prey model -- anyone portion 80/10/5/5 balance in each meal?

Hi all,

I have two kittens who I've been feeding prey model raw (frankenprey / whole prey) for the past weeks since I've had them. I transitioned my senior cat to raw -- mostly ground and chunks of muscle -- before he died in the fall, so I'm not new to raw, but am new to feeding prey model. All is well as far as I can tell, but I feel anxious about balancing the proportions over the course of a week, especially since they are kittens / growing. I created this very compulsive and exacting chart of how ideally it would work with the products that I have, and the reality of feeding them is just not that exact (for one, as kittens, they obviously get progressively heavier, so I need to increase their food / recalculate, and they are not the same age / size as each other either, further complicating things). I weigh and then freeze portions in freezer trays designed for baby food, and it occurred to me that instead of dividing liver, bone, and other secreting organ into a few meals throughout the week, I could weigh out each meal to include proportions of everything. I'm wondering if anyone does this, and if not, why? Too fussy? Other reasons? The main drawback that I can see is that the organ quantities in each meal would be quite small / potentially difficult to weigh. I am not the only one feeding my cats -- my partner also does, and while he loves that I make their food and that they eat raw, he is not someone who I can imagine making the choice to prepare pet food on his own, especially not prey model, with the way it works. I feel like the system is very fussy (e.g. I keep one day of meals in jars in the fridge, and when I feed them a portion, I replace it with the meal that will be fed the same time the next day, which has to be identified on the schedule, and then located in the freezer among the various freezer bags, and it requires conscientiousness). I relaxed about bone after the first few bone-in meals, but I have this nagging anxiety about the balance that is persisting. I am interested in the experiences / perspectives of others. Thanks

Welcome to The Cat Site and The Raw Side

That would drive me crazy! What I do is portion out the meat (in plastic containers), multiply the number of containers times how many ounces/grams of liver/kidney/bone is required per day, then get out that amount of kidney/bone/liver and cut into the number of containers that I have; I eyeball it. It is not necessary to do exact measurements every day/every meal; a week is fine.
For sake of discussion: seven containers x .20 ounce of liver = 1.4 oz per week. Cut into seven portions (I eyeball it), put in containers. Repeat with kidney. For bone, I divide it into three portions over a seven day period. I weigh the bone.

Hope this helps!

I do! ... mostly.

Chicken days are mix/matched with pork or beef heart and liver (1/4 oz each per meal).

Meat days (pork, beef, lamb) are mix/matched with kidneys/melt/brain.

My meal schedule looks like so:

day 1:  1.75 oz (bone in) chicken + .25 oz pk heart + .25 oz pk liver

day 2:  1.75 oz pork + .25 oz pk kidney

day 3:  1.75 oz chicken + .25 oz bf. heart + .25 oz bf liver

day 4:  1.75 oz beef + .25 oz pk melt

day 5:  1.75 oz chicken + .25 oz pk heart + .25 oz pk liver

day 6:  1.75 oz pork + .25 oz bf kidney

day 7:  1.75 oz chicken + .25 oz bf heart + .25 oz bf liver

day 8 :  1.75 oz lamb (or goat) + .25 oz pk brain

I've been adding egg yolk randomly every 2-3 days, and I supplement with vit E and fish oil 2-3 times each.  Still working on getting those in more regularly.  

Since I feed 4 cats and a dog, it's not too bad to package for the day, then divide everything out at meal time.  I package the meats as whole as possible with their corresponding organs... except for the pork brain, it needs to be packaged separately.  Packing days are somewhat lengthy, since I do at least a month's worth at a time, but meal times only take about 7-10 mins for all 5 animals.

Thanks for the welcome. I like this idea -- dividing it into however many pieces you need for that weight, as opposed to weighing out each teeny portion. I also like that you weigh the bone, because I've been driving myself slightly nuts trying to ascertain percentage of bone in various cuts of meat, and I know it's unreliable/variable. 

Furmonster Mom said:

 
I do! ... mostly.

Chicken days are mix/matched with pork or beef heart and liver (1/4 oz each per meal).

Meat days (pork, beef, lamb) are mix/matched with kidneys/melt/brain.

Click to expand...

Ritz said:

I weigh the bone.
 

Click to expand...

I am wondering -- how do you weigh the bone? Do you buy cuts that you de-bone in order to do this? Or do you buy say like chicken soup bones, and then add these to the meal? Thus far (which has only been two preparations) I've used chicken wings and gone with the 46% bone measurement from catcentric, and calculated their bone that way, but I also have bone-in rabbit chunks from HT that I portioned but don't have ratios for. The whole thing feels imprecise and I would like to handle the bone percentage a different way -- like weighing it out on it's own -- and wondering about the best way to go about this / how you are doing this. I am good on the balance in each meal component -- all my boneless muscle meals now have small portions of liver and secreting organ contained (at the moment, goat testicles!). It is the bone that I am now trying to tweak / figure out how to better handle. And even though I'm not super anxious about it as I was initially, I have a nagging feeling that it's not worth the risk of perforations and I should supplement, but this is probably a topic for another thread...

I am sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I take off most of the meat and then weigh the bone. The appropriate amount varies with each cat; that is, is the poop too hard, too soft? There is a delightful thread I believe in raw feeding forum that discusses, with pictures, poop and consistency. :lol3:On kindle so can't search for it.

It's cool -- I just realized that I wasn't sure how you were going about this. Tracy of HT actually does list the percentages of bone in her bone-in products (at least some of them), and I often buy from her, so I'd like to go by her measurements and let go of the weighing bone separately idea, I'm just not sure how consistent/accurate the percentages are -- at least the organ percentages have not seemed particularly accurate in some meat with organs, and mixed organ packages that I've ordered. Bone might be more accurate, but I'm hesitant to assume that. But yes, I am still getting used to how much bone each cat needs, and their poop has been a good indicator.