Contemplating first Hare-Today order...would like advice!

Hi everyone,

I'd love a little feedback before I drop some $$$ ordering from Hare-Today. I'm still pretty new to raw feeding. I took the plunge into raw because I adopted two kittens back in February and I have only just now gotten their diarrhea under control. (At first they tested positive for coccidia, but even after tons of wormers and treatments and negative stool samples, the diarrhea persisted.) Now that I've got them on a 100% raw diet one kitten now has perfectly normal stools and the other one is 75% of the way there.. I started them on RadCat, which they rejected at first but warmed up to pretty quickly. As soon as they decided they liked Rad Cat the local shop I got it from ran out and I had to switch to Primal nuggets, which one kitten rejected outright. Now they're back on Rad Cat and I have a hard time getting the food on the dish at mealtimes because one kitten in particular hops on the counter and attempts to eat straight out of the tub. They swarm me. They clearly LOVE it.

Rad Cat's pretty expensive and after reading through the forums here I went out and checked out Hare-Today and I think I'm ready to make the leap. The shipping's really expensive so it's more economical to place a big order than a small one, but I'm pretty nervous since I fear I'm going to order a bunch of something that they reject. I have a few questions that I'd like to ask you all outright:

1. Bones vs. no bone mixes. I was planning on ordering the mix with organs and bones but the more I read the more it seems like the ratio of bone in the mix is too high and I'd need to dilute it down? (Full disclosure: I'm a long time vegetarian and I really would like to minimize the amount of handling I have to do with meat because it kind of grosses me out. Rad Cat is perfect because I just spoon it out.) However, if I don't want bones I'd have to add in the organs separately (ick!) and then I would stress about getting the ration right. I hate to say I want this to be easy, but I do!

2. Alnutrin. Hare-Today sells Alnutrin, but I notice that lots of people use the custom recipes base on the catinfo.org recipe and there are other brands available. I really don't want to make my own mix because I'm looking for ease, but I want to know that I'm using a really good supplement mix. Is there a reason not to use Alnutrin? I'm kind of clueless here.

3. Teeth. I was thinking about ordering some gizzard for tooth care based on a comment I read in one of the threads here. How do other people make sure their kitties are getting proper dental care? The vets around here really push dental cleanings that require anesthesia and are really expensive, so I'd rather put the money into preventative care and forego anesthesia if I can find a good solution.

4. Quantity. I've had a hard time figuring out quantities for the kittens because I don't have a scale to weigh the portions. I just noticed that Rad Cat website says roughly 1/3 cup twice a day for a 10 pound cat and 3-4 times that quantity for kittens. That's a ton of food! My kittens are about 5 and 6 pounds now, so I'm not sure how that translates. Now that I've cut off the kittens' access to my senior kitty's dry food (the only thing she'll eat), I've noticed the kittens seem much more ravenous. Apparently they were supplementing quite a bit with her grain-free dry food. With two kittens I'm burning through the large Rad Cat containers pretty quickly so I don't want to waste it but I don't want to underfeed them either. And when I had to switch to Primal nuggets I struggled to get them to finish their portions, so I'm having a hard time figuring this one out. I think they'd eat the whole tub of Rad Cat if I left it out. The quantities we're going through is actually why I'm ready to make the leap to Hare-Today.

I appreciate feedback on any or all of these points--thank you in advance!

Congratulations on going raw, so exciting! I've been raw feeding for a little over 2 years now and it's definitely something that I am in love with.

