100% or Variety?

[ravencorbie]

Those of you who've been following my Food Journey thread know that I'm in a bit of a pickle when it comes to freezer space at the moment.  I decided to make this a new thread rather than adding on to that one in case someone else had my particular concern sometime in the future and was looking (i.e. using search) for a thread on the topic. 

So, the situation is this:  I haven't finished researching Frankenprey, which is my eventual goal once I feel comfortable about certain aspects of it (hence, the need for research).  I can't afford a grinder right now, and I also don't have the time to spend making large quantities of ground food.  Therefore, I've chosen, for the moment, to go with commercial raw.  So far, I've introduced four flavors from the Primal variety pack:  beef/salmon, chicken/salmon, turkey, and pheasant.  She has liked the three poultry-based foods and threw up the beef/salmon.  I'll try introducing it again sometime in the future.

I would love to purchase a normal sized bag (3 lb. I think?) that included all three proteins, but I can't:  I have to purchase each one separately.  Unfortunately, I can barely fit one bag in my freezer at the moment, which means I'm limited to one protein at a time.  I could rotate them -- so, when I finish the turkey I have now, I could get the chicken/salmon or have the store order the pheasant, but I can't have 3-5 bags (the ideal number of different proteins) in my freezer all at the same time.

So, my question is:  would it be best, until I get a small extra freezer, to have CANNED food that was different proteins, to preserve the VARIETY . . . or is it more important to be at 100% RAW, even if I only have one protein at a time (as long as a normal sized bag lasts)?  I'm feeling selfishly partial to adding canned back into the rotation as I can make that the early morning meal.  Lately my cat has been waking me up on the week-ends, and it's irritating to have to stay up to watch her finish eating so that I can scoop up the dish within 30 minutes.  That said, if it's more important to be at 100% raw, I'll consider that, and when I do have the freezer space, that's what I'll do.

Sorry for the length of the post -- I have a tendency towards wordiness.

 

[ldg]

There are plenty of people that feed a mix of canned and raw. So really, it depends on your priorities.

Variety is important for frankenprey feeders, because the mix of red meat and white meat, dark meat and light meat provide different nutrients. But for a diet that is already complete and balanced, like Primal, the variety isn't AS important. Certainly not on an every day basis kind of thing. There's no reason not to feed one bag of protein at a time and then feed a different bag of protein. The real question is will she eat the same thing for as long as a 3 pound bag lasts? Mine wouldn't, and that was a factor in how I designed their menu.

FYI, I know the typical recommendation is to leave the food out for no more than 30 minutes. I don't know how long she'd take to eat it if you just left it. But when Lazlo has issues with nausea, I pick up his bowl and stick it in the cabinet - because he doesn't like refrigerator-cold food. I'd offer his bowl again to him after 1/2 an hour - he'd eat a little more. I'd stick it back up in the cabinet and offer it again after another half an hour or so. It would get a little dried out, but I've let him eat it over a four hour period. This has gone on for a week or more, to no ill effect. I have no idea if the probiotics I feed them help or not.

My experience was once I switched to all raw, the cats stopped waking me up for their morning meal. I do get up to feed it at roughly the same time, and on the weekends will go back to sleep if I need it. But with three meals a day, they stopped being so crazy for food when 100% raw fed. :dk:

 

[ravencorbie]

You have very good points - thank you!  I don't think she'd mind eating the same thing: at least, so far.  But that does bring up another concern:  I was talking to my mom about how I introduced variety at the very beginning, giving her a different food each time I opened a can (when I was doing all canned food) and how therefore, she's not very picky and will pretty much eat anything (although she is still very young).  I wouldn't want her to get stuck on a particular variety of Primal.  I got my mom to try adding some wet food to her cats' diets (she won't make it their main meal), and they liked the first one so much that when she tried a different one the next day, they thought it was the first one and wouldn't eat it when they found out it wasn't (the first was Merrick Turducken and the second was Wellness Signatures chicken with chicken liver).  The only foods my cat hasn't eaten are the red meat ones.

Iris actually eats very fast, especially the raw food -- she's usually done in less than a few minutes.  So, I suppose on week-ends, it really wouldn't be too much of a problem to just wait for her.  The big issue is that I don't want to wake up at 6am for good, and I'm worried I'd have trouble falling back asleep if I'm up even a few minutes longer.  On the other hand, on THOSE days, I'm not going to be gone all day until 4-5pm, so I'll be able to pick it up at 9-10, which is only 3-4 hours.  I also wonder if her tongue is getting it clean enough that it doesn't matter as long as she ate it all (which she does -- she licks the bowl completely clean).  So, it's not like I'd have a pile of raw food just sitting out -- it would be a bowl that had previously had raw food in it that is now covered in cat saliva.

Thanks again!