1st Feeder Mouse Meal!

Just a quick recap:

Malibu(8) & Kali(3) started eating raw food in March14. They have been 100% raw since June14, so approximately 3 full months now.

They eat:

Ground: turkey, lamb, chicken, rabbit, beef & cavies

Whole, bone-in: adult quail (excluding feathers, stomach and intestine) and day old quail chicks

The only problems presented in their transition are:
- Malibu has a red meat intolerance, therefore no longer eats that.
- Kali does not care for ground beef. She will finish her meal of beef, albeit reluctantly.

I have been wanting to add frozen/thawed feeder mice to the feeding schedule for a while now and I finally ordered a pack (40 mice) from Hare Today on my last order!

I thawed 2 of the smallest mice from the bag last night so they would be ready for dinner today. I have been so scared all day about feeding them the mice. Will they not like it? Will they leave guts behind for me to clean up? Will there be blood everywhere? Will it stink? AM I GOING TO THROW UP?!?

All my worry was for naught. Malibu ate his entire mouse (on the plate!) and didn't leave a tooth or nail behind. Kali needed a bit of help. I had to cut her mouse in half to entice her but once I did that, she went to town and gobbled it up.

I feel good about giving my kitties the "Breakfast of Champions" and how much they enjoyed it. Since they are so expensive, it will only be 2 meals a week on our menu but I think that is just fine

Yeah for you and your cats.
I FINALLY BOUGHT A FREEZER. I've been wanting one for + three years, and finally found one that is the right size and at the right price ($50--yard sale). So far, no electrical circuits blown.
Now I can stock up on sell-by-date meats @ 50% off original price. AND order from Hare Today. They are having a sale on rabbits (fur and all), tempting.....
I've been wanting to see if Ritz would eat a mice. She is an adventurous eater, enjoying chicken heads. Didn't know what to do with a chicken foot, though.

Impressed.

Ritz said:

Yeah for you and your cats.
I FINALLY BOUGHT A FREEZER. I've been wanting one for + three years, and finally found one that is the right size and at the right price ($50--yard sale). So far, no electrical circuits blown.
Now I can stock up on sell-by-date meats @ 50% off original price. AND order from Hare Today. They are having a sale on rabbits (fur and all), tempting.....
I've been wanting to see if Ritz would eat a mice. She is an adventurous eater, enjoying chicken heads. Didn't know what to do with a chicken foot, though.

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Nice! I thought for sure you had a freezer already, being a veteran raw feeder. I don't have a separate freezer, I just use my standard top freezer connected to my fridge. I can fit about 20 weeks of food for the cats in there; ground, bone-in and whole prey. I think that's around 50 pounds, maybe a little less? I do a Hare-Today order once every 16 weeks or so and it fills up the freezer.

The cat food goes in the main part of the freezer and my food stays in the door. I'm a single 28yo female who rarely cooks and only use my freezer for ice cream and Lean Cuisines   so I don't have any issues sharing my freezer with the cat food. Well, I WAS fine with it up until the mice came. Now I desperately wish I had a separate one. I have an indescribable urge to sanitize my freezer even though the mice are double-Ziploc-freezer-bagged.

Sometimes Kali will leave an adult quail foot behind but most of the time she eats it. I'm sure a chicken foot is much bigger though and I can see why Ritz would turn her nose up at it!

I'm pretty impressed myself with their progress. I thought FOR SURE that it would be more of a struggle to get the cats eating whole prey, being 8 and 3 years old at the time of transition. I got very lucky  . Hopefully they continue to eat it!

I am cheap, don't like to spend any more money than I absolutely have to, so have held out buying a freezer. Some were too big. And I was concerned that my townhouse didn't have enough electrical load to support a freezer. So far so good.
And Ritz took to raw feeding right away. I started her on Primal to see if she would recognize raw food as, well food. She did, and I eventually moved to prey model raw because it suits my lifestyle more.

