question on recipe

[deb richard]

I have been going by what my local store (Meat for Cats and Dogs) have been helping me with.  

What I have to start with is 2 lbs Columbia river chicken Chub (chicken and bones), 1 lb ground organs, 1 1/2 tsp seameal (by Solid Gold) and 1 1/2 tsp fish oil.  

I am going to continue to put some of Solid Gold Tuna mix with it until the transition to this recipe is complete and then I will try to transition to something tasty that is not tuna, like BFF gravy packets or something.  

They said to feed the 10 lb cat each day: 2 oz meat, 1 oz organs, and 1/3 can of the tuna with the additive mentioned above.   the 13 lb cat they said to increase any of those item so that she get 5 oz total of food.  

I know there are many recipes out there, but this is what I started moving to before i found any of these other resources.  

So I guess, i just wanted to know if this sounds reasonable to those that have been on the journey longer than me (just a month).   i guess no matter what, since this is easily available to me locally, I would like for this to at least be a base to any other suggestions.   I do have a grinder... the kitchenaid mixer attachment, but I don't think it does bones.  That is why I purchased the ground meat with ground bones.

Thank you, 

deb

 

[Willowy]

1 oz of organs to 2 oz of meat seems high :/. The usual recommendation is 10% organs. Do they say what's in the organ mix?

 

[ldg]

Well, it's hard to tell without knowing more detail about the food and ground organs.

What is the percentage of bone in the chicken chub?

And if they don't have an answer, the question would be, what's the meat in the chicken chub? Obviously it isn't whole ground chicken, or there would be no need for the separate organ mix. I'm going to guess that the "chicken and bones" chub is made of chicken backs - and maybe necks? :dk:

What is in the ground organs, and at what percentages? I'm going to guess that the chicken organ mix contains gizzards, heart and liver? Again, it'd be best to find out in what percentages. :nod:

The goal? Understanding the composition of the diet: meat and meat equivalent (heart, gizzard), bone, and secreting organ(s), which I think is probably liver.

Most raw feeders base their recipes roughly on the prey model raw guidelines of 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, and 5% other "secreting organ." If ground, taurine at a minimum is supplemented. Most also provide vitamin D in the form of a small oily fish or some type of fish oil, and an egg yolk or so weekly (primarily for the vitamin D and choline). Most ground mixes and ground commercial foods provide just liver (there are exceptions); but then it is typically at a higher percentage than the 5% in the PMR diet proportions.

FYI:

Secreting organs = liver, kidney, pancreas, spleen, thymus, eyes, brain (I may be forgetting some)

Non-secreting organs (treated like muscle meat, because they're just internal muscles) = heart, lungs, trachea, gizzards, gullet, and for ruminants, the tripe (stomach lining).



Here's the SeaMeal: http://www.solidgoldhealth.com/products/index.php?product=36&code=4450

Ingredients: Dried Seaweed Meal, Flaxseed Meal, Dried Lemon, Dried Aspergillus Oryzae Fermentation Product, Dried Aspergillus Niger Fermentation Product, Pineapple, Lactose

Dried Seaweed Meal: iodine and ... amino acids? antioxidants? I'll have to look this up.

OK - found a better description (though why this isn't on Solid Gold's website.. :dk: :lol3: ) http://www.acreaturecomfort.com/seameal.htm So a source of iodine, protein, and antioxidants.

(I do have to take exception with their comment that "All carnivores including dogs and cats, whose prey are usually herbivores, instinctively consume the intestines and their contents first, before consuming the remainder of the animal." For wolves, in particular, this is untrue. They often do not eat the contents of the stomach. For cats eating small prey, they eat the entire animal. Of course, those stomach contents are at least partially pre-digested. Everyone arguing about the fiber, carb or grain content of a feral cat's diet seems to forget this).

Flaxseed Meal: a plant-based source of omega 3s, that is useful to dogs, but not for cats. The omega 3 in plant-based products is ALA. Cats lack the digestive enzyme necessary to convert the ALA in plants to DHA and EPA. They need the DHA and EPA pre-formed, thus the fish oil salmon oil, small oily fish, etc.

Dried Lemon: a source of vitamin C, but cats manufacture their own vitamin C. Of course it acts as an antioxidant, and supplementation isn't necessarily unnecessary... but there are better sources of vitamin C for cats (like pumpkin), as essential oils are toxic to cats, and if this contains the peel... I assume the amount is very small, and thus it's in a product marketed for cats. But I can't imagine the presence of lemon helps with how it tastes to a cat. :dk: An odd ingredient, IMO.

I don't know what the lactose is for - maybe to make it more appetizing. But the rest are digestive enzymes and probiotics.


