Thank you so much for the help I received from iPappy about an article on raw feeding and PMR. I've read it thoroughly, and my big takeaway is that variety is needed. Unfortunately there is only one grocery store in my small town, and I have no way to get to the bigger towns - so I'm lucky if they have liver at all, and certainly nothing more than beef, chicken and pork. I'm thinking I will have to go back to using the Alnutrin supplements, which can be added to just a small variety of meat and still be balanced. But I'm very new to the whole raw thing; I'd love some advice about Alnutrin, what people think. Thanks all!
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Opinions on using the Alnutrin supplements?
- Thread starter dwdanby
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You can always use freeze dried livers. They can be purchased online at places like Amazon, Chewy etc. There is a calculator, you would add how much fresh liver you needed then click calculate (the one on the bottom) and then it would tell you how much of the freeze dried to use. Freeze Dried/Fresh Equivalents (rawcalc.org)
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Lil' bit confused. What if I don't have any fresh liver at all? can I use the freeze-dried for the whole thing? Thanks!
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That calculator is confusing. Let's say your recipe calls for 4 oz of fresh chicken liver. You'll put 4 and 77 (because it tells you fresh chicken liver is 77% moisture.) You'll leave the Dry amount blank and fill in the moisture amount from the freeze dried liver package. Since I don't have one in front of me, I'm going to leave it at 5%. Then I'll press the Freeze Dried Amount Calculate button to calculate that missing value. 0.97 or 1 oz freeze dried (28 grams) to yield 4 oz fresh. You'll add the extra weight in water to reconstitute the freeze-dried into the equivalent fresh amount. Krista, my last cat, she liked Alnutrin. Betty has been on prescription food and steroids. We're weaning her off the steroids and I'm hoping to get her off the prescription food too. We would probably do chicken cuts from the butcher and either fresh or freeze dried liver plus Alnutrin. I like Alnutrin because it's a BYOL (bring your own liver) supplement. When Krista could no longer have chicken, we could switch to turkey or rabbit but keep using the Alnutrin powder.
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I have used Alnutrin. I like it, and will use it again when needed.
There are a lot of raw food suppliers that ship nationwide. Are you able to buy/store in bulk?
Yes, just rehydrate it with water.
Have you looked into EZ Complete?
When I was trying baked foods for my cats (they hated raw), the EZ Complete needed nothing extra. It was indeed, complete. Also works great when you've a really sick cat that is barely eating but need to get nutrients into. I mix it in with meat baby food
When I was trying baked foods for my cats (they hated raw), the EZ Complete needed nothing extra. It was indeed, complete. Also works great when you've a really sick cat that is barely eating but need to get nutrients into. I mix it in with meat baby food
EZ Complete is definitely easier and it's an excellent supplement. I wish we could still feed it but one of our cats developed a sensitivity to some ingredient or other. I'm fairly sure it was green-lipped mussels but can't be 100% certain.
I use Alnutrin with egg shell calcium to make cooked food. I generally use freeze-dried chicken liver, though sometimes I've used duck.
Yes, you can use all freeze-dried. I hate buying a vat of chicken livers (which aren't always available to begin with!) so my main source of fresh liver is roasting chickens, though they don't always come with liver these days!
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- #9
Can I pick your brain again? there seems to be both defatted and non-defatted? how should I choose. I'm just mixing it with fresh ground turkey, pork and beef. Thanks!
Do you mean the liver? I have to say that I've never noticed these options! I just buy pure liver dog/cat treats on Chewy.com. I'm not sure about the fat content of what I buy (which varies, usually depending on price, availability, and offering variety to the cats) but since most of the meat I use for cat food is pretty low in fat, I'm not concerned about fat in the liver.
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- #11
Great, thank you, exactly what I needed to know.
Okay! Others may do things very differently but given how little liver (relatively speaking) goes into the food, the fat is the least of my worries for our cats.
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I've never worried about it either.
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I tried both EZ Complete and Alnutrin with Calcium....very much prefer EZ Complete as it's so much simpler and quicker, I can mix up a batch even while my kitties are eagerly awaiting their breakfast. And the price difference is not that much when you count in the cost of buying salmon oil to add to the Alnutrin mix. Just to be clear, with EZ Complete you don't need to add liver.
If you do end up going with Alnutrin...Hare Today as well as other raw food suppliers sell organ mixes that are way easier than buying fresh liver. I get a variety of these in different proteins (hint, let them defrost in the fridge for a few hours, then you can easily cut them up and refreeze whatever you're not using right away). They are all about 1/3 liver/other secreting organ, the rest are important offal meats that provide valuable nutrition, like heart and gullet. A quarter of a 1 lb chub nicely balances 1 lb boneless meat.
If you do end up going with Alnutrin...Hare Today as well as other raw food suppliers sell organ mixes that are way easier than buying fresh liver. I get a variety of these in different proteins (hint, let them defrost in the fridge for a few hours, then you can easily cut them up and refreeze whatever you're not using right away). They are all about 1/3 liver/other secreting organ, the rest are important offal meats that provide valuable nutrition, like heart and gullet. A quarter of a 1 lb chub nicely balances 1 lb boneless meat.
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I may have to check out EZ complete!
I have used Hare Today's organ blends, and they are well liked and well tolerated by all my dogs and cats. I also get pancreas and spleen from another supplier. If supplies are limited, I use a pinch of the powdered organ in capsules for humans, provided they don't add a bunch of other stuff to it.
EZ really is easier, though when I was feeding both our cats always preferred Alnutrin. What I like most about Alnutrin is that it's a minimalist premix that's very flexible: you add your own omega-3 if you want them and you choose the liver. And, of course, in our cats, the crucial thing is that one cat ended up having some sort of sensitivity to EZ but does fine with Alnutrin. 
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been using Alnutrin for a couple years. Owen is happy, vet is happy, we're happy.
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I suspect the cats like the fresh organ grinds much better than the freeze dried liver in the EZ complete. It smells a bit rancid to be honest. Happily, my cats like both EZ Complete and Alnutrin with calcium. I always feed a boneless meal to my cats in the morning, because they are prone to vomiting after eating in the AM and that has cut down on that problem.
If you have a choice been full fat vs defatted liver....ALWAYS go with full fat. That's because cats need the fat soluble vitamins that liver is especially rich in: A, D, E, and K. (We need those too....this is one reason why fresh liver has been so prized in traditional cultures. And no you can't get them from vegetable sources.) A defatted liver product will have lost most of those vitamins along with the fat.
If you have a choice been full fat vs defatted liver....ALWAYS go with full fat. That's because cats need the fat soluble vitamins that liver is especially rich in: A, D, E, and K. (We need those too....this is one reason why fresh liver has been so prized in traditional cultures. And no you can't get them from vegetable sources.) A defatted liver product will have lost most of those vitamins along with the fat.
Can I ask you the ratio of freeze-dried liver to fresh liver? If the alnutrin calculator says I have to add 1 oz of liver, how much-dried freeze liver do you add?
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There's a calculation for this:
(100 - % Moisture fresh liver) / (100 - % moisture freeze dried liver) * desired weight of fresh liver
For "moisture fresh liver", look that up in the USDA database. I have 75% for turkey liver. I expect chicken liver will be similar. For the turkey freeze-dried liver I used in Krista's recipe, that came out to 4% moisture. 1 oz is approximately 28 grams. For the freeze-dried equivalent of 1 oz fresh liver:
(100 - 75) / ( 100 - 4) * 28 grams = 7 grams freeze-dried or approximately 1/4 the fresh amount
