Raw Feeding Questions!

I know these have probably been covered before but I'm search stupid apparently, lol.

Our dogs are fed raw and we want to switch the cat over, at least to one raw meal a day. We will be doing them 12 hours apart.

If we do one meal a day, how important is it to make sure there is enough taurine in the meal? Are there certain meats that are higher in taurine than others? It's not something that I had to research with the dogs.

If she's on one meal a day, do I need to make sure that she has a good rotation of meats in her diet, or is just sticking to one or two protein sources enough? She's had fish from sushi (not a regular practice, way too expensive, lol), chicken heart and a pinky mouse before, she seems to take to them right away, but if we put a different kind of chicken (part of a chicken breast, or something else) she just looks at it and walks away. Should I just stick to giving her the mice since she eats them whole and they have all the meat, bone and organ right there?

I doubt that we're going to switch her to full raw, simply because of convenience. She will be getting the raw meal in the morning and then kibble or wet in the evening - we have to give her a little bit of kibble just before bed to stop her running up and down the hall screaming at night. We also can't take her with us when we go out of town and there is no way that our friend that comes over to feed her would defrost raw for her.

Any other tips or suggestions for a newbie to cat raw? Feel free to post links to other threads!

Well if you are feeding half raw, you would still want to feed normal percentages as far as bone, meat and organs, hearts are really high in taurine, as is dark meat in general. Rabbit is low in taurine, I think lamb is as well although I'm not sure, I don't feed it. If she's eating chicken hearts, try some liver and then you'd have some organ in there, you can also chop the hearts up with some chopped muscle meat or gizzards and see if she'll try that, sometimes tossing the juice over an unfamiliar food has worked for my cat. Mice would be great, but not pinkies, save those for treats and adults for meals. I would also consider either feeding certain days raw, or maybe canned for the other meal on raw days instead of raw and kibble on the same day. You could also switch to 3x a day feeding if she is screaming for food, I feed morning, 5pm-ish and before I head to bed which seems to work great. Cats do best on several small meals imo.

Note: I wrote my responses in green and they are inside the quote. But the computer doesn't think it is a message, so I am writting this here

Originally Posted by nerdrock

I know these have probably been covered before but I'm search stupid apparently, lol.

Our dogs are fed raw and we want to switch the cat over, at least to one raw meal a day. We will be doing them 12 hours apart.

If we do one meal a day, how important is it to make sure there is enough taurine in the meal? Are there certain meats that are higher in taurine than others? It's not something that I had to research with the dogs.

Most meat is high in taurine. Chicken breast, or other "unworked" muscle, is the going to be the lowest. Heart is probably the highest in taurine, and is fed as a meat. Other things with good amounts of taurine are gizzards, drumsticks, wings, tongue, beef chuck roast (aka neck...I think), basically anything in the animals body that moves a lot/gets a good work out. Rabbit, though, is (I think) is fairly low in taurine as well as having very little fat. So if you are feeding rabbit, then, you'd want to feed some fattier meat besides.

If she's on one meal a day, do I need to make sure that she has a good rotation of meats in her diet, or is just sticking to one or two protein sources enough?

The more variety the better. If I had to stick to just two differant meats I'd do a white meat and a red meat. I feed the "calf barn cats" one meal of raw a day, the other meal is canned. Below is an example of what they get throughout the week, for each cat:

Monday: 2 oz beef or beef heart
Tuesday: ~2 oz chicken heart
Wednesday: 2 oz chicken wing, 0.5 ounce liver
Thursday: 2 ounces plain chicken meat or gizzards, 0.5 ounces sardines
Friday: 2 oz Pork/Turkey (depending on what I have available)
Saturday: 2 oz chicken breast bone-in, 0.5 ounce kidney
Sunday: both meals are canned - I am not there on Sundays

I'm hoping that I typed that out right! I have the amounts written down elsewhere and just came up with this off the top of my head.

She's had fish from sushi (not a regular practice, way too expensive, lol), chicken heart and a pinky mouse before, she seems to take to them right away, but if we put a different kind of chicken (part of a chicken breast, or something else) she just looks at it and walks away. Should I just stick to giving her the mice since she eats them whole and they have all the meat, bone and organ right there?

