Started them on raw tonight :D - Page 12

GOOD NEWS! Spooky came when called for "dinner" (AGAIN!) - and ate the raw meal!

My thinking here is that they are just sick of NV. So.... instead of sticking at 50% pork (I know, I know, but I did start introducing it Friday night, and it IS two days later now!), I bumped it to 75%. And instead of using NV (which is all I have here now apart from Hare Today pork, rabbit, and turkey), I used fresh cut up chicken.

I added no water to the meal (other than the water you add to Hare Today to mix the supplement into the meat/bones/organs), and I just put the pork on one side and the chicken on the other. I sprinkled probiotic and digestive enzymes on top. Figured... let's just see what happens. It's all just meat. Yes, the pork is bone-in, but....

Spooky got only an ounce of food (at three meals a day, she should be closer to 1.5 oz at each meal), and hers was 50% pork / 50% raw chicken. She ate ALL the pork, and some of the chicken! She ate half an ounce!!!

I put NO toppers on ANYONE'S food. Laz and Tux were the only two to look at me like... Hello? Laz got some beef liver crumbled on his, Tuxie got some Fortiflora fluffed on there (I'd stopped using it, but with his appetite being off... .). And Lazlo dove in. I needed to "refresh" his after he'd eaten all but the last 0.20 ounces! Tuxie didn't do so well, and only ate about 0.60 oz total. But at least he's eating and keeping it down.

Flowerbelle ate almost all of her ounce without any help!

Shelly, of course, ate all the chicken. He needed help with the last 0.20 oz of pork. He also got some of the chicken Tuxie didn't finish.

So, offering them meat, not mush, and with no NV was a hit, I'm going to have to say.

2/19/12 Dinner Intake:

Lazlo 1.50 oz
Shel 1.80 oz
Tux 0.60 oz
Spooky 0.50 oz
Flowerbelle 1.1 oz

I have no fresh chicken left, of course. As they've already been introduced to turkey, I grabbed some out of the freezer this morning. I'm not sure, and I'm about to go start fixing their late night meal... but I'm really considering 75% pork and 25% turkey.

No, Chum gets raw! I just don't bother posting how much he's eating, because he always finishes the bowl, as do Ming Loy and Billy. I measure their portions, they eat it. No encouragement, no toppers.

I'm only tracking the fussy eaters. Needed to make sure they're eating what they should be. I started doing it because it seemed Spooky was having a problem - and she was.

It also looked to me like Lazlo, Tuxedo, Shelly and Flowerbelle were losing weight. Lazlo and Tuxedo, in fact, gained weight.

Flowerbelle did lose 6 ounces over three weeks... but she needed to. In fact, while she only weighed 8 pounds, her ideal weight is just under or over 7 pounds. Shel probably did lose some - but he's definitely gaining it back with the amount of food he's eating now.

And for dinner, I did go ahead and introduce the turkey. They just eat so poorly with the NV, and this is just turkey (meat/bones/organs). They've been introduced to turkey with NV via the chicken ( ), the Primal Turkey (which they hated), and fresh cut up turkey. I took a gamble... knock wood, it worked! It's been almost an hour since they finished eating, and everyone's kept it down.

Because I feed them (roughly) 1.5 oz (the bigger kitties, anyway), it's just easier to make the intro 70%/30%. It was roughly that.

Spooky - again, came when called for the meal (!!), and ate all the pork. She left the turkey.
Tuxedo - didn't start eating, so I topped with fortiflora. He ate some of his turkey. So I gave him Spooky's turkey.
Shel - finished his bowl.
Lazlo - finished his bowl.
Flowerbelle - almost finished her bowl with little encouragement needed.

I am SO SO SO glad I finally got something other than NV. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The nothing-other-than-fresh meat/bones/organs is really helping them enjoy meals again!

Ooops, forgot to post amounts. I also forgot to mention that when Tuxie didn't eat much raw (0.6 oz), I opened some Wellness Turkey & Salmon. He ate another 0.6 oz of that. I then offered it to Spook, to see if she wanted more food. She did. She ate almost an ounce.

2/19/12 Late Night Meal

Lazlo 1.53 oz
Shel 1.82 oz
Tux 1.21 oz
Spook 1.50 oz
Flowerbelle 0.91 oz

Total Daily Intake:

Lazlo 6.0 oz
Shel 6.33 oz
Tux 4.01 oz
Spook 3.73 oz
Flowerbelle 3.6 oz

Tux is close to where he should be. Spook... a little under target, but SO improved from where she's been, and totally altered over the course of today. We'll find out tomorrow, but it sure looks like she's lost weight. Be hard for her not to have. But we'll see. The difference is that Spooky seems to be getting back to normal.... and something still seems off with Tux's appetite. As it seems constipation may be a problem, I did give Tuxie some more chicken livers.