So basically the supplement contains iodine, minerals and trace minerals, B vitamins, vitamin C, fiber, and antioxidants, but from natural sources rather than as vitamin supplements. :nod:

It may be a good supplement, depending on your goal in using it. It provides additional nutritional support, but it clearly is not designed to provide the "missing" nutrients/components from a raw meat/bone/organ diet. It is missing one very important component for a ground food diet for a cat: taurine. Taurine is water soluble, so make sure you mix any "juice" that separates during thawing back into the ground mix before feeding. :nod: The hearts in the organ mix (assuming there are hearts in there) are taurine-rich, so taurine supplementation shouldn't be necessary. And I have no idea how much vitamin D is in seaweed meal. It may or may not provide needed vitamin D. :dk:

Maybe you can contact Solid Gold to ask them for the full nutritional profile of the SeaMeal?

Though the supplement contains flax, it doesn't provide cats usable omega 3s. Many provide these in the form of canned sardines (water, no salt) - one or two small sardines a week OR salmon (or krill) oil. I give my cats 500mg of salmon oil daily, and I split one 4.275 ounce can of sardines between 7 cats (one cat hates sardines. :lol3: ).

The supplement doesn't contain choline, so feeding them an egg yolk once a week as a treat is a good idea. :nod: If they don't like the yolk, we can help you figure out how many to mix into the dethawed meat / bone / "organ" mix so that they each get 1 yolk a week from their meals.

 

[peaches08]

The ingredients that I read: 100% ground chicken back, necks, wings, hearts, and liver. It doesn't say in what percentages, and the first thing that comes to mind is high bone content. I think you should contact the manufacturer and get the percentages.

Because it is ground, I wonder if supplementing it with Dr. P's supplement recipe is in order? As well as thinning out the bone content with more meat...

 

[ldg]

:doh3: I didn't even think to look up the food. Here's the link: http://www.columbiarivernaturalpetfoods.com/products/products.html

Interesting. The chicken mix has heart and liver in it. They don't provide any info about the organ mixes.

I wonder why the pet food store is recommending 2 pounds of chicken mix to 1 pound of organ mix. If the organ mix is primarily gizzards and heart, then it may work out... it's so hard to tell. Clearly the bone content of the chicken chub is high, especially for a cat, without adding something to it to thin it out. Maybe the store is experienced with using the product, and this works out to an amount of bone that doesn't make cats constipated? :dk:

Deb - for prey model raw (PMR) feeders, rather than target a calciumhosphorus ratio (because it's basically impossible to figure out when using fresh bone), they target bone as a percentage of the diet. The usual guideline is "if kitty gets constipated, feed less bone; if kitty has soft stool, feed more bone."

When balancing a food from a nutritional standpoint, the amount of calcium that's needed is calculated in a ratio to the amount of phosphorus in the diet. It's called the Calciumhosphorus ratio. Meat is high in phosphorus and low in calcium. Bone has a lot of both, but has roughly 2x as much calcium as phosphorus. I don't want to make this too complicated. :lol3: But basically that chicken chub contains the parts of chickens that are very boney. It also has heart and liver, which is great, but we have NO idea how much.

People that feed whole ground chicken - the entire animal - find that they need to thin out the chub with extra meat. So for a mix that uses only the boney parts of the animal, the question is - just how much bone to meat is in there? And how much is heart and how much is liver? Because you're going to be adding ground organs to the mix - so how much of what is in that?

 

[ldg]

Because it is ground, I wonder if supplementing it with Dr. P's supplement recipe is in order? As well as thinning out the bone content with more meat...

Given she's put the work into figuring out how much of what is needed, I personally would feel more comfortable doing that than using the Solid Gold SeaMeal supplement.

But if Deb wants her kitties to have the benefit of the antioxidants, I guess the SeaMeal could be used, with the addition of everything in Dr. P's recipe (and Deb already has the fish oil) excluding the Morton Lite Salt (which is in there for the iodine)?

We need mschauer.

 

[peaches08]

Given she's put the work into figuring out how much of what is needed, I personally would feel more comfortable doing that than using the Solid Gold SeaMeal supplement.

But if Deb wants her kitties to have the benefit of the antioxidants, I guess the SeaMeal could be used, with the addition of everything in Dr. P's recipe (and Deb already has the fish oil) excluding the Morton Lite Salt (which is in there for the iodine)?

We need mschauer.

The Morton's Lite with iodine provides iodine for sure, but Dr. P mentions the potassium as well since there's not much blood in the chicken thighs recipe she uses.

I also think that Deb would be better off with other supplements than the Seameal. Probably for much cheaper overall too.

 

[ldg]

Deb, this is the recipe we're talking about: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood#The_Recipe

As her recipe is for 3 pounds, you could use the same supplements, in the amounts recommended. You don't need to add fiber.

If it turns out you need to add more meat because of the bone content (even with the addition of one pound of organs), we can help you figure out how to adjust the amounts of the supplements.

