amounts to feed?

Im new to feeding raw to cats, however I've been feeding raw to my dogs since Feb.
Is their a guideline to how much to feed per day? My dogs were both at their ideal adult weights (basically) when I started feeding raw, so I was able to use 3/3.5% of their body weight as a guideline.
However this is a young stray kitty I'm feeding now, I'm guessing maybe 3 or 4 months? He weighed 3 lbs just last week. So I'm just not real sure where to begin as far as how much.
Any help would be appreciated!

The calculator I used to recommend is not working at the moment.. but the ave 8-12lb cat of normal activity and adult would eat roughly 4-5 oz a day

Thanks for your reply Sharky.
There's a certain calculator I use for my dogs too, & they do have calculations for Puppys, maybe I'll use that for now.
For now ... well, I know for sure I'm not UNDER feeding him anyway, Lol, so I guess I'll just watch him closely.

For cats, two to four percent of their body weight is the general recommendation. Kittens, of course, need more.

By the way - what you're doing is awesome! We need more people like you.

The amount of raw to feed your cat depends on many different factors. For one thing, each brand of raw food is formulated differently, which means the feeding guideline changes from brand to brand. For example, some dry foods are low-feed foods (such as Go! Natural's chicken/vegetable dry dog food) which may require one cup for a 30 pound dog, whereby another brand's food for a 30 pound dog might require twice as much or more.

To give an example closer to home, some raw foods will be different ratios of meat to vegetable/fruit. Healthy Paws is 70% meat, 30% fruits and vegetables (K9), whereby Home Made for Life/Pets for Life is 80% meat and 20% fruits and vegetables (K9); HM4L may require less daily feeding than HP because it has more protein. See where I'm going with this?

Another issue is the age and activity of your pet. If your cat is very active, he may require more than a less active cat, because he won't need as much protein. If your cat is a kitten, he will likely require more to eat than an adult or senior.

Which brand of raw food are you feeding? I work on Sunday and can check some of our raw food labels to see how much they suggest (they go by body weight) for some general guidelines. We have four or five different brands at the moment, so we very well might have one of the ones you're using.

Awww, thank you Auntie Crazy! Ben is sooo darn cute & he was so little when first discovered, it really was my responsibility to care for him & now he's doing sooo good, he's just a pleasure to have in my life!
I've been bringing him in the house for longer periods each morning in an attempt to get him acclimated so that maybe by winter I can just leave him in. It's just that I'm scared of how my big weimariner will be with him. He gets along OK with my elderly cat & my little dog.

And thank you Dark Crystalis! Yes, I know exactly where you're going with the different brands of food & daily requirements.
Right now I'm feeding him Nature's Variety in the mornings & chunks of whole chicken in the evenings. I've just started to add the bone in chicken, altho NV does have ground bone in it.

The last couple days I've kind of been letting him decide how much he wants to eat - when he walks away from it, I take it away.

The Nature's Variety website has a feeding calculator on it. But that may be the one that was not working.

Anne

I love that you're trying to bring the little guy inside, ChattyCathy! As well as you're already doing, I'll bet you get him in long before the snow flies.

As for the premade raw foods - cats don't need and can't digest fruits, veggies and grains, so I would definitely try to buy foods that either have none of these ingredients or a very, very low percentage. Not only is the cat wasting his time eating stuff that is just going to fill him up and then land in the litter box, but you're paying a lot for premade raw and throwing away 20% or even 10% of it is... painful. *whew*

Keep us up to date!

Originally Posted by Auntie Crazy

I love that you're trying to bring the little guy inside, ChattyCathy! As well as you're already doing, I'll bet you get him in long before the snow flies.

As for the premade raw foods - cats don't need and can't digest fruits, veggies and grains, so I would definitely try to buy foods that either have none of these ingredients or a very, very low percentage. Not only is the cat wasting his time eating stuff that is just going to fill him up and then land in the litter box, but you're paying a lot for premade raw and throwing away 20% or even 10% of it is... painful. *whew*

Keep us up to date!

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Thanks again! I will get on the NV site & check out their calculator, I didn't realize they had 1. This is the 1 I've used for my dogs in the past http://www.milestonefarms.com/index.html But feeding this little kitty raw is all so new to me! I've never fed raw to my older cat.
I try to use as little NV as possible, but for now I just haven't got a lot of raw sources, so it helps as far as meat variety. Hopefully I'll be able to get a better variety this fall when my son & friends are doing some hunting & then use much less of the NV.
I am able to get it at wholesale cost, which helps a good deal, tho it's still much more expensive than cuts of meat I can get on sale at the grocery, that's for sure! But I'm only able to readily find beef, chicken, pork, & turkey. Altho Ben has so far only been eating beef & chicken. I may give him some NV rabbit tomorrow.

My cats get half a chicken wing or one chicken neck as one meal of the day and the other meal is what I buy and make up from fresh raw red (mostly) meat and supplements. That way I have total control of what they eat, rather than leaving it to someone more interested in his profit. Today they had half good quality mince and half organic chicken liver. The amount will vary on age and activity of each cat, but two and a half level tablespoons of the red meat seems to be a good starting point.
Two meals a day is fine for adult cats, but youngsters need more like four, up to able four months old, depending on weight and growth.
Although most cats will only eat greenery as a medicine, I have a young cat who loves the dogs grated pumpkin. And another who loves grated zucchini. Everyone is different. Let your cat choose.
http://bestcathealth.blogspot.com/

Cathy,

I work tomorrow (at a holistic pet food store) and I'll scope out the feeding guidelines for raw foods in general; if they're very similar across different brands per X pounds of weight, I'll let you know sometime in the evening. Mind you, since you're also feeding chunks of chicken (hopefully without any additives, e.g. salt), your feeding guide will be less than the suggested serving because of the extra protein.

Edit: If you're liking adding cooked or raw meat to your cat's diet, you might want to consider foods like Urban Wolf or Honest Kitchen's "Preference", which are dehydrated powders made from fruits and vegetables (and some minerals, I believe), to which you add raw or cooked meat to and water. This type of food you make in 'batches,' where you freeze the extras... you add the required amount of meat to the dry mix powder and then add water, let it rehydrate, and serve (or pull from the fridge/freezer and let it soften a bit). Just a suggestion!

-DC

Thanks again for all your help & info everyone!
I do feel bad that a lot of days I'm only able to feed Ben 2x a day- before work & again after. Some times I'm able to feed him a 3rd serving if I go to work late or come home early. Since he's outdoors I'm not able to leave his food outside as I don't want every critter around showing up. In the very early days of feeding Ben I saw a possum 1 evening, a woodchuck another & I've seen a couple of full grown cats, lol!

Now I bring his food in once he's done eating & refridge anything he hasn't eaten & serve it the next time.