Homemade Recipe Help

[lavlav123123]

This site is great.. thank you guys in advance so much for you help.

I have been looking at the homemade recipe from Feline Nutrition. I think it would be easier if I could get already ground chicken. At Hare Today you can buy ground up whole chicken, described as "Fine ground whole roasting chicken, this is the entire dressed bird including skin,neck and the offal [heart, gizzards, liver] USDA inspected, all natural." My question is.. could I buy this and just add to it the supplements listed in the Feline Nutrition recipe? Or even premade supplements from other places I've seen? I'm so afraid of getting some ratio wrong and giving my cat too much/not enough supplements, which would of course be bad for them. 

4.5 pounds (about 2 kg) chicken thighs with bone. Remove about 20 to 25% of the bone from the total amount of meat used. For example, if you use ten thighs, then take out the bone from two of them. This keeps the calcium/phosphorus ratio correct. Remove the skin from half of the thighs. If your cats are chubby you can remove all of the skin before weighing it. Don't remove the fat from the meat. Weigh the meat after you have removed these skin and bone amounts. You should purchase about 5 pounds (about 2.3 kg) to start with.

7 ounces (200 grams) raw chicken liver

14 ounces (400 grams) raw chicken heart. If you can't source chicken heart, then substitute with 4000 mg Taurine. If you do omit raw heart, remember to make up the missing 14 ounces of heart with additional chicken thigh meat.

8 ounces (.24 liter) water. Use bottled spring water, not tap water which can have too many chemicals.

4 raw egg yolks

2000 mg Taurine. This is in addition to the taurine you may have added if you didn't use hearts. Taurine is water soluble so you don't have to worry about your cat getting too much.

4000 mg wild salmon or wild caught small fish oil

200 mg Vitamin B Complex

200 IU  Vitamin E

 

[lavlav123123]

Okay, here's what i am now wondering i want to buy this ground mixture from Hare Today. 

Fine ground whole roasting chicken, this is the entire dressed bird including skin, neck and the offal [heart, gizzards, liver] USDA inspected, all natural. Meat/Bone/Organ ratio: Note, heart and gizzard is considered a muscle meat for feeding purposes

68% meat 27% bone 5% organ [liver]

This food is low in Sodium. It is also a good source of Niacin, and a very good source of Protein.

WIth this meat, could I use the rest of this recipe? Would this be a good recipe to feed??

8 ounces (.24 liter) water. Use bottled spring water, not tap water which can have too many chemicals.

4 raw egg yolks

2000 mg Taurine. This is in addition to the taurine you may have added if you didn't use hearts. Taurine is water soluble so you don't have to worry about your cat getting too much.

4000 mg wild salmon or wild caught small fish oil

200 mg Vitamin B Complex

200 IU  Vitamin E

 

[Columbine]

You can definitely use a premix with the Hare-Today meat, but you will need to dilute the bone content to around 10%. You do this by adding in extra muscle meat without bone. This calculator (designed by mschauer ) is the easiest way to work out the ratios http://www.rawcalc.org/dilute-bone-content.html.

Also, check out our [thread="272287"]​[/thread] for more easy to follow recipes

 

[lavlav123123]

Thank you so much!! I will definitely look at that. I was also looking at Alnutrin supplements. Do you think I would have to adjust anything with this ground mixture if I add in Alnutrin? Ingredients: Egg yolk powder, taurine, iodized salt, vitamin E, iron amino acid chelate, copper citrate, manganese amino acid chelate, zinc oxide, vitamin D3, vitamin B12, vitamin B1.

 

[Columbine]

No matter what recipe/premix you use, you must dilute the bone content to no more than 10%. The rawcalc link in my last post is the easiest way to work out how much extra muscle meat you need. Other than that, you should be fine. Lots of people here use Alnutrin, and find it very good.

