my cats makeover

Hi,

I follow the recipe that Dr. Pierson gives on her website except I cook the meat and throw everything in a food processor. The supplements are quite cheap especially if purchased online or at walmart. The most expensive thing is the bone meal which is $15 for a large container at Whole Foods - cheaper online. 

Weruva cat food is expensive and so is a phone consult with Dr. Pierson! 

Do you need links to inexpensive supplements?

Hi, Muezza, Aeevr! Welcome to TCS!

If you two are cooking the meats you're feeding your cats instead of preparing it as Dr. Pierson directs, then you quite likely need to add more supplements than is listed with the good Dr.'s recipe. You are, in affect, cooking out much of the goodness that is inherent in the raw diet (the very reason one feeds raw to begin with) and need to replace as much of it as possible.

I would suggest Fresh + Oasis Feline T, but I've also heard good things about Feline Instincts premixes.

Best regards!

AC

what, besides taurine, is being cooked out?

Also, I just want to point out, I've been serving this about 5 oz/day for 4-5 days a week. The rest is canned food + treats. I'm definitely not confident that what I'm providing is optimal, but I don't have confidence in any one else's diets either.

I've experimented with giving them raw meat with mixed results. For one, I don't have a meat grinder. They liked ground beef which I don't want to feed because that's likely the most contaminated. Lacey chewed a bit on a chicken wing after I hacker into it with a butchers knife but I don't think she actually ingested any. Cagney doesn't like tearing off meat; it takes a lot of coaxing just to get her to tear off a piece of turkey deli meat. I do plan to experiment more with this in the future, but I do have a problem with the idea of them dragging raw meat around the house (I don't have a cage to feed them in) and I don't want to waste perfectly good meat.

Well, if scientists were able to determine that, we would have perfectly nutritious canned foods and wouldn't have to feed a raw diet for optimum health!

Of those nutrients we have identified, a great many are destroyed by cooking; some are even more sensitive and begin deteriorating when exposed to just light and/or air. Table 1 on page 12 of the USDA's Handling Frozen/Thawed Meat and Prey Items Fed to Captive Exotic Animals manual highlights just a few of those we've identified and how stable they are. Fully half are affected by cooking, with the same percentage affected by water. Cooking meats by boiling them is the surest method for removing the maximum amount of nutrients, since the meats are affected by heat and water as well as the leaching-out of nutrients into the water.

If you're afraid of pathogens (and you really don't need to be, read Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria, oh my!), simply removing the skin and rinsing the food should be sufficient, since bacteria are a contact contaminants found only on external surfaces. At the very most, a quick scald of the outside surfaces will kill off anything left without damaging too much of the meat. But, again, cats can handle the levels of bacteria that may be found on our store-bought whole meats.

Yeah, transitioning cats to a raw diet, especially a frankenprey diet, can be tough. There are several TCS members currently in the middle of switching their kitties to commercial raw diets who are recording the entire process, and you can find them in the raw food forum. You might find something helpful in what they're going through.

RawFedCats has a guide for transitioning cats to frankenprey that you might find also find helpful: A Practical Guide.

Best regards!

AC

Right now I'm of a mind to combine all methods (home cooked + raw + aafco approved) of feeding in an attempt to cover all bases.

I suspect that cooked food is a good thing although not necessarily optimal in the sense that it should be eaten 100% of time. Cooking makes many nutrients and calories more readily available. In fact, it has been proposed that the cooking of food aided in the evolution of human's large calorie hungry brains.

Cats are not people; far from it. Cats are obligate carnivores - like snake, sharks and birds of prey - that evolved to thrive on the fresh tissues, organs and bones of other animals. Cooking a cat's meat does nothing but reduce the nutritional profile you are offering your cat.

Might be good for us, but not so much for our kitties.

AC

Sorry. I'm still skeptical. 

I'm not convinced 100% raw is necessarily best for several different reasons.

Here's one:  Raw feeders STILL supplement their cats' food. If raw is so perfect, why?

That being said, I do buy that raw meat should be a significant part of a cat's diet.

Sadly, no one is really doing real research regarding this issue so I have no real reason to believe you over anyone else. 

Hmmm. I know many raw feeders besides myself - the only ones who supplement are those who grind. *shrug*  And there is real research going on, some of it by the pet food industry itself. Check out the Feline Nutrition Education Society's site, feline-nutrition.org, as well as CatCentric.org.

I'm not here to convince you of anything, so you've no need to apologize to me. I do hope that if you continue to cook the meats you feed your kitty, you look into adding adequate supplementation.

Best regards!

AC