Is cooked homemade food a good idea?

Recently, I've been reading many articles that have disgusted me (regarding the pet food industry). I know making your own pet food is a lot of work, but I'm willing to give it 110% in order to give my cats the best possible nutrition. Now, I'm not entirely comfortable with feeding raw as of yet (but it is a very fascinating idea, I do hope I will try it in the future) so I was wondering if it's alright to feed my cats cooked homemade foods?

And is it neccesary to provide essential vitamins such as calcium and taurine as well, if you are already giving them a kitty vitamin? I would be giving the cats kitty vites daily as well as a probiotic and omega 3 supplement.

This question goes out to the raw feeders: how do you ensure your kitty has a balanced diet? That's my biggest scare about feeding raw or homemade. :nod:

PS: I will also be talking to my vet about cooking my cat's food, and will post the advice he gives on here for other potential homemade feeders.

Raw food supporters are quick to point out if you cook it, you have to add supplements because cooking destroys some nutrients. That's one reason a lot of people feed raw food, although some people do it differently and have to supplement it anyway.

The problem is this: If you buy a chicken at the grocery store, it is made for you, not your cat, and therefore does not have enough taurine for your cat. Cats are unable to synthesize taurine, so the only way to get enough is eat the amount they need. This is true for some other nutrients as well.

For more informatoin, go to the Raw Food Forum. You will learn a lot about feline nutrition just by reading LDG's posts there.

Another thing to consider about cooking your cat's food is that IT'S MORE WORK! Why not eliminate that step, when it isn't necessary anyway?
 

Good that you are considering raw diet.

I don't know much about cooked homemade food, other than you lose a lot of nutrients that way.  And under no circumstances (NONE) should you feed your cat cooked bones.

You know, you can buy commercial raw, looks like canned wet food, no fuss, no muss, no supplements (depending on the brand).  Need to defrost it, of course.

Natures Variety, Rad Cat are good ones, other people will chime in with their recommendations. http://www.radfood.com/

In the United States, you can find commercial raw in high-end pet food stores and you can order it through the mail. Don't know the specifics for Canada. 

I started out feeding Ritz Primal http://www.primalpetfoods.com/, then tried other brands and proteins of commercial raw to see what Ritz liked (um, everything!), then transitioned her to frakenprey (raw) food.  I was kind of desperate when I started; she would eat only Fancy Feast Classic seafood, a lot of it, and still seemed hungry.  With raw, she'll eat almost any protein (venison, goat, rabbit, chicken, quail; about to try Buffalo) except fish, and seems to self-regulate at around 4.2 oz of raw food.  Cheaper than high-quality cat food.

I can understand the logic behind cooking for your cat. Many people don't understand cats are better than humans at avoiding illness when they ingest harmful bacteria because they are obligate carnivores. It is a hard concept to accept and I always believed cooking was necessary to prevent disease. But as I learned more about raw food, I became more open to considering the idea - if it does not require any more effort on my part than feeding what is sold at Petsmart. That is the major stumbling block for me, all the talk about you have to freeze and thaw this, add a supplement to that, etc. and the food can be contaminated when I handle it.

Thank you everyone for your advice and opinions.

I will definitely look into RadCat, Primal and NV, especially NV since my local pet store sells the raw version. I was just a little scared at first to try raw, because if I made it myself I would definitely worry that my inexperience could cause deficiencies in the cats of some kind.

I completely agree that cooking the food would be more work than feeding raw. I was willing to do so at first, but if it is much easier to feed commercial raw, then why not? The only thing is my current vet is 100% against feeding raw. I guess that's another thing that scared me, as well.

And do the commercial raw brands provide a complete diet for cats? Like do they include the supplements? I'm definitely interested in feeding raw, but I have a whole bunch of questions. :lol3:

a defrost and serve sounds like a good plan for Dolly since we feed her cooked chicken,rice, canned cat food laced with dry....yes, I know its' over kill on the ingredients

however, we are in the midwest US, (sw Missouri) so if its' not petsmart, walmart or something else ending in "mart' I may be out of luck

any suggestions as to a source for these foods? i.e. stores, mail order?

I've ordered from www.mrchewy.com before, with good results. I believe they do sell these foods as well. :nod:

kittylover23 said:

Recently, I've been reading many articles that have disgusted me (regarding the pet food industry). I know making your own pet food is a lot of work, but I'm willing to give it 110% in order to give my cats the best possible nutrition. Now, I'm not entirely comfortable with feeding raw as of yet (but it is a very fascinating idea, I do hope I will try it in the future) so I was wondering if it's alright to feed my cats cooked homemade foods?

And is it neccesary to provide essential vitamins such as calcium and taurine as well, if you are already giving them a kitty vitamin? I would be giving the cats kitty vites daily as well as a probiotic and omega 3 supplement.

This question goes out to the raw feeders: how do you ensure your kitty has a balanced diet? That's my biggest scare about feeding raw or homemade. :nod:

PS: I will also be talking to my vet about cooking my cat's food, and will post the advice he gives on here for other potential homemade feeders.

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Yeah, unfortunately a lot of vets are opposed to raw feeding. Either they don't know much about it, or they don't know much about cat nutrition, or they've gotten all of their "nutrition" education from Hill's and Royal Canin.

I don't know what's in the vitamins you're feeding, so it's hard to say. But it's highly unlikely that unless it's specifically designed to balance home made food, that it provides the right amount of calcium. Most pet vitamins, if they have calcium, provide calcium already balanced with phosphorus, and that doesn't help. So in that respect, I'd worry more about over-supplementation. Personally, just like part of the reason I feed home made is to control the ingredients, I prefer to control the supplements too.

