Homemade supplement for raw

I was going to include "PMR" (Prey Model Raw) in the title, but it would balance a rotation of ground proteins with organs and bone (or some form of calcium) as it has taurine in it.

It is not a substitute for egg yolks or sardines, as the supplement has no choline or vitamin D in it. I still feed those, at least one egg yolk per cat weekly and one 4.275 ounce tin of sardines split between the 8 cats weekly. (Technically split between 7, because one doesn't like them. She gets a small amount of a vitamin D supplement separately).

I feed a mix of different styles to my cats. But the main type of food they eat is meat, liver and organ with either eggshell or MCHA (freeze dried bone) as the source of calcium at each meal. I split it into 90% meat, 5% chicken liver, and 5% beef kidney. They've been eating this for a year and several months now. Spooky still has to have her meat basically minced, but Billy gets his meat in one chunk now (to slow him down), and Sheldon and Chumley get their 1.5 ounces of meat in two strips.

I balance the organs daily, at one meal per day (for the cats that eat organ). Those that don't - well, let's just say the feeding of my 8 cats isn't straightforward. It ... evolved into what it is. :lol3:

Lazlo eats no organs, so he gets chunks of meat with Call of the Wild. He does NOT get this supplement.

Spooky eats no organs (fresh or freeze dried) reliably, and hates Call of the Wild. I should try a different premix with her, but haven't yet. For now, she gets a cod liver oil pill for her vitamin A. Because she doesn't get a premix, she does get the vitamin supplement.

OK, so the total anomalies are out of the way. :lol3:

This came about because I was worried about the cats getting everything they need. I understand there are many PMR feeders that pay no attention to AAFCO, and all the reasons for that. My personal opinion is that PMR is just that - a model. And I can't afford grass-fed and pastured meat, I'm feeding factory farmed meat for the most part. And beef, lamb, venison, turkey and pork (or even adult chicken for the most part) aren't what the cats would naturally be hunting for most of their diet. ...So I wanted to know what the diet looked like in relation to AAFCO. mschauer helped with that (THANK YOU!). A lot. :lol3: But no matter what we did, the diet came up short in manganese. This is a supplement hard to add per meal or even on a daily basis, because so little is needed.

I'd purchased a bunch of books on raw feeding and nutrition. One of them is "Dr. Becker's Real Food for Healthy Dogs and Cats." I'm not into her fruit and veggie mixes. Her recipes include only liver as the organ (unless she counts heart as an organ, which PMR feeders do not). She does provide two different homemade vitamin supplements. One is for cats eating all components of the diet (meat, "organs," eggs and sardines); and one "For programs that may have deficits." Both have manganese!

Because my cats are eating organs (or equivalent), heart, egg yolks and sardines, I used her first supplement as a base. mschauer analyzed it with my diet ingredient components. Based on that analysis, I tweaked the ingredients. Again - please note this does NOT make just meat complete, and it does NOT provide the source of calcium.

So with this as the "recipe" inputs


...and the egg yolks, sardines, salmon oil, and egg yolk lecithin I feed the cats...


This is the supplement I make. It requires 1/32 teaspoon per 4 ounces of food. I sprinkle it on the morning meal, just once a day, adjusting as necessary (my cats eat between 2.6 ounces and 4.5 ounces of food daily, depending on the cat).

5 tablets of Twinlabs 10mg manganese
3 tablets of NOW 150 mcg standardized kelp iodine
2 capsules of NOW 400u dry vitamin E
15 capsules of NOW 1,000mg taurine
2 capsules of Natural Factors Hi Potency 50mg B complex

I put everything in the grinder, including the capsules (I use a Mr. Coffee grinder I bought just for this, I don't grind anything else in it).

Dr. Becker's recipe includes salt, iron, 2 less tablets of manganese, 3 tablets of Folic acid (not a B complex), 3 tablets of vitamin E, and 25 capsules of taurine.

This is what the diet looks like when analyzed using the supplement:




This is what the diet looks like when analyzed without the supplement:



Because the USDA tracks foods HUMANS eat, a number of the components are missing ingredients. mschauer provided the information as to which components she used as inputs (because defining an appropriate ingredient for the analysis is partly art when it comes to working with the USDA database :lol3: ) - and which datapoints the USDA had and, almost more importantly, didn't have.