 

[lisahe]

I'll just add as a FWIW/aside: some supplements are only used for boneless meat. I just started making food with EZcomplete and chose that supplement both because I don't have to deal with the bone questions (which addle my head!) and because it works for cooked or raw meat.

 

[sophie1]

If you use the Hare Today meat/bone/organ grinds you definitely have to dilute the bone content.  The online calculator is helpful, but here's the recipe I use:

One 2 lb chub of ground chicken or turkey

1 lb ground chicken or turkey organs (this is 1/3 liver, 1/3 gizzards, 1/3 heart)

2.5 lbs boneless meat

For boneless meat, I buy the turkey thighs and cut them into chunks with scissors, but you can use other meats to give your cats some variety.  I've tried the pork trim - it's quite fatty but my cats love pork.  Note that some people prefer to stick with a single protein, but I don't mind mixing.

This gives you approximately the same amount of food as Dr. Pierson's recipe including the chunks for dental health.   I must say, though, that I don't understand her emphasis on chicken hearts.  They actually contain not much more taurine than chicken thighs.  I looked up the USDA info, and the taurine content of chicken liver and heart is 1179 mg/kg.  Turkey dark meat has 3060 mg/kg, so that's my preference for added insurance.  I then supplement with 4000 mg taurine because I have faith that the remaining 2000 mg taurine (to get to the AAFCO requirement of 908 mg/lb of finished food) will be present in 5.8 lbs of meat, regardless of type.

Also, the premixes are definitely easier, just be careful to get the correct one for the meat mix you're using.  They are however very expensive (between 50 cents and a dollar per pound), and don't contain fish oil so you need to add that yourself anyway.  Doesn't seem worth it to me to avoid the work of cracking open a couple of eggs and pulling apart a few capsules, but then I don't bother separating out the white, I just throw it all in there.  There's enough excess B vitamins in the supplements + yolk that I'm not concerned about the theoretical biotin issue with raw egg white.

 

[mschauer]

 
  I must say, though, that I don't understand her emphasis on chicken hearts.  They actually contain not much more taurine than chicken thighs.  I looked up the USDA info, and the taurine content of chicken liver and heart is 1179 mg/kg.  Turkey dark meat has 3060 mg/kg, so that's my preference for added insurance

Where did you find USDA data on taurine content? The only USDA nutrient references I've seen don't include taurine. I'd love to know there is a source out there that I've overlooked. Share please!

 

[lavlav123123]

Thank you so much!! This is so helpful!! Do you think that this below recipe would work, and if not could you let me know what I should add/change? I'm hoping to get a set recipe figured out soon so that way we can order the food and then finally get our cat This process has been a little overwhelming.. I'm so glad I found this site and that you and so many others have been so helpful.

One 2 lb chub of ground chicken or turkey (Hare Today ground mix with bones)

1 lb ground chicken or turkey organs (this is 1/3 liver, 1/3 gizzards, 1/3 heart)

2.5 lbs boneless meat

8 ounces (.24 liter) water

4 raw egg yolks

2000 mg Taurine

4000 mg wild salmon or wild caught small fish oil

200 mg Vitamin B Complex

200 IU  Vitamin E

 

[sophie1]

mschauer - I misspoke, it wasn't directly from a USDA source.  I got the figures from a 2003 article that quoted USDA info, so it was indirect, but I deemed it to be a reliable source - authors from UC Davis, and article cited 75 times.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12864905

Also, the figures I cited were per kg, not per pound - again sorry about that, but I did figure my taurine supplementation using the correct units.

lavlav - recipe looks good.  I supplement with 4000 taurine for extra insurance but you should be pretty safe with 2000.  Also, you'll end up using 400 iU of vitamin E because that's the smallest unit you can easily find.  And I think you only need 50 mg vitamin B, not 200.   There is a discrepancy between the different Pierson-like recipes floating around, but the original (on catinfo.org) calls for 50 mg caps.

