Tonights Homemade trial run

badcat

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My plan it to use Dr Pierson's recipe and add venison since I have tons of it. I plan on using half chicken thighs meat/bone/skin and half venison (meat only) I think that should give me a good fat and bone ratio and save me from skinning and deboning any chicken. So tonight I decided to see if the cats would even show interest a raw/homemade food. I ground together a couple pounds of venison, a can of anchovies in water, and a few chicken livers. Not a complete balanced recipe I know but again the purpose was to see if there was interest from the cats. I used my kitchenaid food grinder attachment to grind the meats. I also added a cup of water and some forti-flora that I had kicking around.

Out of 3 cats one gobbled it up without hesitation. The other two sniffed it and looked at me like "that's it?" so I mixed a teaspoon or so of canned cat food with the homemade and they licked their bowls clean. I'm thinking we'll have a pretty easy transition here. I plan on starting out feeding one ounce twice a day and leaving their dry food out and slowly taking the dry away and increasing the homemade. I hate to just switch them over all of the sudden and run into problems. I have about 2# of the stuff I made tonight so I kept 2 days worth in the fridge and put the rest in ice cube trays to freeze overnight. I'll get everything I need for Dr Pierson's recipe in the meantime so when I'm out of this "experimental food" they'll be ready to switch over to all homemade.

Oh and my main reason for switching to homemade is my rather fat Kevin cat. He started peeing on my clothes and rugs and is on antibiotics for a UTI. He's also getting older and needs to lose weight. I've tried feeding meals rather than free feeding, feeding canned food, making him get more exercise but he's still really overweight. I'm hoping that switching to a homemade diet will help him all around. Plus, I've always wondered why so many cat foods are made with grains and veggies... when was the last time you saw a lion raiding a corn field or a cougar in your vegetable garden??
 

sophie1

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Sounds great.  Have you bought a grinder yet for the chicken thighs?

How did you decide on using half boneless meat?   I looked up bone percentages, and it looks like you're correct on that. Here is a list of approx. bone percentages of different chicken cuts:

Whole chicken - 32%

Chicken thighs - 21%

Chicken leg - 27%

Chicken breast - 20%

Chicken wing - 46%

I do the same thing, mixing different boneless meats with chicken meat/bone/organ grinds.  It's an easy way to add variety to the diet, which is important for several reasons.  First, the cats won't fixate on one food, causing feeding problems down the line.  Second, including several proteins in the diet is best from a nutritional standpoint - especially considering that our current list of important nutrients is unlikely to be complete.  I aim for a minimum of 5 but use as many as I can manage.  Third, it keeps the cats from getting bored.  My cats do best with variety.  No matter what I feed them, if it's the same thing day after day they start getting finicky.

Suggest you go ahead and use the venison, but consider trying them on other meats instead of just the two.
 

basscat

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If you don't have a grinder.
I have an LEM #12 grinder and it eats thighs and legs as fast as you can feed them through it. 
A smaller one might do the same, but, I'm extremely impressed with this size grinder.

Two cats. One last year (rehab and release). One this year, pet.

  Food was chicken legs, necks, thighs, hears, gizzards, livers. 
Mixed some venison in with last year and "rehab" kitty was very hesitant to eat it and she was NEVER hesitant when it came to feeding time.
Mixed some beaver with the chicken a few weeks ago for pet.  He gobbled it up like any other bowl of food (chicken parts). 
The next day, he wouldn't eat at all.  
Took me a few days of his normal chicken mix to get him back to eating again.

Something about the red meat didn't sit right with either one them.
 
 
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badcat

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No I don't have a grinder yet so thank you for the recommendation. I've been browsing different ones.

I decided on half boneless meat because I have a freezer full of roadkill (yup you read that right) deer that has been deboned and cut into chunks. I feed it to the dogs a chunk at a time and decided that it would be a more affordable way to do homemade cat food.

**A note on the roadkill deer. Hubby works for the county and gets called if a deer gets hit and not killed. He "dispatches" said deer and brings it home.

I plan on offering other meats as they come available. Hubby also pheasant hunts and rabbit hunts. Lots of fresh game meat around here. We only use the breast of the pheasants so the thighs and legs are all available for cat food :)

Today all 3 cats gobbled up the venison/chicken liver grind with 1/2 a tsp of canned cat food added. So 1/2 the amount of canned food I added yesterday. No one has seemed to have upset tummies from the switch.

As I am typing this I am seeing that two of the cats have pulled the leftover hamburger patty from my son's plate and are enjoying it on the floor.....
 
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badcat

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So two days of homemade food has made my kitties ravenous little carnivores! They are loving this stuff. I need to go out and get a grinder ASAP. I've decided that I will feed the homemade diet in the mornings and evenings and offer grain free dry food in between. I decided this in order to make feeding more simple when we go out of town and I have to have a friend come feed for me. I am limiting the amount of dry I offer during the day however so it won't be the "all you can eat" buffet they are used to. I did notice that today they didn't even finish the little bit of dry I put out. They ate a little of it but were holding out til the real food came out at dinner time. Spoiled in 2 days :)
 
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