Pre-purchase checklist for transitioning to PMR diet

Alright, so I'll have the funds to make this purchase this week and want to make sure I've got all this right before I hit the confirm button, so to speak. I'm doing this on a budget, so this is the best I can manage. If it's not good enough, please don't hesitate to tell me so. I'd rather keep him on FF Classics with raw as a periodic treat until I have greater income and can do it right.

Norpro Meat Grinder, Mincer, and Pasta Maker  (Can't handle bones, so it's just going to grind the meat and organs)

Nature's Way Vitamin B-50 Complex, Capsules, 100-Count

Now Foods Dry E-400, Veg-Capsules, 100-Count

Jarrow Formulas Taurine 1,000mg Capsules, 100-Count  

Nature Made Fish Oil Omega-3 1200mg, 300 Softgels

Light Salt

Egg shells for calcium

This is based on the recipe by Dr. Pierson. Her's is the chicken-only diet, but while I will be using primarily chicken, I'd also like to add turkey, pork, and potentially beef, depending on what is on sale at the grocery. 

Will I also need to buy a scale, or will I be able to eyeball the egg shells? I'll know how much meat I'm adding it to, so if there's an approximate weight per shell I can use to measure how many shells per X pounds, will that be sufficient?

I appreciate any and all input. I'm very excited to get him switched to a PMR diet, but I want to be completely sure he'll thrive and I'm not going to ruin him. Thank you!

Looks good! Just a reminder, Lite salt with iodine. You probably already know that, I'm just reiterating it since the sodium, potassium, and iodine are needed. Be sure to look at the sodium content of the meat. It needs to be below 100 else they enhanced it with sodium.

I definitely noticed a need for a scale. Somehow I get different weights than the store did when they packaged it.

I grind my own eggshells (super easy) and I add a slightly rounded 1/2 teaspoon per lb of meat. My cats are diarrhea prone and because I use way more water than called for, the eggshells have a tendency to sink to the bottom of the container when I'm portioning out the food.

Look for sell by dates on meat. That can save you lots. My stores start their weekly sales on Wednesday, so Tuesday is when I see most of the sell by dated stuff. And consider deboning meats yourself. It's another $1/lb or more for me to buy deboned meat. I don't know how old your cats are and I don't know the nutrient profile of gizzards, but it's a cheap meat source to add as a meat and good teeth cleaning.

What about chicken wings/necks/etc for a bone source? Might spare you headache making eggshell powder and will add some awesome teeth cleaning.

I do know about the salt needing iodine, but thank you for mentioning that in case someone else looks over this thread for their own knowledge. I should have specified in my list!

Is this scale sufficient? 

As for sale by date discounts, yes! That's my plan. That's how I shop for my family groceries now! >_>  

Oliver is about 8 months old. He can't do bones yet. He won't even eat raw meat if I haven't cut it very small. We're working on bigger pieces. I don't mind the work at all to grind the egg shells. And as he gets better with chewing bigger pieces, I will definitely introduce bone. 

If I'm also feeding heart and gizzards, do I need to cut back on any of these supplements?

With so many salt substitutes like Mrs. Dash and what not, that was exactly my intention was clarification for anyone reading this.

Hmm. I think it was 10 months old when the brother and sister were busting through thigh bones that I deboned while waiting on a back ordered grinder. But my cats were sick (diarrhea) and knew they needed raw/bone to help them. Converting them was incredibly easy. Now I could throw a wing tip at those 2 and they'd think I was kidding. I'd have a time switching them to PMR I think. I chunk some of their meat, but if I had to do PMR then I would have to police bowls. Else Julie will eat all the liver, Mason will eat only____, and etc.

FWIW, my cats were on chicken thighs recipe only for over a year. Not ideal, but I didn't know about the eggshell powder option and if I could use the same supplements for other meats. I also am challenged by budget. Basically here's how I look at it: my cats were sick from something in canned and they were healthy on chicken thighs. They didn't have any rotation but they were still healthier. So if your rotation of meats is only through canned, your cat is still better off.

Edited to add: gizzards are counted like muscle meat. Hearts have taurine, but I have no clue how to properly adjust the taurine amount. Taurine, however, can be fed in high amounts. I purposely add more to my batches because I don't know if freezing changes anything.

Oliver gets diarrhea on and off, accompanied by butt dragging and licking. I took him to the vet a month ago and they gave him a dewormer. Then I took him back Thursday for the same reason. Lab results are supposed to be in tomorrow. Both times they said it may be something in the FF that doesn't agree with him.

Since the first visit, I've completely cut all dry out of his diet and pared down the variety from all of the Classics to just four with the occasional fish option. It's not constant; he just has this problem periodically -- three times in the past month, but the last two were not as bad as the first -- so I thought it may be a certain variety that was bothering him. 