I do think I'm having a bit of the opposite problem... I think my kitties ARE digesting the bone, and they've been getting too much of it. That appears to be what caused Spooky's upset tummy, and I'm pretty sure it's what's bothering Tuxedo. I gave him some more chicken liver a few minutes ago.

But yes - they really like the freshness of JUST MEAT!

IT IS WORKING! I know you're wishing you could turn back time and NOT have introduced the Hare Today.... but man, my kitties THANK YOU for having ordered it and having put us on that path!!!!

And YES, I can "dilute" with fresh meat, and I LOVE that!

I couldn't feed the morning meal because of Lazlo and Spooky going for ultrasounds. I did give everyone a little WL chicken to keep stomach acid at bay. The others had their meal around 11:00, when we got back. Again, I put out a bite of WL chicken when we got home and got their meals ready.

We had the exact same meal as last night: Hare Today Pork and Turkey, at about 70% pork, 30% turkey. YUM!

Shel finished his bowl, 1.65 oz
Tux preferred pork over the turkey today. 1.50 oz
Flowerbelle ate all but a bite or two of both: 1.00 oz

Which supplement, Gloria?

I'm using PetGuard for Cat digestive enzymes (though am going to order and replace it with Prozyme because you need less of those). I use an acidophilus + bifidus probiotic I buy at the health food store (needs to be refrigerated). And for the Hare Today meats, I'm using the pre-mix supplement they sell, Alnutrin.

I plan to include some boneless meats in the rotation from Nature's Menu (the lamb and chicken). Nature's Menu is supplemented food, so no need for supplements with it. But they also supplement with calcium, rather than use bones.

Did that answer your question?

Thanks Carolina!

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OK! Spooky's (and Lazlo's) ultrasound reports! (For those that haven't seen Lazlo's - there was no detectable tumor to measure! http://www.thecatsite.com/t/241514/lazlos-tumor-is-in-complete-remission )

Spooky - nothing! Well, some signs of inflammation, but no blockage or partial blockage. (BTW, as I type this, Spooky and Flowerbelle are flying around the house like crazy, playing with each other and some toy they take turns batting around ). Her colon is a little inflamed, don't know why. Normally, they'd prescribe metro for it, but she doesn't have an infection and doesn't need an antibiotic. Doc's alternate choice is Diagel. They don't carry it, so I'll have to order it. But she also said it's not inflamed "enough" to think it's actually bothering her. As we have to keep an eye on those two stones in her bladder, we'll be able to keep an eye on her colon too. But the diagel should do it, and as she's now not eating anything that should be causing inflammation, we should expect this to go away.

She does have poop in her colon - not a lot. Normal. No lumps, nothing distended... looks great! Now, it is full of bones (we looked at the x-ray from the 11th, and same thing there too). In this one, she also had a couple of bones not in poop working their way through her colon. The vet said they're of a size we don't need to worry about, and she should be able to pass them, no problem. It's just that she's still "new" to raw, bone-in meals, and her body isn't completely digesting them yet. Normal, no biggie. What they want me to do is keep her on the digestive enzymes. As her system adjusts, she'll be able to digest those bones. But for now, I shouldn't worry about them, they should not be causing her discomfort. We'll get the diagel, and hopefully that'll calm down the inflammation. The other part of that news is that I do not need to worry about her calcium intake. As she was tending towards constipated, she's obviously digesting enough of the bone. So in addition to the diagel, she wants me to dilute the bone-in meals with the proper mix of plain meat and organs (3-5% organs per amount of meat added). That way I don't need to worry about supplements or the 15% non-balanced rule.

The other good news is that we don't have to worry about her vomiting or her appetite - she's not been vomiting, and her appetite is back. She's fully back on raw - and back on schedule! (Well, she couldn't have breakfast because of the ultrasound. But she ate REALLY well when she came home. And she came when called for dinner, and went to her eating spot - and ate well! ).

Lazlo had a full body x-ray from several angles. It was "the last diagnostic thing" they needed to do to check on the status of his cancer. Make sure no tumors are sprouting any place else - check on his lymph nodes (as those are often the target of the haywire white blood cells that ARE lymphosarcoma). The GREAT news is that everything looked completely normal. No swollen lymph nodes either!

But HE was FULL of poop - and even more bones. He doesn't look blocked or anything, and nothing's lumping up in there (and no inflammation). So I'm to give him miralax until I don't need to. He had issues with constipation all throughout the chemo process, so this isn't new for him. The good news is he ate all his dinner, so got his entire dose of miralax tonight.

YES! Floating on cloud nine!

I think I'm going to weigh how much everyone eats tonight - and that's it. Tuxie is back on track, Spooky is back on track ( ), and I know that Flowerbelle's LITTLE bit of food is what she needs!