I think all of us that transitioned to home made food worried a lot about all of these things! :lol3: I transitioned to raw by starting with commercial complete and balanced stuff. When I was comfortable with feeding raw, I started offering them raw meat at first. From there, I really had no choice but to start making home made, because several of the cats decided they didn't like the ground food any longer. So they gave me no choice, I had to start feeding frankenprey (whole prey model) - which, thankfully, is pretty easy to do. :nod:

There are three companies that make pathogen-free guaranteed raw foods: Nature's Variety, Stella & Chewy's, and Primal. I don't know if S&C and Primal are available in Canada. But NV is. :nod: I started with NV. All of these are "complete and balanced." Most raw foods are. If not, they'll say they're not, and that they're meant to be fed in rotation. :nod:

There are recipes out there for home made cooked. Most have veggies and things like brown rice in them, so I'm not so sure I'd want to use them. IMO, it improves the quality of the ingredients, but still misses the point - a species-appropriate diet. :dk: But here's a good discussion of cooked at Holisticat: http://www.holisticat.com/cooked.html

IMO, the real problem with cooked is that cooking changes the nutrient profile so much. For people, this isn't such a big deal, because we eat so many other things that provide needed nutrition. For cats? Their bodies are designed to get everything they need from raw animals. The AAFCO "complete and balanced" stuff is so drilled into our heads, it's hard to get away from it. But so many of the recommended amounts of stuff in cat food come from studies that weren't done in CATS. The bottom line is that they have very little clue what the nutritional needs of cats are. But in NATURE, cats eat small rodents, birds, lizards, and bugs. And depending on where they are, cats on islands will eat exclusively birds. Some cats eat 95% rats. Others eat 70% rodents, and a mix of birds and bugs. So we know from feral cat diets that cats get everything they need from raw meat. They don't eat vegetables, fruits, or grains.

So yes, you can make home made cooked food. But it's much harder to ensure kitty is getting what they need, because no one really knows. :dk: It's much easier to get over our fear of pathogens, and just feed them what they're meant to eat. :lol3:

I look at it like this. I don't get all the protein, vitamins and minerals I need in any given day. But over time, my body gets what it needs. When making food for my kitties, I provide a variety of proteins. I ensure they get enough calcium to balance the phosphorus in meat (easy to do several different ways), taurine, and I make sure they get enough omega 3s, because just like with our own diet, the proteins we feed them are high in omega 6 without enough omega 3. Kitties need an animal source of omega 3s, so I don't use flax seed, :lol3: I use salmon oil; others use krill oil. I give them sardines and egg yolks as "treats," and my "frankenprey" diet is essentially Dr. Pierson's ground recipe - just fed not ground. Because I don't freeze my food for long periods, I don't bother with the B supplements.

Dr. Pierson, a very outspoken vet (you know her site!), has a ground recipe up for raw feeding, and she cooks the outside of the meats to kill pathogens. I'm not sure when she started searing the meat, but that was a change she made at some point. But she's been using this recipe for about 10 years, so it's time-tested. :nod: http://catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

Basically, it helps to do a lot of reading. It feels overwhelming at first, but really, it's not rocket science. Most of us haven't had nutrition courses before making our own food. And if you can afford to start with a commercial raw, it makes it that much easier to get comfortable with it.

EmilyMayWilcha said:

The problem is this: If you buy a chicken at the grocery store, it is made for you, not your cat, and therefore does not have enough taurine for your cat. Cats are unable to synthesize taurine, so the only way to get enough is eat the amount they need. This is true for some other nutrients as well.

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I think you mean if you buy canned chicken from the supermarket? Raw chicken has plenty of taurine. Especially dark meats.

EmilyMayWilcha said:

That is the major stumbling block for me, all the talk about you have to freeze and thaw this, add a supplement to that, etc. and the food can be contaminated when I handle it.

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Are you vegetarian? Because if you're not, you handle meat to make for yourself, no? Safe handling of raw for cats is no different. :dk:

LDG said:

Are you vegetarian? Because if you're not, you handle meat to make for yourself, no? Safe handling of raw for cats is no different.

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No, but the only time I cut meat is when it is on my plate. Mom does all the cooking here because she is better with knives than I am.

Time to learn to sharpen and use a knife?  You can also use poultry shears which are rather large strong sharp sissors, and will go through bone.  However they won't deal with a very thick piece of meat.

OrientalSlave said:

Time to learn to sharpen and use a knife?  You can also use poultry shears which are rather large strong sharp sissors, and will go through bone.  However they won't deal with a very thick piece of meat.

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:lol3: I use shears almost exclusively. :lol3:

LDG said:

:lol3: I use shears almost exclusively. :lol3:

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Me too. I'm bad with knives :anon:. Actually, I just use cheap dollar store scissors, which work fine for chicken breast and pork chops. But I haven't tried to cut through bones; of course I'd need heavier shears for that.

I use shears, too.  The grocery store near me was closing out some of their cooking items, so I purchased two Rubbermaid shears half-off.   They work fine for cutting bone and chicken skin.  But note that both bone and chicken skin are tough to cut through, so expect to either have to sharpen the shears or buy another pair.

OrientalSlave said:

Time to learn to sharpen and use a knife?  You can also use poultry shears which are rather large strong sharp sissors, and will go through bone.  However they won't deal with a very thick piece of meat.

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It has nothing to do with that. I have a disability that limits what I can do with my hands so what is easy for one person is difficult or impossible for me. For example, I have to cut my nails with scissors instead of use regular nail clippers.

Sorry to hear it. I feed boneless frankenprey, so I don't need to do any bone cutting. (And feeding commercial raw, you don't need to do any cutting at all!)