 

[mschauer]

 
mschauer - I misspoke, it wasn't directly from a USDA source.  I got the figures from a 2003 article that quoted USDA info, so it was indirect, but I deemed it to be a reliable source - authors from UC Davis, and article cited 75 times.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12864905

I'm very familiar with that paper. I used to use it as a source for taurine content but stopped because I didn't like the wide range of values it gives. For instance for turkey dark meat the 3060 mg/kg value is the mean. What they actually measured was taurine in a range of 2700 - 3750. Still higher than the range 888-1561 given for "Chicken, heart and liver" as you pointed out.  But remember that range is for a mix of heart and liver, not just heart.

The range for "Chicken, dark meat" is 1320-2060 but the range for "Chicken,leg", which I certainly considered to be dark meat is 300-380. Why so different from "Chicken, dark meat" and which one is accurate???

I came to the conclusion that that data really isn't of much practical use for us in creating a nutritionally balanced diet for our cats.  I agree with the approach taken by many in just adding the entire needed amount of taurine with the assumption that the animal parts provide none.  Given the critical nature of taurine in our cats diet I think that is the safer approach.

 

[sophie1]

I think the paper did a good job of presenting the data with all its flaws.  I did note the chicken leg vs dark meat discrepancy, but note the numbers came from two different sources.  "Dark meat" could cover a lot of ground; it could include hearts and gizzards, for example.  The numbers given for chicken "heart and liver" and "liver" were consistent to me:  heart and liver were 1179 mg/kg, and liver is 1100 mg/kg, implying that heart has slightly higher taurine content.

I am quite used to scientific articles as I'm in that field myself, and there is always some degree of uncertainty when you're conducting measurements like this.  Were you to dig into the sources behind the USDA data, you'd find similar issues.

You of course have to do what makes you comfortable.  I just questioned why Dr. Pierson would assert that 14 oz of chicken hearts contain 4000 mg of taurine, given the data in this paper.  She does say that she typically can't source chicken heart, so her cats have been presumably getting a diet in which she supplements 6000 mg per batch.  I could MAYBE believe that 14 oz of chicken hearts could be expected to contribute 1000 - 2000 mg of taurine and that she'd be aware if cats being fed exclusively from the heart version of her recipe were dropping dead of taurine deficiency, so that's why I ended up deciding on 4000 mg.  Note also that there are quite a few "frankenprey" feeders who do not supplement taurine, and feed meats with listed taurine content well below the 900 mg/lb mark.  Even with taurine being water soluble, I'm still a bit concerned about consistent and extreme over-supplementing.  B vitamins are water soluble too, but humans can develop neurological damage from overdosing on them (B6 particularly).

 

[lavlav123123]

I had someone ask on another thread if I would need to double the supplements on this because it looks like the meat total is doubled from the original recipe that I got the supplement totals from. What do you think? This is all too much math for me!! LOL. I'm also really afraid of giving too much or not enough supplements to the cat so want to double check everything. Thank you so much for your help!

One 2 lb chub of ground chicken or turkey (Hare Today ground mix with bones)

1 lb ground chicken or turkey organs (this is 1/3 liver, 1/3 gizzards, 1/3 heart)

2.5 lbs boneless meat

8 ounces (.24 liter) water

4 raw egg yolks

2000 mg Taurine

4000 mg wild salmon or wild caught small fish oil

200 mg Vitamin B Complex

200 IU  Vitamin E

 

[mschauer]

 
  "Dark meat" could cover a lot of ground; it could include hearts and gizzards, for example. 

Exactly. So why are you using the "Turkey, dark meat" entry from the table for  turkey thigh meat? Aren't you concerned that turkey would be similar to chicken in that while "Chicken, dark meat" has 1690 +- 370 mg taurine, "Chicken, leg" (which surely is a close stand in for thigh) has only 300-380  mg? 