That's awesome!!!  I've been thinking about buying the smallest mice she sells...is that what you bought?  I have a $25 gift card for my next order, AND a friend asked me Monday night, "hey, I think you already have a deep freezer, but do you know anybody that wants a chest freezer?"  I bought it for $60.  They really don't pull that much current, but obviously I don't know the circuitry of everyone's homes either.  I have a friend that has been an electrician for 50-something years that helps me with this kind of thing.  His only concern is to make sure I put it on a circuit that isn't loaded down with other appliances.  Neither of them are so I lucked out.

peaches08 said:

That's awesome!!!  I've been thinking about buying the smallest mice she sells...is that what you bought?  I have a $25 gift card for my next order, AND a friend asked me Monday night, "hey, I think you already have a deep freezer, but do you know anybody that wants a chest freezer?"  I bought it for $60.  They really don't pull that much current, but obviously I don't know the circuitry of everyone's homes either.  I have a friend that has been an electrician for 50-something years that helps me with this kind of thing.  His only concern is to make sure I put it on a circuit that isn't loaded down with other appliances.  Neither of them are so I lucked out.

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No, not the pinky mice. I bought the adult mice, $39.99 for 25 adult mice. When I opened the bag, some mice are HUGE and some are smaller. I suppose they're between 30-50 grams.

Since my cats are used to eating whole day old quail chicks and a butchered adult quail I assumed they would be fine with the adult mice and boy was I right. Malibu loved it! Didn't even cut his mouse for him, he knew exactly what to do. Hopefully I won't have to cut Kali's in half anymore now that she knows how delicious it is.

Thanks for posting the picture of the pork trim in the other thread. I'm glad I got to see what it looks like. I didn't order any of that in this HT order but I did get some ground goat and ground pork so keep your fingers crossed for me that Malibu can handle at least one of those meats! Those two meats are my last ditch efforts at having a 're meat in Malibu's diet. Everything else is poultry and rabbit...and now mouse.

Abby2932 said:

No, not the pinky mice. I bought the adult mice, $39.99 for 25 adult mice. When I opened the bag, some mice are HUGE and some are smaller. I suppose they're between 30-50 grams.
 

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it's worth looking at reptile rodent suppliers. I buy from Rodentpro (whenever they have a promotion going on), much cheaper.

Well, I have been feeding my cats one mouse twice a week for the past 2 weeks, so they have had 4 mice each. Unfortunately, Malibu has thrown up the mouse EVERY time except the first one  and Kali still needs me to cut hers in half and sometimes she doesn't eat the head which I think is not healthy since the head contains different nutrients that she needs. As for Malibu, he has problems with red meat and I don't know what kind of meat Mouse classifies as but maybe it is too red for him??? He handles guinea pig meat, all poultry and rabbit just fine but whenever I feed him beef, lamb or mouse it comes up after about 15 minutes. 

As a side note, having the mice in my freezer made me extremely uncomfortable and the 2 days a week that mouse was for dinner, I dreaded the meal-time all day. I would get nauseated cutting Kali's mouse in half for her and cleaning up any bits she left behind. I would have dealt with all of this though if they both ate the mice with no issues. But I cannot have Malibu regurgitate the mouse every time. Not only is it unbearable to clean it up, he is not getting anything from it if he isn't digesting it.

So...mouse is now off the table. I am still going to try to introduce Pork in a week or two to see if he can handle that. If not, I give up and Malibu's weekly menu will be:

Bone-in Quail - 5 meals

Ground Rabbit (Hare Today + Alnutrin) - 5 meals

Ground Chicken (Rad Cat) - 2 meals

Ground Turkey (Rad Cat) - 2 meals

+ 1 egg yolk

+ 1 sardine

+1 day old quail chick

It's not a lot of variety and it is about 65% poultry but I'm having a very difficult time finding meats that he tolerates. I also am discontinuing the cavies for now because of major hairball issues. If the hairball problem is the same without the cavies then I will add it back in for more variety to his menu.

Kali's weekly menu is a bit more flavorful, only 50% poultry:

Bone-in Quail - 5 meals

Ground Rabbit (Hare Today + Alnutrin) - 2.5 meals

Ground Beef/Pork/Goat (Hare Today + Alnutrin) - 2.5 meals

Ground Lamb (Rad Cat) - 2 meals

Ground Chicken (Rad Cat) - 1 meal

Ground Turkey (Rad Cat) - 1 meal

+ 1 egg yolk

+ 1 sardine

+1 day old quail chick

were the mice at room temp or right out of the fridge? Because I have to hide the half-thawed stuff from the Rogue, he will throw up when it is too cold (which does not prevent him from eating it, though).