So, yea... if it is the FF, I'm glad to be switching to raw. He doesn't care for Friskies or Sheba, so my affordable *viable* options are dwindling. 

ANYWAY, thank you for all the info! I'll be ordering all of this in the next couple of days or so, and I'm sure I'll have more questions! Oh, and the next time we grab chicken wings (probably also this week), I'll see if I can get him to try the bones!

Oh, @peaches08, is the scale sufficient? It reads: "Max weight 11 lbs; displays ounces/lbs/grams/kgs; graduation 0.05 oz/1 gram"

If you buy the whole wing as I do (cheaper than just drummettes/wingettes), give him the wing tips before cooking them. I use poultry shears for that and to chunk meat. Plain kitchen scissors will cut meat too. The shears were a "treat myself" item that I got later.

I feel ya on the diarrhea. The brother and sister had it occasionally, but Gadget's was nonstop. Poor fella, I would immediately scoop and spray Febreeze to no avail. Meds wouldn't touch it. My then vet wasn't real keen on raw, but agreed that other than Rx diets I didn't have much left to try. Thankfully raw worked for all three cats.

Hopefully others will chime in, but what you've got to start with sounds fine to me.

Awesome. I have poultry shears as part of my knife set, so I'll try that this week!

The vet he saw this past week (different vet but from the same office as the one last month) was pleased to hear I was planning to switch him to raw, so hopefully I can request her specifically next time I need to take him in. And hopefully that won't be until his annual check up!

LaraLove said:

Oh, @peaches08
, is the scale sufficient? It reads: "Max weight 11 lbs; displays ounces/lbs/grams/kgs; graduation 0.05 oz/1 gram"

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I should have answered you earlier! I like the scale. I think mine goes to 26 lbs, but the largest batch I ever did was still under 20 lbs. It doesn't have to really go to the hundredths for me, just get me lbs and oz. When I make 15-18 lbs of chicken thighs, I have to grind half the chicken and dump it in a large container, then grindte other half and dump it. I'm doing good to add lbs and oz! And count on making 5 or 7 lbs of food at a time. It won't be 6 lbs. That's too easy. I always round up when that happens. I count on freezing doing "something" and it isn't at toxic limits anyway. Plus I add so much more water.

So how are you going to store it for now?

I'm going to make smaller batches and store them in my freezer. That's why I'm doing it myself instead of ordering from Hare-today. I don't have the room to store 35+ pounds of meat. 

Oh, and it's fine to portion into snack size Ziplock bags and then put those in a freezer bag?

Congratulations on feeding raw.
A couple of things, in no particular order:
Yes, the scale looks fine. I find weight to the .00 grams very important. I fed prey model raw (frankenprey), so need to know precisely how much liver/kidney I give Ritz. Likewise bone.
Ziplock bags are fine, though I prefer rubbermaid-type containers. I can store them in the freezer more easily than the ziplock bags. Hint: if you go the rubbermaid type containers, it saves space if they are all square versus some round, some square.
Heart (chicken, beef) have a lot of taurine, but you can't really OD on taurine--it's water soluble and any excess would be excreted. So I don't know that a taurine supplement is necessary, though I seem to remember grinding meat (exposure to air) decreases the taurine content a little. I like to feed Ritz a meal of hearts every once in a while just for good measure.
I feed Ritz giblets mainly because it's cheap and takes her maybe a second longer to eat than chunks of meat. (She *enhales* her food.) But she seems to be more hungry than usual when I feed her giblets: I don't think it's the most nutritious part of the chicken/turkey.
Good luck and let us know how it is going.

@Ritz, do you add supplements, too, or does the frankenprey not require that?

Actually, the grinding oxides some nutrients, but not taurine. The issue with taurine is that it is water soluble, so you just have to makes sure to mix in the juicy stuff that separates when you thaw before feeding.

LaraLove, there are different school of thoughts on the supplements thing. You're following Dr. Pierson's recipe, so techically you're feeding ground raw, not PMR. When grinding, most would add in some supplements, because of the potential for oxidation.

Many feeding prey model raw don't add any supplements - unless you count eggs and sardines as supplements. These often aren't mentioned in discussion of PMR, yet to many are considered "essential" to the diet, and they aren't thought of as "supplements." :lol3:

I don't know if you've seen this thread, but it's a pretty good discussion of "balanced" vs. AAFCO nutritional guidelines: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/261571/the-problem-with-home-made-diets-and-how-to-analyze-your-diet

As to supplements to Dr. P's recipe... the one thing I like to add that some do and some don't are probiotics. Carbs are what provide substrate for bacterial growth; protein not so much (well, clostridium seem to like proteins). My theory is that in the wild, a cat consumes probiotics with every meal. We know that the gut represents about 65% of immune system function, I personally believe that the microflora in the gut are very important. I give my cats a human L. acidophilus+bifidus supplement (and an S. boulardii probiotic) twice a day.

