Prey model and bones

I posted this somewhere else but wanted to see if it can provoke some thought on here.

Feeding just chicken necks is still debated. BARF and raw meaty bones generally say feeding just necks is fine. While people who stick to the prey model diet say that necks have too much bone.

If we compare necks to the prey model diet we see that necks have three times the recommended amount. Necks are about 36% bone. Some common prey and amounts are: rodents and small birds have about 5% bones, rabbits are 9%, chicken 32%, and quail 10% and so on. So its easy to see why the rough guideline of 10%(prey model) is a good range. While feeding cats is not an exact science we do have to look at the bones we feed.

A mouse consisting of 5% bones has a calcium and phosphorous ratio of 1.73:1 (published data on whole prey). Whole chicken at 32% bone has a ratio of 1.6:1. A Pipit (small bird)of 5% bone is 1.2:1. Rabbit at 9% bone is 1.72:1. Chicken necks at 36% bone has 1.1:1

This shows that feeding a variety of things is beneficial.Trying to achieve a mouse type of diet, i feel, won't be met by just feeding 10% of bones that we normally have available to us (calcium is also found in meat and organs but a majority of it comes from bones). I am pretty sure chicken bones are used more than any other bone. They are easy to grind, easy to find, and the smaller parts can be eaten by cats. So i think its safe to say that chicken bones may not be as nutritious as mouse bones, or maybe there is something else that plays a part.

I am all for a prey model diet but at 10% bone with common chicken bones I don't feel you will be truly achieving a prey model diet. Sure the recommended bone amount is right on but nutritionally it doesn't seem to compare to prey. I don't know the specifics of the other diets listed above but there may be a reason why they chose more bone. Again not sure why just speculating using the info I found.

Any thoughts?

............ need to think on this.....

Could it be there is some question about the Ca in a whole chicken? The below reference says it is 1.6:1 as opposed to your 1.1:1.

I only have the reference, not the document.

D. McDonald Zoo Nutrition Advisory Group (NAG), Victoria, Australia.Nutritional Considerations - Section I: Nutrition and Dietary Supplementation, in Clinical Avian Medicine, Harrison G.J. and Lightfoot T.L, 2006

Note - as per Table 4.1.28 in the above section, mice have Ca of 1.7:1, rats of 1.8:1, and chicken 1.6:1 with chicken containg a lower absolute amount as well of both Ca and P.

Click to expand...

Originally Posted by mschauer

Could it be there is some question about the Ca in a whole chicken? The below reference says it is 1.6:1 as opposed to your 1.1:1.

I only have the reference, not the document.

Click to expand...

also I wonder if different breeds of chicken are slightly different ?? Ie some have more breast meat and others bigger legs ..

You are right it is about 1.6:1 using some published data. 1.3:1 and 1.4:1 on some unpublished data. That was either a typo or me looking at the wrong number on my hand written sheet full of numbers. Sorry. It changes things a little bit but still a fair amount of bone to achieve that number.

Originally Posted by chris10

You are right it is about 1.6:1 using some published data. 1.3:1 and 1.4:1 on some unpublished data. That was either a typo or me looking at the wrong number on my hand written sheet full of numbers. Sorry. It changes things a little bit but still a fair amount of bone to achieve that number.

Click to expand...

Since that makes a chicken comparable to a mouse, using the Ca criteria at least, doesn't that change everything? Doesn't that now show that feeding whole chicken fits the "whole prey" model where feeding chicken necks, with a Ca of 1.1:1, only doesn't??

prey model defined by some is

80% meat
10% bones
10% organs

I have just recently learned of these numbers. I just thought that a prey model was to try to mimic the prey as much as you can. But these are rough guidelines. So I guess there are different takes on what prey model is. After looking at the numbers I am not sure if using chicken bones along with this guideline will be beneficial. Being that it takes a whole chicken (32% bones) to achieve an accepted ratio.

Unfortunately the info I have on necks was only calculated with one sample. So that number is not entirely correct. Being that they have more bone I can only speculate that it has more calcium.

So I guess to be clear the only thing I am questioning is a prey model diet using the guidelines above with chicken bones. Not sure about other bones since info is hard to come by.

Originally Posted by chris10

prey model defined by some is

80% meat
10% bones
10% organs

I have just recently learned of these numbers. I just thought that a prey model was to try to mimic the prey as much as you can. But these are rough guidelines. So I guess there are different takes on what prey model is. After looking at the numbers I am not sure if using chicken bones along with this guideline will be beneficial. Being that it takes a whole chicken (32% bones) to achieve an accepted ratio.