If you're trying to make raw as simple as possible, these are my suggestions to your questions:

1.) Bone-In vs Boneless Mixes 

- definitely easier to order the bone-in grinds with organs. You are correct that most of the poultry  grinds are very bone-heavy and need to be adjusted by adding additional boneless meat and organs to reduce the bone count to a healthy 10%. But there are some grinds that are much closer to being balanced and you should not have to add in anything aside from 1 - your supplement premix and 2 - fish oil. Those grinds are:

·       Ground Beef  (Meat/Bone/Tripe/Organ)

·       Ground Goat  (Meat/Bone/Tripe/Organ)

·       Ground Pork (Meat/Bone/Organ) *This grind is a little light on organs, I would add extra*

·       Ground Rabbit (Meat/Bone/Organ) *Might be a tiny  bit bone-heavy*

·       Ground Rabbit, Fur and all (Meat/Bone/Organ) *Might be a tiny  bit bone heavy*

·       Ground Cavies aka Guinea Pig (Meat/Bone/Organ)

·       Ground Sheep (Meat/Bone/Organ)

·       Ground Quail (Meat/Bone/Organ) *Even though quail is poultry, it has a perfect (approximately) 10%                        bone content, much less than other poultry*

·       Ground Mice (Meat/Bone/Organ)

·       Ground Llama (Meat/Bone/Organ)

2.) Premix vs Separate Supplements

- The Alnutrin is a great premix that can absolutely be used with any bone-in, organ included grind to make it a complete meal but you don't want to use it with Hare Today's Rabbit, Mice or Cavies. Those are "whole animal" grinds and include the thyroid gland and since the Alnutrin includes iodized salt (a supplement used for thyroid gland), you would be over-supplementing that ingredient a bit. I just recently switched from using Alnutrin to making my own supplement mix using the supplement recipe from catinfo.org and it is much easier to do than I thought. I would suggest for you to just use the Alnutrin for now until you get the hang of making your own food and once you're comfortable with it the whole process, think about making your own sometimes to switch it up!

3.) Teeth

- If you are strictly feeding ground raw then I think it is a great idea to feed a few gizzards once or twice a week for dental benefit. You probably want to order the turkey gizzards, as I imaging they would be bigger than chicken. I ordered the chicken gizzards and they are pretty small, not much work to eat. Maybe start with chicken gizzards until they get the hang of it and move up to turkey to really give them something to work at. 

4.) Quantity

- I've never fed raw to kittens (my cats were 3 and 8 years old when we transitioned). My cats eat just under 4 ounces a day to maintain their weight. I weight them weekly on a baby scale and they are ~8lb & ~10.5lb. If I did have kittens, I would probably try to feed them about 10-12 ounces a day each, split into 3 or 4 meals. If they eat every last bit at each meal, increase the daily amount to 12-16 ounces. If they are leaving some behind, you can decrease the amount a little so you don't waste. But I would start with about 10-12 ounces a day each. 

Thanks for the feedback, Abby2932! I was leaning toward ordering chicken and turkey because those were more economical and I know my cats like them. They have not hesitated to turn their nose up at some pretty expensive canned food and most of the Primal I've given them, so I'm worried about ordering types of meat that I know they like. They didn't eat the samples of Rad Cat beef and Venison I got but I also didn't have enough to wait out their initial protest phase. I'm realizing that to be economical with poultry from Hare-Today I'm going to have to mix in some of the other blends to balance out the bone or buy more expensive meats. 

I think another reason why I don't want to tweak the mixes myself is because I don't want to do the math to figure out the proportions! Again, I realize my laziness there is standing in the way of being budget minded.

Also, thank you for the suggestion on kitten feeding amounts. They CLEANED their plates this morning and were still swarming me, so I gave them a second breakfast of canned food. After struggling to get them to eat certain raw and canned foods, it makes me happy to see them go nuts over this. I've learned that any time I make a major switch they will walk away from their food in protest.

I have learned SO, SO much since I've been on this odyssey to cure the kitten's diarrhea, which the vet couldn't find an explanation for. I've always free fed dry food because it was easier and my cats were never overweight. I can't get my 17 year old to eat anything but dry food and since she has declining kidney function I'd love her to eat wet or raw food, but the food she'll eat is better than no food at all. (She won't hesitate to hunger strike.) My beloved, beloved, beloved cat Oliver died in November a couple of months shy of his 21st birthday and he ate dry food the majority of his life—I added wet in his final years. I know he lived a really long life but I'm feeling guilty that I could have given him better nutrition. I'm still working with the learning curve on my feline nutrition education but I plan to do better with these two.

