canned, dry, raw? I'm confused!

Fhi09 said:

 
Only the cheap, crap grocery store ones. Wellness, Evo, and most of the premium ones don't have questionable stuffs in them. 

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What about Fancy Feast Classics? 

I'm on a budget and will likely change him to a better brand once I'm through college, for now I'm trying to supplement his diet with raw, but he's not interested. We've tried chicken livers, chicken, and raw egg yolk so far. He gives it a lick or two and walks away. Might have to try mixing it with his wet food.

tammyp said:

Here's the article that started me on the journey into feline nutrition. It was startling in that it tracked the emergence and growth of many common diseases, against the advent of cat food (once it didn't exist!)...basically, our feeding of special 'cat food' is feeding disease.  I now feed 1 meal canned, 3 meals Frankenprey raw each day (small serves frequently is better for blood sugar, and my guys are active Korats - so they eat a LOT!)

 http://www.rawmeatybones.com/articles-others/Malik_feedingcats_Aug2007.pdf.

The permitted ingredients in commercial cat food is also shocking - this motivates many of us to feed raw as we know what our cat is eating:

Because of the nondescript nature of the mush and nuggets in pet food cans and bags, pet owners must extend a lot of trust to manufacturers. But the balm of blind trust and faith never turns out to be a solution for anything. For example, consider the following approved ingredients from the official AAFCO (American Association of Feed Control Officials) regulatory publications:


dehydrated garbage (you read that right)

polyethylene roughage (plastic)

hydrolyzed poultry feathers

hydrolyzed hair

hydrolyzed leather meal

some 36 chemical preservatives

peanut skins and hulls

corn cob fractions

ground corn cob

ground clam shells

poultry, cow and pig feces and litter

hundreds of chemicals

a host of antibiotic and chemotherapeutic pharmaceuticals

a variety of synthetic flavorings

adjuvants

sequestrates

stabilizers

anticaking agents


This is not to say these ingredients are commonly used, just to point out that they can be.(Wysong.  The Myth of “100% Complete and Balanced” Processed Pet foods. http://www.wysong.net/pet-health-and-nutrition/?article=36&cat=cat6)

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I happened on this thread because I also want to know what's what with dry/canned/raw.
That quote...just took 5 years off my life. I'm trying to do right by my cat, and it's just so hard. He's never eaten an entire bowl of canned food, ever. Dry ONE is the only food I have ever given him that he'll eat with any regularity. He won't touch the better dries, or canned. Will try raw, but only if I can get a sample.

But how do we really know what's in the raw?? If these...things...are allowed? Dehydrated garbage?????

LaraLove said:

 
What about Fancy Feast Classics? 

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That is one of the better ones. If I'm financially tight, I'd feed that. The ingredient list:

Chicken, chicken broth, liver, meat by-products, fish, poultry by-products, artificial and natural flavors, calcium phosphate, guar gum, potassium chloride, added color, salt, magnesium sulfate, taurine, zinc sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, Vitamin E supplement, ferrous sulfate, niacin, sodium nitrite (to promote color retention), manganese sulfate, calcium pantothenate, Vitamin A supplement, copper sulfate, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, biotin, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, potassium iodide.

Bolded are the two relevant to this thread. By weight, they are one of the lower ones, and their nutrient profile is very close to what cats need - high protein, moderate fat, low to no carbohydrates. It uses animal proteins (big plus) and has no grains (another big plus). Some of the other cheap-y brands have stuffs like corn to artificially inflate the protein count, but cannot be used by cats.

By-products are not the same as "meal", which is what is used to described rendered animals. I think by-products are OK for cats, even if we find them disgusting. In the wild, cats are likely to eat random animal parts that are unfit for human consumption. AAFCO defines by-products to include stuffs like heads, feet, viscera, etc, and "meat meal" to mean rendered product from mammal tissue. FF Classic ingredient list does not look like they contain 4D animals.

Fhi09 said:

 
I think by-products are OK for cats, even if we find them disgusting. In the wild, cats are likely to eat random animal parts that are unfit for human consumption. AAFCO defines by-products to include stuffs like heads, feet, viscera, etc, and "meat meal" to mean rendered product from mammal tissue. FF Classic ingredient list does not look like they contain 4D animals.

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Ah, that's a really good point. I didn't think of it that way. Okay, good. I again feel okay about feeding him this while I'm on a budget!

Thank you.

By-products are good for cats IF it is organs and such... However, it often also includes things like feathers, beaks, horns, etc.

Awaiting Abyss said:

By-products are good for cats IF it is organs and such... However, it often also includes things like feathers, beaks, horns, etc.

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In a canned food I feel like I would be able to see those kinds of things, feathers especially. I mean, sometimes there are fair-sized pieces of cartilage, so I would think a beak would slip through now and then if they were in there. Not that there's anything wrong with an occasional beak (I think most cats will gladly eat a bird's head whole), but of course it's low-quality protein so you wouldn't want too many. Since a dry food is much more finely ground, you really do have to wonder what they sneak into "by-product meal" though!

Willowy said:

In a canned food I feel like I would be able to see those kinds of things, feathers especially. I mean, sometimes there are fair-sized pieces of cartilage, so I would think a beak would slip through now and then if they were in there. Not that there's anything wrong with an occasional beak (I think most cats will gladly eat a bird's head whole), but of course it's low-quality protein so you wouldn't want too many. Since a dry food is much more finely ground, you really do have to wonder what they sneak into "by-product meal" though!