Unfortunately the info I have on necks was only calculated with one sample. So that number is not entirely correct. Being that they have more bone I can only speculate that it has more calcium.

So I guess to be clear the only thing I am questioning is a prey model diet using the guidelines above with chicken bones. Not sure about other bones since info is hard to come by.

Click to expand...

So, you are questioning whether a diet composed solely of whole chicken adheres to the "prey model" of 10% bone, etc?

I have to question your 32% bone for chicken also. I couldn't find anyting specific about chickens but I did find several references that stated the animal with the highest bone ratio is the elephant with 25%.

USDA
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/
Chicken, broilers or fryers, meat only, raw
New Search
Refuse: 52% (32% bone, 12% skin, 8% separable fat)

I hope they don't have their data wrong. I have spent a long time looking for the skeletal mass of chickens. I have seen a few refs to the elephant thing. But this is what I am going off of since I couldn't find anything else.

The question is are chicken bones nutritious enough to be only 10% of a diet. A whole chicken, if in fact those numbers from the usda are correct, would be fine. Minus 22% bones would a whole chicken still be fine in terms of proper ratio of nutrients.

Originally Posted by chris10

USDA
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/
Chicken, broilers or fryers, meat only, raw
New Search
Refuse: 52% (32% bone, 12% skin, 8% separable fat)

I hope they don't have their data wrong. I have spent a long time looking for the skeletal mass of chickens. I have seen a few refs to the elephant thing. But this is what I am going off of since I couldn't find anything else.

The question is are chicken bones nutritious enough to be only 10% of a diet. A whole chicken, if in fact those numbers from the usda are correct, would be fine. Minus 22% bones would a whole chicken still be fine in terms of proper ratio of nutrients.

Click to expand...

Said another way, if a whole chicken, with 32% bone, is a complete and balanced food for a cat then how can a "made from bits and pieces of a chicken" diet be complete and balanced if it only contains 10% chicken bone? Is that the question?

Maybe part of the answer is that the 80-10-10 is just a guideline? In the book Whole Health for Happy Cats the author stresses the importance of knowing the phosphorous content of the particular meat used in a raw diet and, if using a bone substitute, adjusting the quantity of it accordingly.

Yes. I am pretty sure we are on the same page. Just questioning the nutritional value of chicken bones and how they compare to prey bones. If they do have a lower nutritional value then shouldn't we be feeding more than 10%? But like you said everything we have are just guidelines. I just heard of those numbers and then started thinking about the info on chicken that I knew about. It wasn't making sense me. So I thought I would throw some info/question out to see what the deal was and to see if we could make some sense out of my crazy ideas.

Anyone else reading this take note that feeding a cat is not rocket science. Some of us, probably just myself, try to make it look harder than it actually is. The more I question the more knowledge I gain through info and opinions from others.
Take care

Originally Posted by chris10

Yes. I am pretty sure we are on the same page. Just questioning the nutritional value of chicken bones and how they compare to prey bones. If they do have a lower nutritional value then shouldn't we be feeding more than 10%? But like you said everything we have are just guidelines. I just heard of those numbers and then started thinking about the info on chicken that I knew about. It wasn't making sense me. So I thought I would throw some info/question out to see what the deal was and to see if we could make some sense out of my crazy ideas.

Anyone else reading this take note that feeding a cat is not rocket science. Some of us, probably just myself, try to make it look harder than it actually is. The more I question the more knowledge I gain through info and opinions from others.
Take care

Click to expand...

Don't give up! Hopefully someone who follows the whole prey guidelines will have something to say.

AuntieCrazy where are you?

what the chicken ate will also play a role in the Ca to Phos levels ... ie how much if any oyster shell was feed

Hi, all!

I've been doing some searching and I can't find a definitive explanation or origin of the 80/10/5/5 rule. I thought I saw something way back when, but can't find it now. Whoever finds it first gets a gift from everyone else.

In any case, I think there's an error in calculating chicken at 32% bone. In the formula below (from one of Chris's posts), bone is 32% of the 52% "refuse", not 32% of the whole chicken.

Chicken, broilers or fryers, meat only, raw
New Search
Refuse: 52% (32% bone, 12% skin, 8% separable fat)

Click to expand...

That makes it approximately , um.... 16.64% of the total carcass, I think (I'm way sick and my brain's working in slow motion - someone want to double-check the math?).