For instance, the analysis indicates the diet is - according to AAFCO - a little short in choline. Do I need to feed more egg yolk? Well, based on the number of components in the diet missing the nutrient data for choline in the USDA database, it's most likely that my cats are getting enough choline.

Here is the information for which ingredients were missing nutrient data (and which nutrients) in the USDA database:

Thanks Laurie! I always wondered what was in your homemade supplement. I like that there's so little powder to put on top of food.

I've been thinking about adding manganese, but I do large batches. How much per 3 lbs of food would I add?

Also, what's the benefit of kidney? The Nutricology Immoplex doesn't include it so I'm wondering if I should use individual organ supplements.

By the way, the before and after supplement tables are the same...?

peaches, mschauer probably has that info available (how much manganese to add per 3 pound batch), as I think she uses it as a supplement in her raw food batches. :nod:

I basically TRY to follow the PMR guidelines, so I use kidney as the 2nd secreting organ. I can sometimes get ground beef pancreas from Hare Today, so I do include that in the rotation at times. ALL the cats like that one. :lol3: Most organs are just nutrition-packed-little-packages. :lol3:

I do buy the Nutricology Beef Kidney - I initially hoped that the cats that didn't like fresh kidney would like freeze dried. Nope, the cats that hate fresh kidney, hate freeze dried too. :lol3: BUT it makes a great topper for Tuxedo, who loves kidney - and it requires very little (for him).

And no, the before and after pictures aren't the same. You have to look specifically at manganese, iodine, vitamin E, taurine, and the B vitamins - the stuff that's in the supplement. Everything else remains the same though, because adding the supplement is all that changed!

peaches08 said:

I've been thinking about adding manganese, but I do large batches. How much per 3 lbs of food would I add?
 

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I've been adding about 10 mg / 10 lbs or so. That's a *tiny* amount. The only way to feel I can get it fairly evenly distributed throughout the food is by adding it to all the other supplements in a jar and shaking it really well and then adding the whole lot to the food.

SUCH a good point. I completely forgot to mention anywhere, the total amount of one batch of supplement is meant to balance 50 pounds of raw food. That's how I adapted the supplement into a "per meal" basis. I made the supplement, measured the total volume, and divided into ounces. It was such a small amount, I really had no choice but to use it once daily, working around the amount needed per 4 ounces. :lol3:

mschauer said:

I've been adding about 10 mg / 10 lbs or so. That's a *tiny* amount. The only way to feel I can get it fairly evenly distributed throughout the food is by adding it to all the other supplements in a jar and shaking it really well and then adding the whole lot to the food.

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Thank you! I can use that! I need to order supplements soon so I wanted to add it to the list.

I usually make 15 -18 lbs at a time of Dr. P's, and 3-5 lbs of boneless with eggshell so I can manage this.

Awesome, thanks!

LDG said:

Spooky eats no organs (fresh or freeze dried) reliably, and hates Call of the Wild. I should try a different premix with her, but haven't yet.

 

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FWIW: I have recently made beef and lamb ground raw TCFeline Plus - with Beef Liver.  My cat Boo, who I had given up on with regards to raw - she never liked the Dr. P recipes - took to it right away!  I offered it to her as a lark - and darned if she didn't chow down a whole ounce of raw ground beef.  What's even more amazing is that she even chewed a few tiny beef chunks - and she's a pate kind of gal.

Now, it could be the beef or the lamb - first time raw for those proteins.  But I do have some COTW on the way - I'll try that with her too.  It will be interesting to see if she likes that one.

Something to consider - in case you have not tried that one yet.

Aprilprey, there's something in that TC Feline! My cats once tore open a bag and drug it all over my kitchen.

I know!  Right after I opened the bag and got a whiff of the stuff, I thought "Hmmmm...nice and stinky - I wonder if Boo will eat this?"  Maybe its the beef liver?

It's worth a try! :nod: Beef liver - freeze dried - is the only liver Spooky will eat, when she eats it. In fact, she specifically only eats Etta Says brand freeze dried beef liver. :lol3:

That could be why she doesn't like CoTW - it uses chicken liver.

LDG said:

It's worth a try!

Beef liver - freeze dried - is the only liver Spooky will eat, when she eats it.

In fact, she specifically only eats Etta Says brand freeze dried beef liver.

That could be why she doesn't like CoTW - it uses chicken liver.