There are many raw feeders that do feed whole prey. But best to move to bigger sizes of mice, not just pinkies. http://www.rodentpro.com/ and http://www.hare-today.com/index.php?...8c850dbb0feb49 are the two sites I can think of right now that sell whole prey. I'd still try to vary what you feed though: mice, quail, small rabbits, chicks, etc. Maybe even some live crickets once in a while!

I doubt that we're going to switch her to full raw, simply because of convenience. She will be getting the raw meal in the morning and then kibble or wet in the evening - we have to give her a little bit of kibble just before bed to stop her running up and down the hall screaming at night. We also can't take her with us when we go out of town and there is no way that our friend that comes over to feed her would defrost raw for her.

Would it be possible to quit the dry all together? Would it help to, instead, give a small meal of raw or canned right before you go to bed? Raw seems to keep mine satisfied for longer than canned.

From another thread:

However, it is not a good idea to be feeding dry food within 12 hours before you feed raw. Reason being the digestion rate: dry digests very slowly but raw is much more easily digestable so it digests fast. That's part of the reason that cats can easily handle raw meat - it goes through fast - not giving time for bacterial growth. But get the raw stuck behind dry and that could end up causing problems.

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Though mine are fed grain free canned when I am gone, I do not give them canned any other times than that. They are still happy enough to eat the canned

But, they are incredibly happy when I get back, and they can have real food again

Any other tips or suggestions for a newbie to cat raw? Feel free to post links to other threads!

http://www.rawfedcats.org/ is a very good site to read through. There are also some groups on facebook, so if you want me to, I can send you the links.

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Thanks for the help! It sounds like it's pretty similar to dog raw, with the exception of a few things - my biggest worry is that she won't get enough taurine, or if it's possible, too much.

I got her the pinkie mice just to see if she'd even touch it, she plays with it a lot before she eats it though, lol. We just picked them up at Petsmart because I was there, I'm going to see if there's a local reptile store or supplier that I can get mice through cheaper (it was like $5 for 4 pinkie mice at PS!). At least I know that they sell them (all sizes) at PS incase we run low and aren't able to get them quickly.

I will look into it and see if I can get baby chicks from somewhere. I know there is a chicken farm/processing plant in Thamesford but I don't know what they do with the chicks that die or if it's even safe to get them from there - how would I know what they died of or if it was safe to feed? Are chicks something that you would be able to get from a reptile store? I have no idea... I suppose that would be where you could get a lot of the smaller sized prey. Would probably be good to get the dog meat from there too since they are small as well (11lbs & 18lbs). I hadn't even thought of that before.

We get our hearts, gizzards and livers (chicken) at the grocery store because that's the cheapest place I've seen them. It's like $1 for a huge thing of them.

I'll definitely check out the link!

Eventually, we would like to cut out the dry and switch just to wet/raw but for now we have to keep the dry in there until we figure out something for her nighttime snack and for when we go on vacation. I don't know if our friend will be able to come over every day to feed her, so I was going to get an automatic feeder for when we're gone and then have our friend come over at least every other day. If for some reason she can't, I have our building manager's phone number and can have her come over and check on her.

I don't know if wet would go down well for her night snack. We tried giving her her evening meal of wet and then saving a bit and giving it to her before we went to bed, but it just seemed to make her more energetic and we had more screaming. She gets really excited about her wet food, lol.

I had thought about giving her the raw meal right before bed, but she likes to play with it and I'm kind of afraid that she's going to get it somewhere and not be able to get it out - then I'm going to have rotten meat somewhere. So I make sure that I'm in the same room as her when she's eating so that I can watch her. Maybe I'm a little paranoid about that. Our apartment also gets pretty hot in the summer, so I'm also a bit worried about leaving raw meat out overnight if she doesn't finish it all.

I was tempted to get some crickets when I was at Petsmart, but decided against it just because I'm sure she would play with it and then I would have a cricket loose in my apartment driving me nuts, lol. I swear one was following me around Petsmart the other day, I kept hearing them everywhere.

I would NOT feed any cat just one meal a day! Better to be feeding twice a day.

Originally Posted by GoldenKitty45

I would NOT feed any cat just one meal a day! Better to be feeding twice a day.

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We don't feed her only one meal a day, we feed her two plus a small snack before we go to bed.

I was asking if one raw meal instead of one her kibble meals, in addition to her kibble/wet meal and her snack would be ok.