If you're doing the chicken and turkey, this is how I would make it:

1lb ground chicken or turkey meat/bone/organ

1lb ground boneless chicken or turkey

4oz ground chicken or turkey organs

+ appropriate amount of Alnutrin for 2lbs meat

+ appropriate amount of fish/krill oil (about 5,000mg for this 2lb batch)

*+ one or two treats of turkey gizzard a week for dental benefit*

That recipe would bring you this approximate average:

81% meat, including heart and gizzard

12% bone

7% liver

You can order all of that from Hare Today except the fish/krill oil.

Just a note in regards to the ground organs: it comes in a 2lb package but you only want to use about 4oz (if you're using the recipe above) so you'll need to thaw the package, split it up into eight 4oz portions and refreeze. This way, every time you make a batch, you'll only have to thaw one 4oz portion every time.

Also, in regards to the bone percentage: My cats would be fine with 12% bone but some cats might not. Keep an eye on their litterbox habits and if they seem constipated, you'll need to adjust the recipe above so that there is more boneless meat to lower the bone percentage more. 

Thank you SO MUCH for giving me the breakdown--that's what I'm going to do. I figure as I go along I can start experimenting with different meats, but right now I'd like to be safe by going with what they like. Diarrhea/soft stools have been our issue, so hopefully a little extra bone won't affect them.

That brings me to another issue: thawing and refreezing. To mix in the supplements, I realize I'm going to have to completely thaw the meat. Does it affect the nutrition value of the raw to go through such wild temperature swings? 

Also, is there a brand of fish/krill oil you'd recommend?

I have to say, today is day 4 of being cut off from their older sister's dry food and the kittens seem much more excited about eating whatever I put in front of them when they don't have a dry buffet to go graze on at their leisure. I don't think they've been getting enough food over the past couple of days.

 Anytime!

I regularly:

- fully thaw my ingredients in the fridge to mix and supplement a batch (Takes about 15-ish hours to thaw 1lb chubs in fridge)

- mix and portion my batch into meal-sized servings and refreeze (you can put the meal sized servings in ziploc bags or tupperware/glass containers)

- thaw again for serving each meal (after I feed my cats breakfast, I pull out another breakfast serving and put in fridge to be ready for next day. I do the same for dinner)

Always thaw it in the refrigerator though, not at room temperature.

This is the krill oil I use:


Some people use this fish oil:

http://www.iherb.com/Nature-Made-Fish-Oil-1200-mg-100-Liquid-Softgels/40399?at=0

In regards to the kittens not getting enough food, I would just make SURE that you're feeding them as much as they want to eat 3 or 4 times a day. Even if they're eating canned food, I would offer them at least 10oz each over a few meals a day. No buffet needed.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes

I order a lot from HT, but avoid all the poultry bone-in grinds because as mentioned, they are very high in bone. I order the following - 

Beef/bone/tripe/organs - my cats are NUTS for beef. So this one is a big hit. bone ratio is great.

beef/bone/venison - no organs in this one, but I feed such a huge variety I dont worry about that. Again low bone content.

Pork/bone/organs - 15% bone, which is okay I think. My cats don't really like pork tho, so I don't really get this one often.

Rabbit/bones/organs - this one is also 15%, which my guys have no issue with. although I do mix it with RC turkey sometimes, or some other boneless meat when I serve it. I'm about to put in a new order and I'm going to buy the whole ground rabbit this time for variety, and the bone content for that one is 10%. 

I also order boneless chicken breast, boneless duck, and turkey thighs. However I just got access to a local farm so I'm probably only going to order the boneless turkey from HT in the future since I can't get that locally. 

I use alnutrin for bone-in meat for the bone grinds. For boneless, i use both alnutrin with eggshell calclum or foodfurlife's EZ complete. Some of my cats prefer the EZcomplete while one only likes alnutrin. 

Good information!

