Interested in Getting Back into Raw: Recipe Ideas?

Hi,

I fed raw to my cats for 2 months last year. They did good on it but I was afraid I was making a poor nutritional food so I stopped and switched back to kibble and canned foods.
Recently I've became interested in starting back...can anyone offer any good home made raw recipes? I am not interested in commercial raw diets long term as my cats do not like them and I enjoy making my own food, plus I want to have more control over what goes into their food. I am also not interested in anything whole prey mode and nothing with fruits/vegetables/grains/gluten and nothing vegan or vegetarian as those foods are detrimental to a cat. Also, pate foods are preferred by my cats.


Can anyone recommend some good recipes? I've read Little Big Cat and Catinfo. Org and loved both sites. Thanks!

A couple more would be 

http://www.catnutrition.org/recipes.html 

http://feline-nutrition.org/nutrition/making-raw-cat-food-for-do-it-yourselfers

I don't follow homemade recipes I just buy pre-ground meat from Hare Today and add either alnutrin or EZcomplete. But those will up your costs slightly. 

Awesome. Thank you! It says hearts are a major source of taurine...is rabbit heart okay? How about rabbit liver (one of my girls loves it!) rabbit lungs? (I raise my own rabbits so I know that they're fresh and healthy).

oldgloryrags88 said:

Awesome. Thank you! It says hearts are a major source of taurine...is rabbit heart okay? How about rabbit liver (one of my girls loves it!) rabbit lungs? (I raise my own rabbits so I know that they're fresh and healthy).

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You can def give heart or liver as treats, but those by themselves aren't enough to balance out a meal. Unless you're going to feed PMR you'll have to supplement, taurine is especially important with rabbit because rabbit is naturally low in taurine. You could grind whole rabbit, or cut up the meat and add the organs, but you'll still need supplements. 

missmimz said:

You can def give heart or liver as treats, but those by themselves aren't enough to balance out a meal. Unless you're going to feed PMR you'll have to supplement, taurine is especially important with rabbit because rabbit is naturally low in taurine. You could grind whole rabbit, or cut up the meat and add the organs, but you'll still need supplements. 

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Thanks so much for your help! Could I add the organs to the food daily? Can I mix proteins? Like rabbit and chicken combo, etc?

Thanks again! Is it okay to mix raw meat with cooked meat? (Like raw rabbit with cooked plain chicken or vice versa?) Is a one a week meal containing fish okay? (Like sardines which are rich in omegas or salmon?) Sorry for being so naïve; it's been a while since I fed raw.

oldgloryrags88 said:

Thanks again! Is it okay to mix raw meat with cooked meat? (Like raw rabbit with cooked plain chicken or vice versa?) Is a one a week meal containing fish okay? (Like sardines which are rich in omegas or salmon?) Sorry for being so naïve; it's been a while since I fed raw.

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Yep all fine. Just make sure you supplement correctly. 

You also look at catinfo.org. Dr. Pierson is a long time advocate of raw feeding and she has a wealth of information on other cat related topics, such as vaccinations, litter box issues, etc.

I also reccomend http://feline-nutrition.org/nutrition/making-raw-cat-food-for-do-it-yourselfers . I follow the recipe on this page and my cats are eating it well and seem to like it. The only downside is you have to get a grinder that is capable of grinding bone. There is the option of supplementing the bone but the real thing is said to be better. I'm slowly increasing the size of the chunks of meat and bone that I include in my "Meat Slop" as I call it. My little one is five months old and is already eating large marble sized chunks of raw bone if you can believe it! I'm very glad because I'm committed to the health of their gums and teeth. Bones, skin and sinew etc. remove plaque because they have to do so much chewing when they eat it. Plaque mineralizes into tater in 3 - 5 days and tarter is very hard to remove and is the cause of gum disease. Sadly I learnt this the hard way because it happened to my two puppers in the end they had to get almost all their teeth pulled. This was probably very traumatic and painful for them to go through. And (much less important to me but still relevant) it costed a small fortune to get them removed.
Eventually I'm planning on working my way up to about 75% whole prey and 25% ground meat pate so I can get their supplements into them. Just like was mentioned, whatever you do, make sure you're supplimenting appropriately!