LDG said:

LaraLove, there are different school of thoughts on the supplements thing. You're following Dr. Pierson's recipe, so techically you're feeding ground raw, not PMR. When grinding, most would add in some supplements, because of the potential for oxidation.

Many feeding prey model raw don't add any supplements - unless you count eggs and sardines as supplements. These often aren't mentioned in discussion of PMR, yet to many are considered "essential" to the diet, and they aren't thought of as "supplements."

I don't know if you've seen this thread, but it's a pretty good discussion of "balanced" vs. AAFCO nutritional guidelines: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/261571/the-problem-with-home-made-diets-and-how-to-analyze-your-diet

As to supplements to Dr. P's recipe... the one thing I like to add that some do and some don't are probiotics. Carbs are what provide substrate for bacterial growth; protein not so much (well, clostridium seem to like proteins). My theory is that in the wild, a cat consumes probiotics with every meal. We know that the gut represents about 65% of immune system function, I personally believe that the microflora in the gut are very important. I give my cats a human L. acidophilus+bifidus supplement (and an S. boulardii probiotic) twice a day.

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Ah, okay. So now I have more questions, but I'll go look over that thread first! Thank you all.

Okay, if I add egg shells for calcium, and include egg yolk, liver and heart in his diet along with a sardine weekly (exact amounts to be determined), that would negate the need for the addition of supplements?

And if I do add the organ meat, is there a risk to his health if I'm also putting supplements into his mix? (Noting that I haven't started yet.)

Well, if you're following Dr. P's recipe, you don't really need additional egg or sardines. The recipe includes egg yolks and salmon (or fish) oil (and vitamin E).

Right. I'm asking about including organ meat and such instead of the supplements. Getting the nutrients from meats is better than from supplements, which is one of the things discussed in that thread linked above. I know it's true for humans, and can reasonably be assumed the same for animals. So I'd rather use organ meat and sardines  for as much nutrition as necessary and only supplement what I'm not able to provide otherwise. Maybe something I'll work toward after I'm comfortable with the initial process. I just don't want to overdo any vitamins, for example. 

And you're right, egg yolk is there. I've read so much information and so many recipes recently, they're all sort of running together. 

Organ meats is how the PMR feeders balance the diet, so many don't use supplements like Dr. P. However, because of grinding food, that allows for oxidation of some nutrients and that's part of why we add the supplements.

I was concerned initially about oversupplementing something, but got over it. I can guarantee that I'll end up with weights like 16.5 lbs for ground meat/skin/bones, so I just say to myself "Gather supplements for 18 lbs" when doling out supplements. B vitamins are water soluble and you're not anywhere near toxicity limits when rounding up 1. Vitamin E is fat soluble but again rounding up 1 won't put you near any toxicity limits. Fish oil too. Taurine I go a little crazy because I'm paranoid and my cats are fine 2 years later. I may have expensive urine out of them, but I don't care. It beats vet bills. Plus when I started 2 of my cats weren't a year old yet, so I wondered if growing kitties need more? I tend to end up with a little more liver in my mix than Dr. P calls for, but again my cats seem fine.

Be prepared to see some changes. My cats shed like crazy at first, they were wild (felt better), urinated a LOT more, and less poop with less smell. The crazy shedding stopped after a couple of months. They shed, but not like that.

LaraLove said:

 
Right. I'm asking about including organ meat and such instead of the supplements. Getting the nutrients from meats is better than from supplements, which is one of the things discussed in that thread linked above. I know it's true for humans, and can reasonably be assumed the same for animals. So I'd rather use organ meat and sardines  for as much nutrition as necessary and only supplement what I'm not able to provide otherwise. Maybe something I'll work toward after I'm comfortable with the initial process. I just don't want to overdo any vitamins, for example. 

And you're right, egg yolk is there. I've read so much information and so many recipes recently, they're all sort of running together. 

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Whether a PMR diet needs supplementation, even if loaded with organs, is mostly a raw feeding philosophical issue. There are those that believe that a PMR diet composed exclusively of various animal parts replicates a cats natural diet of whole prey closely enough that no supplementation is needed. And there are those that believe there are enough differences between a PMR diet and a diet of actual living whole prey that some supplementation is warranted.

Those that fall into the latter camp will come up what ever supplementation they think is needed based what ever they conclude is different between a PMR diet and a true natural diet.  I don't think you'll find a single list that all in that camp follow because there is no definitive way to determine that difference. So without a single list of what is missing in a PMR diet there is no single answer to how to provide what is missing without using supplements.

Is that a sufficiently vague answer?