Need second opinion on my homemade cat food

[aermoid]

I decided to make homemade cat food for my cat considering its benefits. Although I just winged it and he seemed to like it I want opinions if I should keep feeding him it or not.

It comprises of:
Chicken gizzards, liver and thigh
Carrot and a tomato
Eggs
Milk
Water
Oats

I put it under a stove and heated it for a while to eliminate bacteria and such.
I couldn't add bone because I didn't have anything to crush it with.
So what do you think?

 

[Willowy]

It would need a better calcium source than just milk. Plus a lot of cats are lactose intolerant so milk probably isn't a good thing to add anyway. Carrots and tomatoes don't have any benefit for a cat.

There are very easy premixes you can get---just mix them with meat and you're set. If you want to make your own, there are some vet-approved recipes to use. Check out the resource threads for more info.

Just a quick couple of recipes links:

For raw: www.catinfo.org
For cooked: www.dogcathomeprepareddiet.com

 

[lisahe]

I decided to make homemade cat food for my cat considering its benefits. Although I just winged it and he seemed to like it I want opinions if I should keep feeding him it or not.

It comprises of:
Chicken gizzards, liver and thigh
Carrot and a tomato
Eggs
Milk
Water
Oats

I put it under a stove and heated it for a while to eliminate bacteria and such.
I couldn't add bone because I didn't have anything to crush it with.
So what do you think?

I think it's great that you'd like to make homemade food for your cat but this recipe doesn't sound balanced enough to feed more than occasionally, as a small part of your cat's diet. (I would also get rid of the milk, vegetables, and oats because they have no real benefits for cats.)

As @Willowy mentioned, there are lots of balanced recipes online... or you could try a supplement that would make things a little easier. There's a new one, EZComplete, that uses boneless meat; I'm going to try that one soon since it works with raw or cooked meat. I can also say that I've used the bone meal version of the recipe on catinfo.org: our cats loved it. A food processor works great to grind up the meat a little, though the bone meal version isn't recommended for long-term use.

This section of The Cat Site has posts with lots of resources, too. You can find links here.

Good luck!

 

[aermoid]

I'm looking for a recipie that doesn't need any supplements as it's hard for me to get them.

 

[Columbine]

You absolutely HAVE to have supplements when making your own cat food. There's no way round it. The only supplement free homemade diet is prey model raw (sometimes called frankenprey). I can understand that a supplement premix might be hard to get, but many recipes use human supplements - which are often easier to get hold of. If you can't add bone for calcium, ground eggshell is a good alternative, and is often used in low phosphorus formulations for CKD cats.[thread="263751"][/thread][thread="272287"][/thread][article="32339"][/article][article="31801"][/article]

 

[missmimz]

I'm looking for a recipie that doesn't need any supplements as it's hard for me to get them.

You absolutely cannot "wing" cat food. Supplements are NOT optional unless you feed raw prey model. You must do your research before you attempt to feed or make your own homemade food. As everyone else already mentioned your food is not supplemented correctly and for the health for your cat you should stop feeding it and re-evaluate your recipe before you attempt to feed homemade again. 

 

[mschauer]

I'm looking for a recipie that doesn't need any supplements as it's hard for me to get them.

Where are you located? Do you not have access to any vitamin or mineral supplements at all?

 

[LTS3]

I'm looking for a recipie that doesn't need any supplements as it's hard for me to get them.

Then perhaps you need a whole prey or frankeyprey model diet. Neither of these require supplemention as long as you follow the correct way of making sure the cat gets all the vitamin and minerals. For a frankenprey diet, this is feeding 80% muscle meat, 10% raw bone, 5% liver, and 5% other organ.

Are you in the US or Canada? If yes, buying supplments for  raw diet is very easy. You can buy them all online. If you're in Europe, I'm pretty sure you can buy supplemention online as well. There are pre-mixes available if you don't want to bother with individual supplements. TC Feline, Alnutrin, Better In The Raw, and EZ Complete are some brands.

Until you can get the proper supplemention for a raw diet, please do not continue feeding your made up raw recipie. It doesn't have the necessary vitamins and minerals a cat needs. Cartos, tomato, and oats aren't needed in a cat's diet. They're just useless fillers that add no nutritonal value. Can you feed regular commerical cat food temporarily?

 

[mrskm]

I just made my very first batch of homemade cat food today. All the supplements that I used, I bought at the grocery store, with the exception of taurine (which I ordered from Amazon.com). The initial purchasing of the needed supplements may seem like a lot, but they will last a long time for one cat. You could even space it out and purchase them as you can afford them, and feed kitty the food he was getting before until you get all the needed supplements. I hope you check out the resources posted earlier on this thread, there's some great info! 

 

[lisahe]

 
I just made my very first batch of homemade cat food today. All the supplements that I used, I bought at the grocery store, with the exception of taurine (which I ordered from Amazon.com). The initial purchasing of the needed supplements may seem like a lot, but they will last a long time for one cat. You could even space it out and purchase them as you can afford them, and feed kitty the food he was getting before until you get all the needed supplements. I hope you check out the resources posted earlier on this thread, there's some great info! 

You raise a lot of good points: when I made food I also bought all the supplements at the grocery store, at Whole Foods, and you're right that not everything has to be purchased at once.

Of course I'm curious about what kind of food you made since I'm finally planning/hoping to do this for real, regularly, now that I've gotten through a very busy time!

I hope your cat loved the food!

 

[mrskm]

@LisaHE  I made a separate post about what I made today. I didn't want to hijack this thread!