Raw.. the ultimate recipe?

OK, I'm being a bit lazy as I'd like someone to point me in the direction of the best do-it-yourself raw diet amongst all the info here.

I've tried and tried my two on the ready-made stuff and they're just not going for it, and it's just so expensive!  I would really like to try making my own, with ingredients that are available in Australia (i.e., not a specific product).

I'd be really grateful any advice, or where to find specific recipes on TCS,

in advance.

Well, the basic go-to ground recipe is the www.catinfo.org one. Personally, I would no more feed the same raw recipe every day than I would feed the same commercial food every day---I think variety is very important---but it is a balanced recipe and theoretically your cat could eat it every day for life and be healthy. I don't know if you have a grinder though. If your cats will eat non-ground meat, you might consider a prey model raw diet. You can modify the diet depending on whether your cats can/will eat bones, various organs, etc.

Here's a handy thread with all the good links in one place!


http://www.thecatsite.com/t/240809/raw-feeding-resource-thread

I feed my 3 cats the catinfo.org chicken thigh recipe. I also feed chicken gizzards as a snack. They are much healthier than they were on canned and my vet loves the results.

I hope to incorporate more variety as money and time permits. But for now this is what I can do.

This is similar to the catinfo.org recipe, but the way it's written up is a little more flexible - use any meat, or combination. :nod: http://www.catnutrition.org/recipes.html

Here's Andrya's experience with it: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/249264/launching-into-homemade-raw

You can compare the supplements between catinfo,org and catnutrition.org recipes. Dr. Pierson (catinfo) discusses why she doesn't use the glandular supplement (which you might not be able to get there). FYI, one of Andrya's kitties did get constipated on the catnutrition recipe - it turned out the problem was the psyllium. Psyllium requires a LOT - a lot, lot, LOT of water, or it can cause problems. I personally wouldn't use any fiber in a recipe, but provide slippery elm bark powder, pureed pumpkin, etc. only on an as-needed basis - and most find it's not needed. :lol3:

Wait - just making sure - you want to make home made ground? The advantages are that you can make large batches and freeze, so it's easy to take out, thaw, and feed. A number of us feed prey model raw - or our modified version thereof. If you portion the meat and organs, then freeze, it's basically just as easy to feed. It may be a little more difficult to transition - really depends on your kitties' preferences.

Thank you everyone.. I really appreciate it.  I'm going to look over all the info and see what is most acheivable.

I only have access to two commercial raw here... one they just won't touch, and one still has grain.

LDG, I'm not sure what the difference is in what you're saying, but I'll do my reading and hopefully all will be clear   Yes, I was planning on home made ground.

Ah! The ground food is what you'll find at catinfo.org and catnutrition.org

If you want to read about prey model raw (also called frankenprey), there's

http://www.rawfedcats.org/nature.htm

http://catcentric.org/nutrition-and-food/raw-feeding/

Basically, ground you add everything at once and each meal is balanced, like canned cat food.

With Prey Model Raw (PMR), you provide meat, bones, and organs in the proportions they would be in a cat's prey (roughly 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, and 5% other secreting organ). No grinding, the cats do the work of ripping, tearing, and chewing, and the diet is typically balanced over the course of a week, because it's a real PIA to provide a teeney little bit of liver and kidney (or whatever) at each meal. :lol3: If you have an Asian market near you, it's usually pretty easy to source everything you'd need to feed them.

With ground raw, they get the benefit of a high quality, home made, species appropriate diet. All the nutrients are there at each meal.

With prey model raw, they get the additional psychological and dental benefit of eating the food more akin to a style they naturally would. They get to tear and chomp on meat, and crunch bone.

LDG said:

Ah! The ground food is what you'll find at catinfo.org and catnutrition.org

If you want to read about prey model raw (also called frankenprey), there's

http://www.rawfedcats.org/nature.htm

http://catcentric.org/nutrition-and-food/raw-feeding/

Basically, ground you add everything at once and each meal is balanced, like canned cat food.

With Prey Model Raw (PMR), you provide meat, bones, and organs in the proportions they would be in a cat's prey (roughly 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, and 5% other secreting organ). No grinding, the cats do the work of ripping, tearing, and chewing, and the diet is typically balanced over the course of a week, because it's a real PIA to provide a teeney little bit of liver and kidney (or whatever) at each meal.

If you have an Asian market near you, it's usually pretty easy to source everything you'd need to feed them.

With ground raw, they get the benefit of a high quality, home made, species appropriate diet. All the nutrients are there at each meal.

With prey model raw, they get the additional psychological and dental benefit of eating the food more akin to a style they naturally would. They get to tear and chomp on meat, and crunch bone.

Click to expand...

Thanks Laurie.. that's really clear.

I think PMR would be a bit of a culture shock for my little prince and princess (and becoming more princey and princessy by the moment, so it's now or never!)  I like the idea though.

They will have a good old chew on a chicken neck, but I haven't had a cat who won't do that yet.

One of the problems with this is that I only have a tiny freezer, and no space for more, and I'm going to need to travel a bit to access the ingredients, so I need to buy a fair bit.  I'll go through all the info and work out the best..

The little darlings have pushed me back to some canned food, and I just hate it... There is a canned food here called Applaws which was considered excellent (and would want to be as it costs an arm and a leg) so I'd been using some of that.  It doesn't have taurine, but the manufacturers say it doesn't need it as it's 100 per cent pure.  Of course it's cooked, so the taurine would be minimal, and recently people started commenting on that, so now they have 'fine print'.  It just really p**ses me off that companies don't give a hoot about our cats' wellbeing.  It's just all about the dollar.  And I'm over it!

