Thirty calories per mouse is what I've often read online. But Rodent Pro's "guaranteed analysis" (here, for example) puts it a bit higher for even small mice. Medium average at a minimum of twice that. What gives with the discrepancy?
Well, kibble is coated with animal digest. It’s junk food for cats.Lastly my chubby house cats always prefer their dry/wet food to a freshly caught bird.
Thank you!My indoor-only boy Zeke loves whole mice! I put them out to thaw overnight. Depending on the size/weight, he gets up to four (0.6oz)mice for breakfast.
My kittygirl Chloe goes outside and sometimes catches and eats birds and shrews. She snubbed the thawed mice.
My Willow adores them. I got her started on pinkies ASAP because I was pretty sure she would accept them. She is not a true feral, but her mother was an abandoned pet who certainly looked like she wasn't a first-time mother or a teen mom the one glance I got of her. According to what I had read on the internet, it might be more difficult to get a well-bred purebred who had been able to stay with their mom and siblings to 16 weeks to recognize frozen rodents as food.Do cats even eat frozen mice? How many does your cat want to eat in a day? Do you thaw them first? So many questions!
I'm not that enlightened yet.W Willow's Mom , does Willow eat them from her bowl or does she take them away somewhere to eat?
My supplier did this for me, but she said she just used her regular food processor. My understanding is that the cartilige and hides provide some protein and micronutrients as well as fiber, so we just left them on. You may need to add just a small amount of the grind to her regular food at first, the same way you would any new protein source.Krista is toothless now. Could I just pick up some frozen mice and put them in my grinder for her? Do they need to be hairless? Anything else I should know about this/look for?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure my cats would want to hide away with it to eat. They try to do this with bigger pieces of meat. I don’t have any crate, I’d need to figure this out before trying.I'm not that enlightened yet.
I have dogs so my rule is that all carnivores have to eat in crates. Safe meat handling is something I still need to be 100% consciously aware of, just like a ten year old in her first Home Ec class.
I wouldn't make mice her full time food, but to offset her canned which seems to be too much fat in her diet.My supplier did this for me, but she said she just used her regular food processor. My understanding is that the cartilige and hides provide some protein and micronutrients as well as fiber, so we just left them on. You may need to add just a small amount of the grind to her regular food at first, the same way you would any new protein source.
I don't bother with EZComplete or supplements as long as I'm giving Willow the whole animal. The reasoning is that a mouse or a rat is the natural prey of domestic felines.
I have been using species-appropriate supplements for my dogs. They were bred to serve my species as "cat substitutes" but rodents are not their natural prey.
As far as anything else you should know, it's incredibly expensive but so worth it. Krista might enjoy pinkies as training treats even without any teeth. The only reason why I can do this at all is because I have a good relationship with my local rodentry and because there is a need.
These animals are humanely euthanized with CO2, which is expensive. Their food is expensive. Their socialization takes time. Their lives are naturally much shorter than our pet carnivores' and they haven't been domesticated as long, so we don't know as much about keeping them healthy. The people who breed and love them deserve our respect.
From what I understand, snakes have extremely low metabolisms. So if you're feeding him every week, 30kCal is a decent amount.20-30 kcals per mouse seems extremely low just based on what I know of the usual caloric content of meat. Pretty sure a snake couldn't get by on that kind of caloric intake.
I was reading that as 5.25 kcal/gram of mouse, not all those complicated figures. Maybe contacting Rodent Pro to see how they meant it would be best.So a 15 gram mouse would have a calorie count of (.1825 * 4kCal/g + .0772 * 10kCal/g) * 15 g = 22.53, based off of 4kCal/g of protein and 10kCal/g of fat.