 You of course have to do what makes you comfortable.  I just questioned why Dr. Pierson would assert that 14 oz of chicken hearts contain 4000 mg of taurine, given the data in this paper.  She does say that she typically can't source chicken heart, so her cats have been presumably getting a diet in which she supplements 6000 mg per batch.  I could MAYBE believe that 14 oz of chicken hearts could be expected to contribute 1000 - 2000 mg of taurine and that she'd be aware if cats being fed exclusively from the heart version of her recipe were dropping dead of taurine deficiency, so that's why I ended up deciding on 4000 mg.   

Her recipe calls for 2000 mg taurine, not 6000. I don't find anyplace on her web site where she ways 14 oz of chicken hearts contain 4000 mg of taurine. What she does say is:

 Hearts - Hearts are a good source of taurine but chicken hearts are not as high in taurine as mouse hearts.  Therefore, I consider hearts to just be pretty much the same as muscle meat so I still add powdered taurine.  (I have never used heart meat in my cats' food since I do not have a readily available source for them.)

Originally Posted by sophie1  

Even with taurine being water soluble, I'm still a bit concerned about consistent and extreme over-supplementing.  B vitamins are water soluble too, but humans can develop neurological damage from overdosing on them (B6 particularly).

I agree absolutely with being careful not to over supplement even with water soluable nutrients. But toxicity levels are generally many times higher than recommended levels. For B6 for instance the recommended daily amount for an adult human is 1.3 mg. The toxic level is at least 100 mg or 77 times the recommended. We aren't talking about supplementing taurine at  levels anywhere near that kind of multiple.

Well, it's clear you are satisfied with what you are doing and you are actually supplementing tauine at a level consistent with what Dr. P recommends so I guess all is good. I really hope anyone reading this thread will take the time to understand the data in the linked paper before attempting to make use of it. Maybe I'm being overly concerned about it because the recipes I publish include a nutritional analysis and I'm not comfortable with using data as imprecise as what is in that paper in an analysis. I think it would make the analysis dishonest.

 

[sophie1]

You're right - it's the catnutrition.org recipe, originally, that takes about substituting 4000mg taurine for 14 oz of heart.  This is the same one that doubles the vitamin B quantity (200mg for 5.8 lbs instead of 50 mg for 3 lbs meat/bones/liver).  Dr. Pierson's original recipe calls for 2000mg taurine for about 3 lbs of meat (3 lbs thighs minus 1/5 the bones plus 4 oz liver).  This is less than the AAFCO minimum for taurine, so she is counting on a bit over 700 mg taurine from the meat itself.  Sounds safe to me.  That's how I got to 4000mg taurine for my 5.5 lb recipe.

re the taurine data:  I took the turkey #s because the other #s reported for different turkey preparations were mostly consistent (e.g. for "ground turkey").  Also I noticed that reference "c"  in the table (the 1965 Nature paper) had universally low numbers compared to the later studies, so there were probably some methodological differences.

I keep coming back to the prey model raw fed cats who do not get supplemental taurine.  It would be useful to know whether taurine deficiency is common in these cats.  I would guess not or we probably would have heard of it on this board.

 

[mschauer]

I haven't suggested there is anything unsafe in the levels of supplemental taurine that have been mentioned in this thread.

What I have suggested is that the data in the paper linked to is of questionable value for use in formulating our home-made diets.  My first post was to ask where you had found USDA data for taurine. I was interested because I use the USDA Nutrient Reference Database in analysing my own recipes but it doesn't include taurine values. The data in that database can justifiably be called questionable in some respects but at least it is continually updated and maintained to attempt to ensure the data is accurate and consistent. I was hoping you had found a similar source for taurine data. I now understand that is not the case.

BTW - Dr. Pierson doesn't use the AAFCO recommendations so you can't use the recommendations to infer how much taurine she thinks is contained in the meat she uses.

 

[lavlav123123]

I'm curious what supplements you use in your recipe?

 

[mschauer]

You can find a number of my recipes and those of other here : raw recipe thread

 

[lavlav123123]

Thank you so much for your help!