Dr. Pierson's Grind Recipe with Hearts

[chandra09]

Hi all! I have been feeding my cats Dr. Lisa Pierson's ground raw recipe to my three kitties for about 2 years. I've used chicken, turkey and very recently rabbit. They have loved all of those meats! Also, I want to mention that one of my kitties, Penny, has an egg allergy, so I do not use eggs.

I am interested in using raw hearts as the taurine source instead of adding taurine supplement. Do any of you do this with a ground recipe? I know you can't overdo the taurine, so I suppose I could put the supplement in anyways...but I have a source for turkey hearts and pork hearts and would like to use them!

My kitties are all around the right weight, so I leave 50% of the skin on the thighs. I remove 25% of the thigh bones.

I have looked at the catnutrition.org recipe and am trying to base things on the amount of heart she uses. That recipe calls for 14 oz of heart to 4.4 lbs of meat/skin/bones. So, if I use Dr.Pierson's recipe and make it with 1 lb of hearts to 2 lbs of meat/skin/bones that should be plenty of taurine, right? Then, since I would be using 2 lbs of meat/skin/bones that would be leaving 66% of the skin on, which should be fine for my kitties, and should make up for a bit of fat loss from using hearts instead of thighs (with fat on them) for that 1 lb. Then, there's the amount of bone. I regularly would be leaving 75% of the thigh bones. If I am using 1 lb of hearts, then its only leaving 66% of the bone in the 2 lbs of meat. Do you think that would be alright?

Thanks so much for your help!

 

[Willowy]

The main reason taurine supplementation is recommended with ground recipes is because grinding increases surface area, thus increasing oxidation, and oxidation degrades taurine :/. So I don't even know if adding more heart would make up for that or not. Frequently, raw feeders err on the side of caution and supplement taurine no matter what, just because it's important and you can't really overdose. Soooo. . .I don't even know if it's worth it to make all the necessary calculations :dk:.

 

[vball91]

I agree with Willowy. You could certainly use heart as a portion of muscle meat, but I'm not sure I would count on that being enough taurine though it probably is. It's just hard to know for sure. What about feeding some heart separately, or pieces mixed into their ground? Would your cats go for that?

 

[chandra09]

Hmm..ok, thanks for your input. I suppose it would be a lot of calculations to figure out the necessary amount of heart needed to account for the oxidation.

Just curious about it because the raw ground catnutrition.org recipe uses heart meat as the taurine source. It calls for 14 oz of heart, or if you cannot source it than 4000mg of taurine instead.

I do need to be chunking up more meat for them in their ground food, so I will just chunk up some heart for them.

Thanks!