I think feeding a variety of meat/bone/organ sources would be more beneficial than sticking to a specific % of the ingredient, since the %'s vary so much from prey type to prey type.

Originally Posted by Auntie Crazy

In any case, I think there's an error in calculating chicken at 32% bone. In the formula below (from one of Chris's posts), bone is 32% of the 52% "refuse", not 32% of the whole chicken.

Chicken, broilers or fryers, meat only, raw
New Search
Refuse: 52% (32% bone, 12% skin, 8% separable fat)

Click to expand...

That makes it approximately , um.... 16.64% of the total carcass, I think (I'm way sick and my brain's working in slow motion - someone want to double-check the math?).

Click to expand...

There could be error. I understand it to be 52% of the whole chicken (well I clicked on the 1/2 chicken option) is refuse or discarded. Then 32% of that is bone. Which in my thinking makes it 32% of the chicken consists of bone.

I got this off the usda site: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcom...3/sr13_doc.htm

"Refuse

The refuse and refuse description fields contain amounts and descriptions of inedible material (for example, seeds, bone, skin) for applicable foods. These amounts are expressed as a percentage of the total weight of the item as purchased, and they were used to compute the weight of the edible portion. Refuse data were obtained from Agriculture Handbook Nos. 102 and 456 (Adams 1975, Matthews and Garrison 1975) and unpublished sources. To calculate "Amount in edible portion of 1 pound as purchased" use the following formula:

Y = V*(4.536*[(100BR)/100)]

where:

Y = nutrient value per 1 pound as purchased
V = nutrient value per 100 g (Nutr_Val in the Nutrient Data File), and
R = percent refuse (Refuse in the Food Description File).

For meat cuts containing bone, any connective tissue present is included in the value given for bone. Separable fat is not shown as refuse if the meat is described as separable lean and fat. Separable fat generally refers to seam fat and intramuscular fat. Separable lean refers to muscle tissue that can be readily separated from the intact cut; it includes any fat striations within the muscle. For boneless cuts, the refuse values apply to connective tissue or connective tissue plus separable fat. The percentage yield of cooked, edible meat from 1 pound of raw meat with refuse can be determined from the following formula:

Y = (Wc / 453.6)*100

where

Wc = weight of cooked, edible meat."

Its getting late for me. trying to make sense of this but my brain is spitting out an error code.

The 32% has always seem high to me but I haven't come up with anything in the last few days of searching.

The key word in the usda article may be "edible portion". Are they considering every last gram of muscle an edible portion or just the cuts we normally see in the stores and on our plates? if they don't take in every gram and weigh the bone with some meat still attached then that could possibly be why the percentage is so high.

If it turns out that it comes out to 16%, does sound a lot better. The amount of bone is still 3 times the amount of a mouse which kind of tells me that the calcium level in chicken bones is lower. So if that number is correct then we in theory would need to have a diet that is at least 16% bones (if using chicken bones). Right? Does this make sense?

Sharky did mention something that has bouncing around in my head. You are what you eat. Most of the info we have on chicken are probably from chickens that are mass produced and fed all sorts of interesting things. They possibly could be bigger than ones that came long before the chicken craze caught on. Bigger but not better in terms of nutrients. AHHH more questions. I should stop for now.
Take care

I thought the 80-10-10 rule was fairly commonly used but I haven't found a reference to it either. I'm really coming to think it isn't meant to be used without regard to the nutritional profile of the animal used but rather just as a general guideline.

Originally Posted by Auntie Crazy

In any case, I think there's an error in calculating chicken at 32% bone. In the formula below (from one of Chris's posts), bone is 32% of the 52% "refuse", not 32% of the whole chicken.

Click to expand...

I have to agree with Chris's interpretation. They are referring to the components of the refuse as a percentage of the whole.

32 + 12 + 8 = 52

The 52 I think is obviously a percentage of the whole so the 32 must be also.

I found other references that say a chicken breast is 15% bone. If a piece as "meaty" as a breast is 15% bone I find it easy to believe the whole could be 32% bone.

You are what you eat. Most of the info we have on chicken are probably from chickens that are mass produced and fed all sorts of interesting things. They possibly could be bigger than ones that came long before the chicken craze caught on.

Click to expand...

I think todays factory raised chickens are bigger and meatier but that would make the bone to meat ratio lower not higher. At least in the US where hormones are used.