You can chunk some of the meat in the ground chicken thighs recipe for some dental benefits. I chunk almost half of the meat.

As far as cost, my grinder and deep freezer paid themselves off in 8 months for my 3 cats. That's raw chicken thighs/supplements compared to cheap canned here in the US.

:nod: It would definitely have been culture shock for my cats too. Fortunately, we have so many commercial raw options here, I was able to start them with ground raw without having to buy a grinder.

Of course... if you're willing to mince the meat, you can do it without a grinder. Our kitties always loved bites of our (cooked) chicken or steak or whatever, so it's not the concept of small bites or chunks that's the issue, in the end... and it's also possible, if they don't recognize raw meat as food to sear it for them at first, so two different ways to go about it (if you want to pursue it).

The easiest thing to do, of course, is if you eat meat, just offer them a bite of something you're making for yourself before you cook it.

I actually never had any intention of providing my cats prey model raw. But I was using a commercial mix that had a rather high bone content in it, and a couple of my cats became constipated. It was suggested to me here that instead of just giving them the ground mix, that I offer a meal of plain meat here and there. So I went to the supermarket, bought some boneless chicken breast, cut it up into small bite sized pieces, and offered that as a meal. I was shocked - they all ate it. And after that, three of the boys would NOT eat the ground food! :lol3: So I had to scramble rather quickly - both to figure out how to give them a properly balanced diet - and to get additional freezer space. My 8 cats eat about 2 pounds of food a day between them, and we live in an RV, so our freezer is literally tiny - it fits about 30 pounds of meat (assuming there's no frost build up in there) - and we also usually have some frozen food for ourselves in there, and anything in a carton or box of some kind takes up additional space... We ended up buying a used small chest freezer and plugging it in outside. We put a tarp over it to protect it from the weather. :lol3:

I don't know why I don't think mine will eat non-minced.. I've seriously just never tried it.  I'm going to give it a go, based on what you've said, Laurie.  They will certainly eat hand-shredded cooked chicken as a friend who looked after them spoiled them rotten on it.  My problem is that I can't bring myself to buy non-free range (and prefereably organic) chicken, which ups the price somewhat!  Isn't it funny.. I've been feeding them a bit of canned chicken which could come from absolutely anywhere, but when it comes to buying actual chicken, I go all moral...

and Peaches08, that's very good saving.. I just can't imagine where I would fit a freezer (I know it sounds crazy, but I'm that strapped for space), but maybe I can do an LDG and go with outside and a tarp!

We paid $35 for our freezer. It's going to celebrate it's one-year anniversary about now! This is it: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/240497/started-them-on-raw-tonight-d/300#post_3175254

:lol3: Looking for the new-to-us freezer pic, I found the one of our RV freezer: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/240497/started-them-on-raw-tonight-d/210#post_3172376

We put it on a small platform (so water doesn't swamp it when it rains) directly behind the RV so it's in the shade all the time. :nod: ... and literally covered it with a tarp! I use a bungee cord to hold it in place, because we get some nasty storms. But it kept the food frozen for four days when the electricity went out, and it kept everything nice and frozen even when it was really hot here this summer. :cross:

If I decided to go to PMR, it sounds as though it's critical that no meals are missed.  This is difficult as there's only one of me, and I may need to be away for a full day.  If I went away for a longer period and needed someone to come in to feed, if I couldn't get a sitter, they would only come twice a day. Others come for playtime/cuddles, but it's not a regular thing.

The going away is exceptionally rare, but I'm thinking that once you're on to PMR, if it works would it be really counter-productive to alter it at all to allow for these situations?

whoops.. cross-over post.. Just saw your freezer info, Laurie..

Well, there's really no need to go full PMR. I have access to ground whole prey, which I feed several times a week. ...And actually, how is that different than an all wet diet, or ground raw? :dk: Also, a number of people feed some raw and some canned. :nod: There are also some that, at least during the transition, feed raw and canned, and put kibble out overnight. It really doesn't have to be all or nothing!

We're normally here (other than appointments or errands) as we work from home. But we do have to head into New York sometimes for a long day. The kitties just have to tough it out. At the beginning of feeding raw, that would most likely mean some of them would throw up bile from the empty stomach, but that can happen whether raw fed or not.

To manage that, some people just leave out frozen (whatever it is - canned frozen in ice cube trays, frozen raw, whatever form), and the kitties can eat it when it's dethawed. That's not an option for us with 8 cats. Chumley and Billy would likely eat it all, even frozen, as soon as it was put down.

When I fed them only canned, I still kept kibble in the house. When we'd head into New York for a 12 - 14 hour day, I'd leave kibble out for them. Not ideal, but it's what we did.

Hey, I just noticed you're an advisor! I'm not sure how long that's been, but congrats!

Thanks, Laurie.. it certainly isn't for my knowledge of raw feeding! 

You're right.. it doesn't have to be all or nothing.. I'll have a really good read through everything and work out the best way to go. 

And the different cat thing is such an issue!  My Sundar is more like Chumley, whereas Nilah is a little grazer, and a precious one at that.  I normally feed her in another room, and if she leaves any, be it on her head!  She's thin, but not skinny, and obviously content.

I often have to leave my cats for days due to clinicals, so I have the food portioned out in the fridge for whoever is feeding my cats (twice daily).

Also if doing the catinfo or catnutrition recipe, you can chunk some of the meat. I chunk almost half of it.

peaches08 said:

I often have to leave my cats for days due to clinicals, so I have the food portioned out in the fridge for whoever is feeding my cats (twice daily).

Also if doing the catinfo or catnutrition recipe, you can chunk some of the meat. I chunk almost half of it.

Click to expand...

Good advice, thanks