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 I did see that CoTW uses chicken liver - Boo hates chicken.  So it will be interesting to see how she likes CoTW.  My other cat, Dexter, will eat ANYTHING so he's my backup for anything Boo won't eat.  Good thing - I don't mind (usually) forking over for good food - as long as it goes into a cat's stomach and NOT my garbage  - wasting good food bugs me. 

Dexter "broke" our scale today LOL - it only goes up to 11 lbs and today when I weighed him I got "ERROR"!  Eleven is his perfect weight - I guess this is firm evidence I am spoiling him toooo much!  VERY hard not to - he's the first new kitty in the house in 11 years and when I did the math, I realized I could be pushing 70 years when he dies.  Sniff - he could be the last cat I ever get.

That's my excuse.  Not a great one, but the only one I have and I'm sticking with it.

Gary and I were just discussing that the other day! I pointed out we could adopt senior kitties...

I ordered some of the TCfeline Plus with the beef liver! :cross: I'm sure SOMEONE will like it, even if Spooky doesn't. :lol3:

FYI, I keep tweaking the homemade supplement to get it to an easy-to-measure amount on a per meal basis. I also worked with mschauer to adjust the amount of iodine, as I've learned that too little iodine is more dangerous than too much - up to a point. So we jiggled it to get to a point that we can be sure that if there IS iodine in the food, meeting their daily need, then the amount we supplement won't put it over the "too much," but if the food doesn't provide enough, the supplement will make it at least the right amount.

(Hope that wasn't completely confusing).

So here are the new amounts of everything:

50 NOW 1,000mg Taurine capsules
20 NOW 150mcg standardized kelp tablets
10 Twinlabs 10mg manganese capsules
5 NOW 400iu dry vitamin E capsules
2 Natural Factors Hi-Potency 50mg B-complex capsules


This balances 50 pounds of food (meat and organ). That works out to a slightly scant 1/64th per ounce of food. With another 10 or 20 taurine capsules, we're probably at an even 1/64th.

I use the Norpro Mini Measuring spoons. The smallest one, the drop, is 1/64.

I also began using collagen (gelatin). I give 1/32 teaspoon of collagen per ounce. This is because they don't get much fresh bone or connective tissue. I feed one bone-in meal a week to the cats that will eat it. But that still isn't much in the way of connective tissue.

@LDG - why do you supplement with taurine? Is it a 'too much can't hurt' thing or do you feel that the amount of hearts in their diet is not enough? (I'm asking because I thought I shouldn't give mine taurine, as they eat all sorts of hearts, and canned food, even if the taurine excess is eliminated. But now I worry they might need more?)

I needed it to make the supplement bulk larger, basically. It needed to be an amount that could be measured to put on the food. Without the bulk of the taurine, the amount needed per ounce (which is how I use it) just wasn't something that could be measured. :lol3: So I use it to get to a volume that is practical for every day use.

Plus I have ONE cat that doesn't eat heart. So she needs taurine. Thus for us, it does serve a practical purpose. For others, it's a safety net. Taurine is a water-soluble vitamin, and excess is excreted. Of course - anything that is "healthy" can be provided in an amount that is "too much" and becomes unhealthy. But this amount of taurine isn't running that risk.

And if anyone is grinding... even if there are hearts, taurine should be added, as just grinding food can impact it.

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but do you add sodium and potassium in any way?  Or is there enough blood in the food so that it isn't needed?

I don't know that there's much blood in the diet, but there's plenty of potassium and sodium. The analysis with the supplement is in the first post.

Potassium is 1.1% (DMB) vs. minimum of 0.6%
Sodium is 0.33% (DMB) vs minimum of 0.2%

LDG said:

I don't know that there's much blood in the diet, but there's plenty of potassium and sodium. The analysis with the supplement is in the first post.

Potassium is 1.1% (DMB) vs. minimum of 0.6%
Sodium is 0.33% (DMB) vs minimum of 0.2%

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Sorry, I was just looking at the supplement recipe and trying to figure it from there.  I wonder why Dr. P adds it in her supplement mix...I think I'd read it was to make up for the blood that isn't there plus providing iodine but I can't remember for sure.

She uses the Lite salt - made with potassium instead of sodium (or at least partially) - because of the iodine. There is iodized salt, but then that adds much too much sodium. Thus it is just a different way to get at iodine. I think standardized kelp iodine didn't exist when she formulated the diet, so using kelp was a crap shoot. Now the amount of iodine in the supplement is standardized, so you know exactly how much iodine is being used with a "standardized" kelp-based iodine supplement.