Malibu & Kali's Raw Food Transition Progress Notes

[ritz]

My niece (a cat lover) takes care of Ritz when I go on vacation. I put one day's worth of food in a small tupperware type container. You're right, just as easy as feeding regular food.
Petco/Petsmart sell whole mice (freezer section). You could buy one package and see how your cats like it.

 

[abby2932]

Updating! 

~ So a few weeks ago I started a new thread about Malibu's poop being kind of mucous-y and smelly. I decided to cut out the beef for a bit, add cavies with fur (for fiber) and added Prozyme. I'm not sure what did the trick (I'm thinking the Prozyme) but I added the beef back into their rotation 8 days ago and both of their poops are still "victory". YAY!

~ Our meal menu is pretty much the same as last month...

Breakfast:

Even Rotation of:                                   

Rad Cat Turkey

Rad Cat Chicken

Rad Cat Lamb

(On Turkey and Lamb days, Malibu is still getting 50/50 (Turkey/Lamb) because he vomits sometimes when I give him 100% Lamb)

Dinner:

Even Rotation of:

Hare Today Finely Ground Meat/Organs/Bone with Alnutrin:

Rabbit

Beef

Cavies

Supplements:

1/2 Capsule of Nexabiotic twice a day per cat

250mg Now Krill Oil once a day per cat (only 250mg per cat a day because the Rad Cat has salmon oil included so they only get Krill Oil at dinner)

1/2 Egg Yolk twice a week per cat (mixed in with their dinner)

1oz Sardine once a week per cat

Smidgen size spoon of Prozyme on each meal

ON TO THE EXCITING NEWS!....

Malibu and Kali ate their first day old quail chick today  

 

~ It was slow going at first. I took 2 chicks and warmed them in a baggie with warm water for about 10 minutes and plopped them in front of the curious kitties. They were sniffing them but soon lost interest and walked away. 

~ I then knew that I was going to have to cut them in half. This part was hard for me because even just looking at the babies made me want to cry. *Pathetic, weak-stomached animal lover here* At this moment I am reconsidering my decision to start feeding whole prey. (Not only to I have a bag of the chicks, but I have about 32 adult quail in my freezer that would go to waste if I can't do this or if my cats won't eat it.)

~ I screamed when I cut the chick in half and some guts squirted on me. That's when Kali came over OUT OF NOWHERE, grabbed the top half of the decapitated corpse and ran off with it! I followed her to see what was going to happen. I couldn't see much but I heard a few crunches and gone was the head! We went back into the kitchen together for the bottom half and I video recorded her eating it with pride. I don't know how to add the video here.

~ Malibu sees the commotion and wants some action so....I cut his chick in half too (I managed not to scream this time)

~ He's interested in the head, licking, carrying it around in his mouth but after a few minutes I'm sad because I don't think he's going to eat it. 

~ I pass Kali the bottom half of Malibu's chick and I hear crunching but Kali hasn't dug in yet...I turn my head to see Malibu swallowing his chick-head! Ah shoot now Kali already scarfed up the bottom half of his chick. Oh well. Maybe next week Malibu won't take so long to eat his chick!

 

[abbyntim]

Thank you for sharing the details of your transition to raw! I have a cat with a very sensitive stomach and we just started our raw transition, so it is very helpful to me to read of other experiences. We are starting with Rad Cat turkey and Primal Pronto rabbit, tiny amounts of each mixed with canned food. We picked up samples of Rad Cat chicken and lamb, though I plan to wait to try those, as I suspect a chicken sensitivity and he does not seem to tolerate high-fat foods.

 

[abby2932]

Well, it's definitely the Beef that Malibu can't tolerate 

 

When I wrote the last update I thought we were fine because I was introducing it back in slowly and didn't see any issues but once we got back up to 1/3 of his dinner rotation (16.6% of his diet as a whole) we are back to STINKY, mucous-y poops. That is so crazy how small of an amount of Beef can mess him up inside like that!

I now have 7 pounds of beef from Hare Today that Kali is going to have to eat all on her own! Does ground meat from Hare Today really stay good frozen for up to a year? That is what Tracy says on her FAQ but I wanted to run it by you guys! 

I also have to find a cheaper ground meat for Malibu to have in his dinner rotation. Right now for Dinner the cats are getting Rabbit and Cavies (Well Kali is getting Rabbit and Beef/Cavies). But the Cavies are too much for me so I was thinking about Rabbit and Chicken but the bone percentage in chicken is so high that I would have to cut it with boneless ground chicken AND extra organ meat.  I guess I will just have to do it even though it's a bit more work than the Beef and Rabbit where I just defrost the chub, mix it with Alnutrin + water, portion and refreeze. 

On another note...Malibu and Kali ate their second quail chick this morning! I didn't even have to cut Kali's up, she just took it and ran off. She did play with it a bit before she started crunching which I don't like. I'm going to have to figure out a way for her to eat on her plate. I did have to cut Malibu's into thirds. But once I did that, he started crunching away too. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that Malibu (at 8 years old) would eat a whole prey baby chick!

I also have some adult dressed quail from Hare Today that I will start feeding on Monday morning. I took 2 quail (one for each cat), cut them up and portioned them into ziploc baggies for Mon-Fri breakfast meals! I suppose that will be the cat's first bone-in meal. I'm not really counting the chicks since they are so delicate and their bones are not fully calcified yet. I will let you know how they do!

 

[ldg]

Can you crate train them? That's how some raw feeders prevent the grab-the-food and run thing. If she just pulls it off the plate to eat, you can use a placemat. That's how I manage it for those that pull the food out of the dishes.

Yes, the FDA says that the issue with freezer storage is loss of quality. I'm sure there's *some* nutrient oxidation - but it depends on where it is in the freezer, how often you open it, etc. Keep it in the opaque plastic wrapper, in the back of an upright or the bottom of a chest, and as you're adding alnutrin, IMO, you should be good to go. It's not like that's all they'll live off of for an extended period of time.

 

[abby2932]

I have crate trained the cats (kind of) for their meals of bone-in quail. Thanks for the suggestion! I bought a $10 baby gate and lock one cat at a time at the very end of the hallway in the kitchen. They have room to pull their meat off the plate and eat but not TOO much space so I only have to disinfect a few tiles

Each cat eats one whole quail (excluding feathers, stomach and intestine) portioned into 5 meals (Monday-Friday breakfast). Malibu, my 8 year old boy is doing absolutely fabulous. This guy just loves everything I feed him, he's such an angel!

Kali is being a little problematic. For the first 3 weeks, she did wonderful. She ate 3 entire whole bone-in quail over that time period. She had no problems eating everything: head, feet and everthing in-between.

Now on the 4th week (and 4th quail) we have a set back. On Monday, she tried to swallow too much and didn't chew thoroughly. This caused her to regurgitate her whole meal and she wouldn't eat anything. I didn't worry about it, figured it's just one meal and it can't throw off her balance too bad as long as she eats everything else for the week.

Well today, she left the head of the quail behind! Keep in mind, the quail is approximately 10oz, split into 5 meals so each meal is only 2oz. So by leaving the head behind, she only ate half of her meal. So I cut the head in half to entice her to eat it but she was done. I put the head back into the fridge, chopped it up and mixed it into her ground dinner, which she did eat entirely.

Do you guys think she's just having a bad week? Or is she just not interested in chomping bones anymore?