Just one correction:  the chicken and turkey organ grinds from HT are 1 lb, not 2 lbs.  So you'll want to split them into 4 pieces to follow this recipe.  I also use effectively double the organ mix (i.e. split in half) which is still within the realm of OK.

Also, some cats DO have trouble with 12-15% bone, so be on the lookout for constipation or white stools.  I do suggest adding extra meat to these grinds (except the goat) for this reason.

Instead of boneless grinds, I like to order things like hearts, gizzards, thigh meat cubes, pork trim, and venison cubes.  They are packaged in approximately one lb blocks.  I cut these up with scissors and add them to the mixture.  That way the cats get chunks with their meals in addition to extra chewy items that they get as "treats".  My cats particularly recommend the small rabbit chunks.  It seems to be working well for dental health, as I suspect my toothbrushing is not all that effective :-)

Thank you for the advice, sophie1 and missmimz!

I put in my first order Friday and managed to screw it up twice. The first time I ordered a bunch of meat and afterward decided I should go ahead and order salmon oil from them, too. I wrote and asked if i could add it, so Tracy voided my order so I could replace it. I saw missmimz's post in this time and decided to add the beef bone/organs mix to the order. I'm trying to be economical, so I wanted to order as much as I could since the high shipping makes small orders expensive. This is what I ordered:

5 lbs. chicken meat/organ/bone mix

5 lbs. chicken breast

5 lbs. turkey meat/organ/bone mix

5 lbs. turkey thigh

2 lbs. turkey gizzards

5 lbs. Ground Beef/Organs/Tripe/Bone

Alnutrin (without calcium)

Salmon Oil

The first order I placed I also ordered turkey livers, but I forgot it on the second and didn't realize that I'd left it off until after I'd already gotten the shipping confirmation. So...my poultry mixes will be light on organ meat (I was planning to combine the bone and non-bone poultry mixes to bring down the bone content.) Since I have the beef mix coming too, I figured I could start with that and see if I could try to find some locally sourced liver that I could add in to the poultry when I'm done with the beef. There's a good farmer's market that has just started back up for the spring and I know there's a vendor that takes meat orders. I figured I could check that out. I ordered five pound chubs so I'm going to have to see how much that is--I'm not sure if I should divide them in half to mix or do a 10 pound batch.

I have started feeding the kittens more after I realized how much they must have been eating older kitty's dry food, which I cut them off from. Friday and Saturday they probably got fed 6-7 times, each time cleaning the plate. The last couple of meals they've left a tiny bit on their plates and then gone back and cleaned them later, so I think we may have reached equilibrium on hunger backlog and appropriate serving size. I was afraid they were going to eat me out of house and home there for a while.

I was a little disheartened over the weekend because cow patties returned back to the kittens' litterbox. One kitten has perfectly normal poop but the other is still getting there. I think it's the little girl--she was the runt of the litter. I accidentally ambushed her in the litterbox this morning and saw that she'd just left a soft but poop-shaped poop (rather than blob of pudding), so hopefully we're going back in the right direction. It's been frustrating because the whole reason I got started on raw food is because the vet couldn't find a reason for them still to have diarrhea and we were about to go down a rabbit hole of expensive tests. 

beth0612 said:

 
I was a little disheartened over the weekend because cow patties returned back to the kittens' litterbox. One kitten has perfectly normal poop but the other is still getting there. I think it's the little girl--she was the runt of the litter. I accidentally ambushed her in the litterbox this morning and saw that she'd just left a soft but poop-shaped poop (rather than blob of pudding), so hopefully we're going back in the right direction. It's been frustrating because the whole reason I got started on raw food is because the vet couldn't find a reason for them still to have diarrhea and we were about to go down a rabbit hole of expensive tests. 

Click to expand...

Are you adding probiotics to their food? Probiotics are especially beneficial when feeding raw. Kittens especially do great on probiotics because their tummies are sensitive. 

