I need some help with figuring out what I can use as a calcium sources for my very sensitive kitty in homecooked food.
Background: Boomer has IBD and is sensitive to ALL but one brand of canned food (nature's variety instinct - pork and rabbit). I had two flavours I switched between but hey just discontinued one of the flavour and there are rumours they are discontinuing the other as well .... which leaves me with no food I can feed my kitty. This website helped to determine a lot of his issues are from the thickeners and yes he seems to react to guar gum, agar, carregnan etc. Cant handle kibble at all - even one piece will throw his digestion way off. I have been trying to get him on raw for the past 5 years with no luck at all - he chewed on some raw duck meat once but nothing since so I have to cook everything.
Which leads to my major issue - balancing calcium/phosphorus levels when I cant use the bones since they will be cooked. He throws up when eating beef so that knocks bone meal out as a supplement. He also throws up chicken eggs so cant use eggshell, and duck eggs are WAY too pricy to use - $30 a dozen.
I'm thinking oyster shell is a possibility or can I use bone broth to dissolve the bones before feeding? If I cook the bones until they crumble and have no sharp pieces and they use all the water they were cooked in .... would that maintain all the calcium in a useable form? I will be using rabbit, duck and pork as proteins since he is good with them - probably heavy on duck since pork sometimes doesn't agree with his tummy and rabbit is super expensive. I tend to buy a whole duck and roast in oven for 3 hours then pull all the meat off the bones and toss the leftover bones. Obviously this wastes a bunch of the meat and making bone broth with it would also limit the waste.
Does anyone have any tips or comments about any of the above? I hope the rumours are false and I can just feed him what he is getting now but also with the pork being discontinued and having to only feed rabbit my daily food costs are insanely high for this one little kitty. I started looking into home cooking a long time ago but when I realized how difficult it would be because of his allergies I stopped and just add meat and organs as toppers, but I may have no choice and now scrambling a little bit.
(PS - the natures variety instinct LIT Pork I list as discontinued is only discontinued in the dog 13oz cans I use - my cat eats 13oz a day and is still a little underweight so buying in the 5oz is not possible since its more expensive. The rabbit I hope is only the LIT rabbit or kibble being discontinued - because I can feed pork he likes the regular rabbit cans. But rabbit is undersupplied right now and many companies are having trouble supplying enough)
Background: Boomer has IBD and is sensitive to ALL but one brand of canned food (nature's variety instinct - pork and rabbit). I had two flavours I switched between but hey just discontinued one of the flavour and there are rumours they are discontinuing the other as well .... which leaves me with no food I can feed my kitty. This website helped to determine a lot of his issues are from the thickeners and yes he seems to react to guar gum, agar, carregnan etc. Cant handle kibble at all - even one piece will throw his digestion way off. I have been trying to get him on raw for the past 5 years with no luck at all - he chewed on some raw duck meat once but nothing since so I have to cook everything.
Which leads to my major issue - balancing calcium/phosphorus levels when I cant use the bones since they will be cooked. He throws up when eating beef so that knocks bone meal out as a supplement. He also throws up chicken eggs so cant use eggshell, and duck eggs are WAY too pricy to use - $30 a dozen.
I'm thinking oyster shell is a possibility or can I use bone broth to dissolve the bones before feeding? If I cook the bones until they crumble and have no sharp pieces and they use all the water they were cooked in .... would that maintain all the calcium in a useable form? I will be using rabbit, duck and pork as proteins since he is good with them - probably heavy on duck since pork sometimes doesn't agree with his tummy and rabbit is super expensive. I tend to buy a whole duck and roast in oven for 3 hours then pull all the meat off the bones and toss the leftover bones. Obviously this wastes a bunch of the meat and making bone broth with it would also limit the waste.
Does anyone have any tips or comments about any of the above? I hope the rumours are false and I can just feed him what he is getting now but also with the pork being discontinued and having to only feed rabbit my daily food costs are insanely high for this one little kitty. I started looking into home cooking a long time ago but when I realized how difficult it would be because of his allergies I stopped and just add meat and organs as toppers, but I may have no choice and now scrambling a little bit.
(PS - the natures variety instinct LIT Pork I list as discontinued is only discontinued in the dog 13oz cans I use - my cat eats 13oz a day and is still a little underweight so buying in the 5oz is not possible since its more expensive. The rabbit I hope is only the LIT rabbit or kibble being discontinued - because I can feed pork he likes the regular rabbit cans. But rabbit is undersupplied right now and many companies are having trouble supplying enough)