In fact... despite the fact that Spooky was "undereating" for two weeks... she weighed 11 pounds today (with a little more poop in her colon) than the 10 pounds, 14 ounces she weighed one week and two days ago!

I actually may have to cut down the amount of food I'm giving them. !!!!

Breakfast was messed up because Laz and Spook didn't actually have their first meal until they got home (around 2:00pm). But everyone is LOVING real meat! Dinner tonight took about 40 minutes. And feeding them canned used to take about half an hour. SO much less fussing required, and more empty bowls!

Dinner was great too.

Running total daily intake:

Lazlo 3.36 oz
Sheldon 3.2 oz
Tuxedo 3.25 oz
Spooky 3.4 oz
Flowerbelle 1.90 oz

OK! Once again, we ended today on a high note! It seems everyone IS back on track!

I'm going to stop weighing how much they eat. The last two meals have only taken me about 40 minutes start-to-finish (including standing there warming up their food under running water, all the way through to done with clean up). It used to take me about half an hour with the canned... but even Flowerbelle has cut down the amount of time it takes her to eat, even with her ADD! I think she's FINALLY getting the hang of eating on timed meals. (Again ).

I'm glad I did this though. I'll need to weigh how much I'm putting out for them, but I've gotten really good at eyeballing how much they've actually eaten of it. And I think part of the problem with "leftovers" is that I am giving them more than they need. I mean - everyone's apparently been gaining weight. And on a relative basis, they ARE all getting more than they were on canned.... and with raw, they should need less. And on raw, with digestive enzymes, they should need less than that. !!!

So I think I'm going to start trimming down the amount I give them.

And with all of that said... today's total intakes:

2/20/12 Monday Total Daily Intake

Lazlo 4.9 oz
Shel 4.6 oz
Tux 4.3 oz
Spook 4.2 oz
Flowerbelle 2.9 oz

Well, I didn't have to worry about cutting down on their food this morning. Of course Billy, Ming Loy, and Chum ate like champs. But no one else was particularly excited, ate very little, and Lazlo got almost none of his miralax as a result.

I didn't have any pork "prepped" with supplement, but a 2 pound package dethawed. I was thinking - mix in supplement, serve and store. Not today. Apparently there may be some issues with batch consistency at Hare Today. The chunks of meat were... chunks. And the pieces of bones were chunks too. It took me an hour to pick out a lot of the bones. And I still had a pile to collect when I put individual servings in the dishes and went through them individually. I ended up mixing the turkey and pork in the bowls. Apparently they prefer their meat not mixed. (Which makes sense, because some of them aren't so hot on the turkey at each meal, and Shel isn't a fan period).

Stella & Chewy's saved the day.

I'll post a pick in the Questions about commercial raw thread, so it doesn't get buried in here.

Because of the bone issue (turns out the Hare Today was a course ground pork. They no longer offer it, but used to. They refunded my money), I bought lamb and chicken. Dinner was 70% fresh cut up lamb, 30% fresh cut up chicken. Everyone but Laz and Spooky emptied their bowls. Both of them ate most of it. Shel and Tux were happy to finish them up.

They were both hungry a little later. I gave them some more fresh cut chicken.

Because they like meat, but I'm leery of bones as yet - and they're not digesting them so well yet - I'm working on figuring out a boneless frankenprey menu/rotation for transition. I'll be using baked powdered eggshell as the calcium supplement for now. I will also be feeding 1/3 of their food (one meal a day) as either fine-ground bone-in mix, or a boneless commercial (Nature's Menu). I need to figure out how to give Chumley his slippery elm and Billy his L-lysine, and don't know how to do it with Frankenprey.

Lauren, I'm just glad I've had a few meals here where I'm not pulling my hair out. It seems it's always SOMETHING.

OK! Initial boneless frankenprey. I'm doing ROUGHLY 85% meat/gizzards/heart to 7.5% kidney (as the "other" secreting organ) and 7.5% liver. AC recommended 88%/6%/6%, but given the ounces per meal I feed, it just fit right into the 85/7.5/7.5.

I have yet to introduce ANY kind of organs, muscle or otherwise, so we'll see how that goes. Have to get some first. The chicken livers at the supermarket were dated today. NOT. I did not come home with them.

I don't have when I'm feeding what proteins worked out yet, but I have the rest.

My 8 cats require 10.7 ounces per meal, 3 meals a day. That is 2 pounds of "stuff" a day, 14 per week.

At least initially, I want to feed one meal a day of ground mix, or boneless supplemented. I will use Hare Today (ground mix of meat/bone/organs) and Nature's Menu (boneless commercial supplemented). That's 4.68 (or roughly 5) pounds per week (7 meals of 10.7 ounces).