 

[deb richard]

Wow, what a wealth of information and so much to take in!   I think someone asked about the organ meat.  it was just what I bought at the grocery store.  I got a package of hearts and gizzards and a package of liver...all chicken.  We ground it together tonight.  I had to do something.  I have this stuff and I have to use it.  I don't even know if they will it it as I am sure it has a different flavor than the Nature's Variety that I have been using.   I bought some BFF gravy packets too, they love that and it will assist in the transition, along with the tuna.  

as for all the other percentages you all mentioned.  my brain isn't taking it in yet.  I will read it over and ponder it until it makes sense.  I guess right now, I just want someone to tell me I am not harming my precious kitties.

 I moved from the kibble because I knew they were harmful.  Maybe what I am doing isn't perfect, but i don't want to any harm to come to them.  we can move to perfection down the road. 

so thanks again.

deb

 

[ldg]

Nope, not harming, not short term.

The kitty not eating solid gold tuna may get constipated if there's too much bone. And we need to understand approximately how much liver is in there because of the vitamin A.

 

[deb richard]

Nope, not harming, not short term.

The kitty not eating solid gold tuna may get constipated if there's too much bone. And we need to understand approximately how much liver is in there because of the vitamin A.

that's a relief anyway.   so what we ground up today was 1 lb liver and 1 lb hearts and gizzards.  we did the appropriate addition of teh seameal and fish oil.  Then we pu that into the 4 oz container with lids....  for Tilly we put in 1 oz and for kiki 2 oz.  Then on top of that we put two oz of the tuna.  Then we lidded the containers and froze them.  Then when we feed them we will add two oz of the chicken chub. and if need be, a little of the BFF gravy to mask that its a different food.  

does that info help?  I will watch to see if they are constipated.  I can get some chicken w/o bones in the supermarket to dilute the chubs, if needed.  do you think I should just do that right off?, oh and they both eat the tuna.

deb (and off to bed

) 

 

[mschauer]

I agree with what the others have said, that chicken with bones product from Columbia River is very high in bone. I've noticed that lot of the prepackaged raw products are either very high in bone or fat or both. I suspect that is why they are usually so cheap. They also frequently have little muscle meat other than heart. I don't know that that is necessarily bad but given that we are trying to mimic a cats natural prey diet as closely as we can and given that their prey would have a much higher percentage of muscle other than heart I'm not sure products with more heart than other muscle meat fits the bill very well.

That Columbia River product ingredient list says it contains: chicken backs, necks, wings, heart and liver. Since the ingredients have to be listed in descending weight order we know the bulk of it is the back, necks and wings. To illustrate the problem with the high bone content of those ingredients, lets assume the backs, necks and wings are present in equal quantity. Ignoring the heart and liver for the moment and looking at this chart:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/263570/composition-of-proteins-bone-skin-fat

we know that a mixture of equal amounts of back, wings and necks would have a bone content of 39.3%, skin and fat content of 29.3% and a meat content of 31.3%. Most raw feeders find that they can only feed a maximum of 15% bone without risking their cats getting constipated. To cut that 39.3% bone with enough meat to get the percentage down to 15 would require adding 2.3 lbs of meat and/or organs for every 1 lbs of back,necks and wings. Given that he Columbia River product ingredient list indicates that the heart and liver is present in amounts less than the backs, necks and wings I don't think it is possible for the bone content of the product to be anything close to 15%.

But we don't have any way of knowing what the bone content actually is. If we did we could calculate how much meat to add to get the bone content down to what we want it to be. Personally I wouldn't use a product that didn't provide either the bone content or the calcium & phosphorus content which is an indication of the bone content. 

 

[aprilprey]

  I can get some chicken w/o bones in the supermarket to dilute the chubs, if needed.
deb (and off to bed

) 

I made a Dr P rabbit batch with a rabbit that weighed a little more than the recipe called for - I am diluting that with a few small chunks of gizzards each serving.  The bonus here is that gizzards are chewy and give the cat a nice "chew experience", are really cheap, and come almost chopped up for you...I just cut them a bit smaller with some shears.

ETA: Deb, I have stressed over the bone/constipation issue plenty.  FWIW - so far, my one cat Dexter that eats raw all the time hasn't come close to constipation.  And I am using Dr. Pierson's recipe, and we do the best we can following her directions.  But I don't know precisely how much calcium from bone there is in the resulting food due to a lack of precise information about the calcium content in the typical grocery store chicken.

 

[peaches08]

I made a Dr P rabbit batch with a rabbit that weighed a little more than the recipe called for - I am diluting that with a few small chunks of gizzards each serving.  The bonus here is that gizzards are chewy and give the cat a nice "chew experience", are really cheap, and come almost chopped up for you...I just cut them a bit smaller with some shears.

