Anything like Tiki Broth?

[chickpea616]

My 12 year old senior foster/hospice cat LOVES the Tiki Broths and can go through several a day (and more, if I'd let her); got any suggestions for an alternative similar to that, but perhaps less expensive? Thanks!

 

[Kieka]

My guys are big on the broth toppers too. In my experience, they tend to be all around the same price point. Fancy Feast, Nulo, Rachel Ray, and some others all have variations. Fancy Feast Broths is probably the closest one to the Tiki Cat one. But you could try getting a pet bone broth or making one at home. You can get a large bottle, freeze it in an ice tray and thaw out as desired. I'd do it, but I always forget to that it out in time.

 

[maggie101]

I bought some at a pet store. Its powder you mix in water. I keep forgetting to make more and I would also forget to thaw

 

[daftcat75]

Make your own meat stock. It’s like bone broth but not cooked as long. This is actually a benefit to older animals or those with a sensitive stomach as bone broth is high in glutamates. These can be problematic for some cats and people too. Like MSG headaches. So if you follow along in the video below, the strained liquid from stage 1 is the meat stock. You can stop right there.

Bone Broth Is Excellent Nourishment for Older Pets

If you’re starting with uncooked meaty bones in a slow cooker/crock pot, it’s about 12 hours for turkey. Probably half that for chicken. If you use an Instant Pot (pressure cooker), 1 hour should be sufficient. If you’re starting with Thanksgiving leftovers, you can cook the same amount of time. 12 hours isn’t long enough to cook the bones down into high glutamate bone broth.

To store, I recommend large mason jars (16 oz is plenty large) for the freezer and a smaller “working jar” that will keep several days’ worth in the fridge. You could also do ice cubes. When you remove stock from the freezer, warm it back to a liquid in the jar and the jar in a pot of water on the stove. Pour out several days’ worth into your working jar and put that in the fridge for several hours to set back up like meat jello. The rest of the jar goes back in the freezer until you need to refill your working jar again.

It’s labor and time intensive, even with an Instant Pot, because you’re having to refill the working jar every few days. With ice cubes, you could pop out a few days worth into a baggie and bring that back to liquid in a hot water bath. Then pour that liquid into your working jar. It’s only slightly faster this way. You still need to let it set back up if you want to serve it as jello. If you don't want to serve it as jello, you could take an ice cube from the freezer to a baggie and defrost that under hot water in the sink until it's liquid, preferably luke warm (or at least not chilled) and then you can serve it like a liquid topper. Bottle cubes--long skinny cubes for dropping an ice cube into a water bottle--will defrost the fastest from the freezer to the plate.

I actually just posted my pictures of making meat stock for Krista from last year to Instagram today:

I bought wings and thighs. I stripped the meat for making her raw food. The meat bones went into the slow cooker or Instant Pot. I think this one was an Instant Pot batch. And you can see the size of the “working jar” that I use and how it sets up like meat jello. The last picture in the series is my Iron Chef judge giving her approval.

Yes, that's a good point I brought up in my Instagram post. It's best to use meaty bones rather than bones with a lot of meat still on them. The more meat, the longer it has to cook just to cook the meat. Undercooked meat in a slow cooker is the perfect breeding ground for clostridium. The undercooked drumstick I refer to was a whole drumstick that probably did not cook all the way through before straining out the stock. If you remove most of the meat from the bones before cooking the stock, you should be alright. If you start with already cooked meaty bones like Thanksgiving leftovers (or a roast chicken carcass), even better!