So initially, the "transitional boneless frankenprey" will be 14 meals per week (2 per day). With the 85% meat/gizzard/heart, 7.5% kidney, and 7.5% liver, this requires:

Meat/heart/gizzard: 8 pounds per week (128 ounces)
Liver: 0.7 pounds per week (about 11 ounces)
Kidney: 0.7 pounds per week (about 11 ounces)

Remember - for my cats' daily requirements, one meal is 10.7 ounces.

As the liver and kidney should not be fed by themselves, I'm splitting the weekly requirement into two meals for each one weekly.

So, the weekly "menu" will be:

7 meals of meat/bone/organ ground mix OR Nature's Menu (boneless commercial)
3 meals of some kind of heart
2 meals of gizzards & liver
2 meals of other secreting organ (kidney) and meat
7 meals of meat
= 21 meals

This means 1 meal a day of Nature's Menu or Hare Today ground mix; 1 meal a day of either heart, or gizzard & liver, or 50/50 meat/kidney; and 1 meal a day of just meat.

The introduced proteins I have to work with (so far) are:

Pork
Lamb
Chicken
Turkey
Rabbit

The liver I can source is:

Beef - grass fed, organic from local health food store
Rabbit - Hare Today (in the rabbit organ mix)
Turkey - Hare Today
Chicken - Supermarket (or Hare Today)

And the kidney I can source is:

Beef - Hare Today
Rabbit - Hare Today (in the rabbit organ mix)

Hearts I can source:

Chicken - Hare Today
Duck - Hare Today
Turkey - Hare Today

I am in the process of joining the NJ BARF Yahoo group. I'll see if I can find other sources or other organs through them. But that's what I've got so far.

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2/21/12 late night meal was fresh cut up pork chops. Spooky, Lazlo, and Tux balked at a meal of 100% pork. So the ferals will enjoy those leftovers, and I cut up chicken for them, which they happily ate.

It WAS quite funny when I was prepping the meal. I have a GREAT box (best box I ever had! Thank you Lauren! (It's still the box from Christmas LOL)). It was located underfoot - sitting in front of the oven. Flowerbelle jumped up there, and stood on her back legs so she could see what I was doing (I don't have enough counter space for 8 bowls, so I have to use the stove top too).

My process: set out the bowls (each cat's bowl goes in the same place). Place a bowl 0n the scale, cut up meat into it. Put it back in the right space. Well - Flowerbelle apparently leaned up and grabbed some pork out of Lazlo's bowl, because when I went to set down Billy's, Flowerbelle had dropped a piece of meat on top of the box and was chomping away at it!

I noticed she was moving around - I just thought she was stretching "taller" to see better!

She tried again this morning. I moved the box to in front of the fridge (right next to the stove). She couldn't QUITE reach.... So she took a new tack. She walked over to the couch, and from the back of the couch, just BRAZENLY walked on to the counter (the other side of the sink)

Here's a pic of the kitchen:



and walked that thin edge in front of the sink! She KNOWS she is not allowed on the counter! I relocated her to the cat tree. She reached out, grabbed at my back - then WALKED UP MY BACK!

That girl wanted breakfast!

Well, I've been feeding the NV to the ferals. But I thought I'd give it a shot, as the fine ground pork is still dethawing. I am not risking feeding the course ground pork - what if I miss a piece of bone? Just not worth it. I spent another hour yesterday picking bones out of it. I don't want the ferals that eat the garbage to have a problem either.

2/22/12 Wednesday. So breakfast was 70% NV chicken and 30% cut up fresh pork or chicken. I did spend 15 minutes going through ONE DISH of course ground pork, because Shel will NOT eat NV, period. Everyone ate great except (of course LOL) Laz, Tux, and Spooky. I got Laz and Spooky going again, but Tux was a no go. So I opened BG Quail & Chicken. He ate about an ounce - which means he got a healthy amount of food. Laz and Spook ate about a half ounce each. The ferals enjoyed the rest.

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Carolina, on the boneless frankenprey, I'm going to use baked eggshells for calcium. At 1/2 tablespoon per pound, Gary and I are going to be eating a lot of eggs. I'm haven't done the calculation yet to figure out how much that is per the two meals a day, but I'll get there.

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ORGANS.

AC reminded me that the percent of organ meats is really 3% - 5%, so the 7.5% is just too high. As the commercial raw typically has 20% organ meat to 80% muscle meat (though 10% is typically heart, a muscle meat), I'm simply going to cut the organ portion of the meals by half.

So the gizzard/liver meals will be 75% gizzard, 25% liver (instead of 50/50), and the fresh meat/kidney meals will be the same.

Now... to get some organs and see if they'll eat them!