ETA: Deb, I have stressed over the bone/constipation issue plenty.  FWIW - so far, my one cat Dexter that eats raw all the time hasn't come close to constipation.  And I am using Dr. Pierson's recipe, and we do the best we can following her directions.  But I don't know precisely how much calcium from bone there is in the resulting food due to a lack of precise information about the calcium content in the typical grocery store chicken.

Somewhere in a thread I asked mschauer about protein/bone/fat percentages, but I'll be darned if I know where it is.

ETA, mschauer included the link in her post in this thread! LOL!

 

[ldg]

Aprilprey, you're not using chicken backs, wings, and necks though. You're following her recipe, using the suggested amount of meat to bone (as closely as possible).

To bring that chicken mix down to a similar level, mschauer did the math for Deb, and she needs to add AT LEAST 2.3 pounds of meat.

Deb, for your organ mix, what was the weight of the liver container, and what was the weight of the gizzards & hearts?

Too much liver isn't going to hurt your cats for a week of meals, but liver is very high in vitamin A, which is not water soluble, it gets stored in body fat, so it can build up to toxic levels.

For 3 pounds total of food (48 ounces), there should be 5% to 10% liver. That means that there should be a total amount of 2.5 OUNCES to 5 ounces of liver. Total. In 3 pounds of food.

Now, for that 2 pound chub, mschauer did the math, and going forward you would need to add 2.5 (and maybe up to 3) pounds of meat to it to bring the bone content down to a point it won't cause constipation. So given that the total amount of food would be 5.5 pounds (88 ounces), that means that of the meat and organ you add to the chub you buy, 4.5 ounces - and up to 9 ounces - can be liver.

...though, of course, it is best to contact the people who make the chubs, and find out how much heart and liver is added. That will help us target more accurate figures. And if they have more detailed information about what percentage is backs vs wings vs necks, that would help too.

 

[mschauer]

Aprilprey, you're not using chicken backs, wings, and necks though. You're following her recipe, using the suggested amount of meat to bone (as closely as possible).
 

 To begin with Dr. P's recipe uses chicken thighs which are only 15% bone and even at that she discards some of it. That's quite a bit different from using things like backs, necks and wings which are all at least 36% bone and not discarding any of it.

 To bring that chicken mix down to a similar level, mschauer did the math for Deb, and she needs to add AT LEAST 2.3 pounds of meat.

I think I didn't made myself clear. That 2.3 lbs would be how much meat would be needed if *only* backs, necks and wings were used. The Columbia River product also has heart and liver which will dilute the bone and make less added meat necessary. But we don't know how much liver and heart there is so we can't know how much added meat is needed.

 

[ldg]

Thanks for clarifying. And thanks for doing the math. :lol3:

One last thought here, until Deb can get whatever information is possible TO get from the manufacturer, the calculation you made for how much meat to add was an amount that would (if the chub had no heart or liver added) bring the bone content down to approximately 15%. ...which is still high for many kitties. In fact, most raw feeders find that 7% - 8% (usually somewhere between 6% and 10%) of fresh bone is needed. So that amount of meat (& small part of that being organ) to add is still likely a good approximation, unless the chub has some unexpectedly high heart and liver content - which is unlikely.

All of that said, we really need more information from the manufacturer. It's all just guesswork without proper inputs until then.

 

[deb richard]

Thanks for clarifying. And thanks for doing the math.

One last thought here, until Deb can get whatever information is possible TO get from the manufacturer, the calculation you made for how much meat to add was an amount that would (if the chub had no heart or liver added) bring the bone content down to approximately 15%. ...which is still high for many kitties. In fact, most raw feeders find that 7% - 8% (usually somewhere between 6% and 10%) of fresh bone is needed. So that amount of meat (& small part of that being organ) to add is still likely a good approximation, unless the chub has some unexpectedly high heart and liver content - which is unlikely.

All of that said, we really need more information from the manufacturer. It's all just guesswork without proper inputs until then.

I was gone for the the weekend so just now getting caught up reading.  I have to run off soon.  but just a couple of things.... the chub I purchases had no liver or heart in it.  and Kiki is leaving some of the bone chunks behind.  She eats some of them, but not all.  

I am sorry someone (probably more) think I am being irresponsible.  I am doing the best I can.  I will try to get more info from the manufacturer. 

thanks again for the information. 

deb

 

[peaches08]

I don't think that you're being irresponsible. You are searching for information so I'd say you're being responsible! Let us know what you find out and we'll do our best to help you.

 

[mschauer]

 

No one has suggested that you are being irresponsible. We are just trying to help you understand what you need to know in order to use the products you say you want to use. My understanding from your first post is that it was that kind of information you were looking for.

I don't see a product on the Columbia River web site that has only chicken and bone. Are you referring to a product from someplace else.??