A few questions about homemade cat food

[Tylerthefeline]

Hi everyone, I recently bought a bag of EZ complete premix to start making homemade food for my cat and I have a few questions.

1. I have read about a possibility of bacterias being in meats that aren’t in canned food because the canned is high pressure cooked, is this something I’d have to worry about with feeding boiled or baked chicken and turkey?

2. Are chicken and turkey from the grocery store OK, or is it necessary to find a butcher/organic meats from somewhere?

3. I have read that sodium content can be tricky or inaccurate with chicken and turkey from the store, the store I get mine from lists 45mg per 4oz of chicken. Is that an ok amount for a cat or should I be worried about added sodium in meats?

4. EZcomplete lists its fiber content as 0.60% while the current canned food I feed lists it as 1.6%, is 0.60% enough or should I be adding in some canned pumpkin with the homemade?

thank you to anyone who takes the time to answer, I love my cat and don’t want to make any mistakes with the diet change!

 

[daftcat75]

Meat itself is essentially sterile. The highest risk of bacterial contamination will be on the surfaces. Some might suggest washing your meat. But then you are simply spreading that surface bacteria around in your sink/kitchen. Cats have a highly acidic stomach and short digestive system that is meant to eat raw prey that has sometimes been left out for hours. Still, if this is a concern of yours, you can surface bake the meat (15 minutes at 350F is what I believe I read somewhere.) Retain any drippings to use as part of the liquid needed for EZ.

If you are going to cook or surface bake the meat, then grocery store meat will be okay. Though you may still want to find better sources as grocery store meat can come from animals that have been treated with antibiotics and growth hormones. Another hazard of pre-packaged grocery store meat is that sometimes the grocery store will add something to the meat to make it look still palatable a day or two longer than it should be sold. They are figuring that you will cook away any such abuses. Back when I was making raw food for my last cat, Krista, I would buy turkey legs, thighs, and sometimes wings from the butcher at a more boutique grocery store. I chatted with the butcher and he assured me that all cuts were cut that day. Sometimes he would even go to the freezer and chop up a bird right in front of me. The nice thing about establishing a relationship with the butcher is that if you find that EZ doesn't work out (and the green lipped mussels in the formula can be a challenge for some cats), you can ask the butcher to set aside giblets for you as other recipes will require liver and sometimes heart.

Sodium I plead ignorance on. I think it's less than 100 mg per 4 oz. But I could be wrong on that.

Some cats need more fiber than others. I would try the recipe as is and see how it goes. Note that raw fed cats will have smaller stools. One of the raw resources out there shows stools of raw fed cats so you can feel assured that a change in stools is not necessarily a problem sign.

My best advice when venturing into raw food is to keep a canned food in rotation for a few reasons. Some cats do go off their raw sometimes for no other reason than being a cat. Sometimes you may forget to defrost the day's food the night before or you simply ran out and didn't make the next batch in time. Or your cat doesn't like the batch you just made. Sometimes, there are global supply chain interruptions and you might not be able to get EZ or any of the other ingredients when you need them. And finally, you may make a mistake or three when you are first starting out. For all of these reasons, it's good to have a canned backup for perhaps one meal a day to cover your butt and provide you insurance against any or all of these reasons. I like Mouser and Rawz as excellent clean recipe canned food backups.

 

[daftcat75]

While looking for the surface baking recommendation, I ran across this incredible page of notes and links.
Raw Info for Cats | Hare Today