I have been giving them Dr. Goodpets Feline Digestive Enzymes for about a month or six weeks now. The person who recommended it online (the woman from Conscious Cat) said it had probiotics included in it. However, I've been giving them a dish of probiotic kefir for a while now and only the little boy drinks it. Since he's the one with the good poop, I started mixing it in their food for the past several days so girl kitten would get it also. I'm almost out, so I was thinking about switching to Answers raw goat milk instead of the kefir. 

I'm always open to suggestions!

beth0612 said:

 
I have been giving them Dr. Goodpets Feline Digestive Enzymes for about a month or six weeks now. The person who recommended it online (the woman from Conscious Cat) said it had probiotics included in it. However, I've been giving them a dish of probiotic kefir for a while now and only the little boy drinks it. Since he's the one with the good poop, I started mixing it in their food for the past several days so girl kitten would get it also. I'm almost out, so I was thinking about switching to Answers raw goat milk instead of the kefir. 

I'm always open to suggestions!

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Check out some of these ones recommended by IBDkitties. I use both Nexibiotic and Natural Factors. 

http://www.ibdkitties.net/probiotics/

missmimz said:

 
Check out some of these ones recommended by IBDkitties. I use both Nexibiotic and Natural Factors. 

http://www.ibdkitties.net/probiotics/

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Thank you for that link, missmimz. Do you have a preference of one over the other? Both kittens have soft poop again so I discontinued the kefir...maybe they were getting overdosed? I think ordered the Nexabiotic because Natural Factors said that it can trigger lactose sensitive cats and I have yet to pin down what is upsetting the kittens systems.

My Hare Today order came today. I decided to start with the poultry since the kittens are having soft poop again--I figure something that could be constipating might be good for them. I cut the 5 lb. chicken chubs (one with bone, one without) in half  and have one half of each thawing in the fridge right now. 

beth0612 said:

 
Thank you for that link, missmimz. Do you have a preference of one over the other? Both kittens have soft poop again so I discontinued the kefir...maybe they were getting overdosed? I think ordered the Nexabiotic because Natural Factors said that it can trigger lactose sensitive cats and I have yet to pin down what is upsetting the kittens systems.

My Hare Today order came today. I decided to start with the poultry since the kittens are having soft poop again--I figure something that could be constipating might be good for them. I cut the 5 lb. chicken chubs (one with bone, one without) in half  and have one half of each thawing in the fridge right now. 

Click to expand...

Nexabiotics is the "better" one of the two because its contains S. boulardii, which really helps with soft stool issues. I know a lot of raw feeders that use it regularly. I've been using it since my kittens were tiny and it made a huge difference. Good luck! I think between the new raw from HT and probiotics you're on your way to perfect poops 

Thank you! May I bother you for one more question? The link says to give 1/2 capsule of Nexabiotics twice daily to kittens for therapeutic use and 1/4 capsule for maintenance. Since my kittens still have soft poop, I assume it's okay to give them the therapeutic dosage. At what point do you cut them back to regular? 

beth0612 said:

 
Thank you! May I bother you for one more question? The link says to give 1/2 capsule of Nexabiotics twice daily to kittens for therapeutic use and 1/4 capsule for maintenance. Since my kittens still have soft poop, I assume it's okay to give them the therapeutic dosage. At what point do you cut them back to regular? 

Click to expand...

Yep I would cut back once you see their stool is formed again. It may take a few doses before you see an improvement, but generally I would see an improvement within 24 hours. 

Fingers crossed! Thanks for your help!

missmimz, I just replied to you in another thread but I wanted to let you know in this one that the Nexabiotic seems to be having the desired effect. Thank you so much for the recommendation!

Hello!

I was just wondering how it is going for you with the Hare-Today order?  How are the kittens doing?  I have 14 week old kittens and I"m nervous about trying it.  However, they love Rad Cat and this does get a bit pricey.  I would also like to introduce something for them to chew on but the idea of them swallowing bones worries me, especially at their young age.  Advice??  I do know that they want to chew and toys haven't seemed to be a big hit.