way I could avoid it helps Natural Pet Pantry comes in a flat plastic bag so it seems much easier to portion.

I wish I could feed buffet style and my other cat, JonSnow, would appreciate it too. But Ygritte won’t eat the food that is left out too long (in her definition). I am actually feeding them 4-5 meals a day to accommodate their needs.

 

[daftcat75]

I was feeding Krista 4 to 6 raw meals a day before her recent troubles started. It’s harder to keep straight how much she’s actually eating this way. When the Entyce kicks in, she’ll go plate to plate. I much prefer her 2am buffet run to her old 4am wake up call.