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Exactly. Some of the nomenclature these days...it just doesn't tell you much. I'm not afraid of feet, beaks, and etc. I would think that the bits we see aren't from a rendering vat. I could be wrong on that one though!

My first cat who only lived to be around 7 was fed strictly dry food since we brought him home at 6 months.   This was years ago.  Now that we have the 3 kittens (who were born to a feral mom and we hand-reared them since day 1), we attempted to do strictly raw, but proved to be (sorry to admit) inconvenient.

So we've switched tactics.  We feed 75% raw, and the rest is either high quality dry food or the original Fancy Feast (which I've read that while it' s not the best, it's the better one of the cheap foods).  Once in a while, we'll get a bag of Primal rabbit.

My kittens seem lazy, as they do not like to chew tough raw pieces.  I'll even chop up the gizzards and liver into tiny bits, and they pick around it.  The chicken we do give them is in one chunk per serving, so they have to chew it up.  Haven't tried the chicken wing bone thing yet.

I also prefer doing the big mix so the kittens get used to variety, in case I can't get my hands on their usual foods.  So far so good.

pawpurrints said:

 
My kittens seem lazy, as they do not like to chew tough raw pieces.  

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I've had the same experience. I tried giving Oliver a raw chicken liver. He wasn't having any of it. Then we tried giving him a chicken leg. Nope. I thought he just wasn't interested in raw, especially after he refused to eat a raw egg yolk this morning. However, based on the above, I decided to finely dice some raw chicken (which we're using for dinner tonight) and try that. He ate it right up and asked for more! I gave him three little servings and he was still meowing for more! I stopped there, though. I've portioned some out for him and am pleased to see I may actually be able to start supplementing raw. 

If this stays constant, I'll have to order some of Taurine. 

Yes, sometimes the need to be 'trained up' to a large chunk.  Small pieces first.  In fact 3 of our meals are cubed, the final boney meal is a big chunk of rabbit that they wrestle with over-night.

One question:

 If this stays constant, I'll have to order some of Taurine. 

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Why?  If it is fresh meat (not treated with sulfites), then it has taurine (particularly heart).  That's the whole point of a 'natural' diet...cats eat raw meat, taurine is in meat.  Supplementation of taurine only came about with commercial food, because of the lack of meat in them, or the processing that depleted the taurine.  And they 'discovered' how important taurine was to a cat because the commercial foods caused mass deaths (I think in the 80s).  I believe I am correct, but if you have different info, please tell me...  

Oh, I may have misread or misremembered something. I thought I'd read here about several ordering raw ground turkey and such and adding taurine. I'll have to go poke around again. I stopped reading through those forums after he showed no interest in the chicken liver and leg. 

LaraLove said:

 
Oh, I may have misread or misremembered something. I thought I'd read here about several ordering raw ground turkey and such and adding taurine. I'll have to go poke around again. I stopped reading through those forums after he showed no interest in the chicken liver and leg. 

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What we add are supplements, which include taurine and other stuffs like vitamins, iron, iodine, egg yolk powder, etc. Taurine is non-toxic and water soluble though, so cats won't overdose on it. Some people add extra taurine to compensate for any that might have been lost through grinding, freezing, etc (not proven to be the case though). Any extras would just come out as pee.

Different proteins have different levels of taurine, hence it is strongly recommended to rotate 3-5 proteins to avoid a deficiency (I think rabbit has lower taurine that poultry for example).

EDIT: I might be slightly wrong. Taurine in meat not from nature is not enough for a cat's daily dose, hence supplements (which are required, not optional) include taurine.

My kitties will gobble up a whole 1oz chunk of meat. But a whole piece of gizzard? Not yet. Not even if I chop it up. But they do well on raw. They have nice coats.

Fhi09 said:

EDIT: I might be slightly wrong. Taurine in meat not from nature is not enough for a cat's daily dose, hence supplements (which are required, not optional) include taurine.

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Taurine is present in meat - dark meat / heart are higher in taurine.  Processing and grinding will result in losses of taurine and other nutrients, which is why supplements are added to ground raw food.  If you feed a balanced frankenprey diet or whole prey diet, you don't need to supplement taurine, calcium etc.  Hearts are very rich in taurine.  I feed my cats a few chicken / duck / etc hearts a week and don't supplement any taurine but my cats will eat chunks of meat and whole chicken hearts.  If you are planning on feeding a ground raw diet then you will need to supplement if you aren't purchasing an already balanced one.

Alright. Well, BF and I have been doing some research tonight and we're going to come up with a plan this weekend. I'm hoping to get some super fresh meat from a local butcher. We'll see.

Good luck!  If feeding it as more than 15% of the diet you have to be careful to make sure it is balanced.

Things like gizzards, heart, liver, tongue, chicken necks etc are usually very cheap - but buy small amounts because it might take a cat who isn't used to raw food a while to transition to eating it.  I'd offer your cat very small pieces of a variety of things.  

Thank you! We have so far just given him some finely chopped chicken breast and he ate it up and begged for more, three times now. He eats it much quicker and without leaving anything, which is different than how he eats the Fancy Feast. But he's still getting a couple of cans of the Classics each day. I have many cans (just bought a couple of cases last week), so we're going to *slowly* transition into a frakenprey diet. Or maybe do half raw, half wet. That's the goal, anyway. When I'm getting things for my Christmas meal in the next couple of days, I'm going to grab some giblets for him to see how he likes them.