Due to the variations in chicken sizes it might be impossible to come up with a single bone % for all chickens. From what I've read I think it is safe to say though that the bone content of chicken is significantly higher than 10%.

I'm glad this issue was brought up. I'm going to visit a store this morning that specializes in supplies for people who feed raw to their pets. Along with whole animal parts they do in store grinding. If they also have premade mixes of ground with bones I'll be sure to ask how they came up with the "correct" amount of bone. They claim to be experts on raw feeding so I'll be interested in what they have to say.

I am reviving this thread after recent discussion on another forum. The argument/theory is how nutritious are chicken bones and do they fit in the prey model diet as listed. Some of the things I write may have already be written in previous posts in this topic.

I am attacking chicken bones because they are most of the time the cheapest and most widely available bone.

The prey model diet, as most of you know, is a diet that tries to mimic prey as much as possible. The rough guideline is 80%meat, 10%bone, and 10%organs

So with a little research we can see why prey model may be one of the better diets for you kitty. Given that they have survived off of prey since the beginning of time and their anatomy, at least to me, shows they are equipped to handle prey.

But a question can be raised when we are using commercially produced ingredients(chickens) to assemble a natural guideline. Using the whole prey report we can see that a whole mouse and a whole chicken fall within the ranges our kitties may need. Mice have a cah ratio of about 1.7:1 and chicken is about 1.4:1. So thats a mouse with about 5% bones providing the same, if not a bit more, nutrients as an animal with about 30% bones.

Now the skeletal mass of chicken is debated. The usda list 32% bones but thats usually for a processed chicken. I calculated a rough 25% bones when adding in 30% discard of organs and other items off of the bird.

Using a known source we can see that chicken bones may not have as much calcium as we thought. In the land o lakes analysis we can use the chicken necks. 100 grams of necks contain 1542mg of calcium and 1415mg of phosphorous. The usda states that 64grams of neck meat, necks are 36% bone or 36grams of 100g, has 17mg of calcium and 72mg of phosphorous. Minus the 17 and 72 from the overall numbers we have 1525mg of calcium and 1343mg of phosphorus we need to find a home for. Necks are basically meat and bone. So that would lead me to believe that the rest of the calcium and phosphorus is located in bones. This would somewhat mean that bones themselves have a cah ratio of 1.1:1. I did use two different sources so there is bound to be some small error in the numbers. And I further suspect that chicken bones have a slightly higher calcium content than I just listed because it wouldn't be able to balance the ratio when we add all of the meat from a whole bird.

There has been a statement that chicken meat contains high amounts of phosphorus so that may be a reason why the numbers could be off. But looking through the usda nutrient database at everything that could be considered prey(rabbit,owl,pigeon,pheasant, ect). It shows that chicken is lower in phosphorus when compared to possible prey. And when looking at the whole prey report, chicken is on the lower end of the phosphorous scale when compared to other prey. So that can be argued.

So there may be a chance that chicken bones are not as nutritious as we thought and using them at only 10% of the diet may not be that healthy.

Everyone, including myself, usually recommends variety. But bone variety is sometimes not feasible for everyone.

Thoughts

I would wonder if some of this would even vary by breed of chicken... commonly only two "meat" chicken s are commonly avail but many others are still eatable .. Of the two common meat ones , one has a lighter framework than the other ( my guess is roughtly 10% total mass for the same wt chicken s

There are probably a fair amount of variables that need to be taken into consideration. Such as different breeds and their food intake. One of the reasons I won't make an actual claim that chicken bones are lower in calcium. Usually I will say there is a theory or chance that they are lower in calcium

So I guess from the lack of discussion/posts, aside from one pm, people either think I'm nuts, don't know what to say, are in agreement, just ignoring me, or not many people have been on TCS.

I haven't been able to come up with much of anything to show otherwise. So was looking for some other theory's or data.

There has been a few people, not on this forum yet, that have told me that I am over thinking this too much. And that I am over complicating something as simple as prey model. In their view bone is bone and thats it. If you have this same view then let me know and try to help me understand your perspective and or why I wrong. I won't be offended if you do and certainly won't go on the attack.

If I get nothing from my end or yours then I might make it an official theory/chance that chicken bones are lower in calcium. And if that was possibly true, then chicken bones IMO may not be healthy just at 10% of the diet. Of course this is just my opinion. But it just might be another piece of the raw puzzle that someone can think about. And if they decide that I may be on to something, after consulting their vet, then it can possibly help them when making the appropriate changes in their kitties diet.