Feeding homemade?

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Rescuemamaprays

Member Since 2016
Is anyone feeding homemade? In the long run is it cheaper than fancy feast classics? Chopper is eating so much and now that he doesn't eat Meow Mix anymore (both cats are now eating FF), it has gotten so expensive. Chopper is downing about 6 cans of FF a day and my other kitty only eats about 2-3 maybe.
 
Is anyone feeding homemade? In the long run is it cheaper than fancy feast classics? Chopper is eating so much and now that he doesn't eat Meow Mix anymore (both cats are now eating FF), it has gotten so expensive. Chopper is downing about 6 cans of FF a day and my other kitty only eats about 2-3 maybe.

I've fed a homemade raw diet to my diabetic boy (before he was diabetic) for the last 4 yrs and the apx 20$ amount of supplies I get will feed him for roughly 22 days. He eats 2x's a day and I mix in a little Friskies canned to his raw....and he eats a lrg amount of food at meals. I never measured the amt but I'd say its close to 2 cans of FF per meal.
Some cats take right off the bat to eating raw, some don't. Adding a little bit at every meal then increasing the amt will help transition it over.
If you like I can tell you exactly what to do but you'll need a decent grinder to grind the chicken, (bones and all.) I have a grinder from national tool and its under 100$ but has been working great for me.

mike
 
Thanks for the reply Mike. The thought of grinding a whole bird nauseates me. :-( I'm vegetarian. And raw chicken just really freaks me out. When I prepare it, I have to get boneless, skinless already sliced in to strips. Lol. Maybe homemade/ raw isn't for me after all. I didn't realize it would involve putting an entire bird in to a grinder.
 
Is anyone feeding homemade? In the long run is it cheaper than fancy feast classics? Chopper is eating so much and now that he doesn't eat Meow Mix anymore (both cats are now eating FF), it has gotten so expensive. Chopper is downing about 6 cans of FF a day and my other kitty only eats about 2-3 maybe.
6 cans a day sounds a little much to me. Have you tried breaking up feedings through out the day ?
 
You could try feeding Friskies, it's much cheaper and the ingredient lists look pretty similar. There's also a pretty good selection of the low carb varieties.
 
Hi,
I feed Sheba a raw/home prepared diet and have done so for about 2 years. She is a diabetic and also has early kidney disease.
I think feeding raw diet is cheaper than buying canned food. I do not have a grinder and I do not use bones for the calcium. I cut up the food by hand and leave some of the pieces larger so Sheba has to chew the food.....very good for the teeth.
You can buy supplements online that provide the calcium, taurine and vitamins etc which need to be added to the food to make to a complete meal. It is a commitment to do home prepared but takes no longer than going to the shops and buying the canned food all the time. There is no way I would ever feed any of my cats anything but homemade now.

Here is a link to another post that I answered the other day and it gives information about the food and the supplements and where to buy it. It is towards the end of the post.
If you have any questions just tag me.
Bron
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/rebecca-diagnosed-diabetes-yesterday.154931/
 
Thanks for the reply Mike. The thought of grinding a whole bird nauseates me. :-( I'm vegetarian. And raw chicken just really freaks me out. When I prepare it, I have to get boneless, skinless already sliced in to strips. Lol. Maybe homemade/ raw isn't for me after all. I didn't realize it would involve putting an entire bird in to a grinder.

Actually its chicken quarters that gets ground not a whole chix (I didn't mean to gross you out, sorry) but there's a couple other ingredients (internal organs)that supplies the Taurine and other vitamins but it all ends up in a hamburg kind of texture...no problem I understand.
I been using this recipe for a long time and have had great results especially if some vet says your cat has IBD with bad diarrhea and no one can find a solution...I've found a raw diet fixes it. There's too many additives in commercial foods and cats can get allergic to them...even specialty vet sold food....too many grains or fillers of some sort. Cats are obligate carnivores.
 
Great information! I do split up Chopper's meals. Now that I understand why he cries for food and vomits if he doesn't eat every couple of hours there is no way I can reduce his intake or let him be hungry so I'm forced to feed him. I'll try friskies.... He acts like I'm feeding him antifreeze if I dare offer 9lives pate. I was tempted to give them the old bag of meow mix yesterday. I was desperate and he doesn't stop eating.
 
If you check the ingredients of most dry food its really all a grain filler that they use. The commercial dry is sprayed with an enzyme that make it taste good...hence why a lot of people refer to it as kitty crack. Even some so called all natural dry food has peas or rice or potatoes or carrots....a cat won't eat any of those in the wild...they say its corn free...ya but they substitute it with other fillers so be careful.
You can buy pre made raw diets but the reason I don't is because there's been recalls on some for e coli and I think it has to do with the food partially thawing then refreezing several times.
When I make mine I do it all at once then spoon out a daily amount (2 meals) in a baggie then freeze it taking out a baggie the day before I need it and when I go to spoon out a meal, if its not completely thawed I nuke it for a few seconds.
I'm assuming your kitty is diabetic? My diabetic boy can be super hungry sometimes and I believe (I'm not an expert on diabetes that's why I joined) but that's a side effect of being diabetic and they can eat lots of food but never gain weight. Luckily my boy is holding steady right now but he did lose some in the beginning. He was eating some Royal Canin dry that cost over 100$ per bag but I stopped that when I found he was diabetic so all he eats now is a pretty large amount of the raw diet plus a big tspn of friskies canned mixed in. Absolutely no carbs now...the friskies was all he would eat when he first got sick and I didn't know what was going on.
Being new to this disease I'm having a hard time figuring out his readings and wondering if this meter I got is showing false high's so I ordered an Alpha Trak meter that my vets use. I just don't want him to get too low because I live alone and I can't monitor him all day so that scares the heck out of me.

Your boy looks much like one I have here named Sampson. A black LH with a small wht spot on his chest. His white upper canines stick out like a vampires :) He was another rescue from my TNR station.
 
My diabetic boy can be super hungry sometimes and I believe (I'm not an expert on diabetes that's why I joined) but that's a side effect of being diabetic and they can eat lots of food but never gain weight.
The ravening appetite is known as polyphagia.

Insulin works to 'open the door' in cell walls to allow glucose to enter the cells in order to provide energy for normal metabolism. Even if an unregulated diabetic cat were to eat everything around them it would not get the proper benefit from the nutrients it is consuming when there's not enough insulin. In essence, at a cellular level their little bodies are starving. The body will then start breaking down fats, etc. to use for energy - hence the weight loss that is a hallmark symptom of untreated diabetes.


Mogs
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Yes I've read about that and when Sparky was first diagnosed he did lose 4 lbs but has been stable the last 2 months so his insulin level must be close. In his defense he always had a decent appetite but the weight loss was a definite wake up....well that and because he was lethargic, wouldn't eat and just layed there one morning. That's the day he was diagnosed. His BG was extremely high.
This morn I just got an email that my Alpha Trak meter was shipped and will get it Fri so Sat I will be doing a full curve all day and see what these readings compare to my Ipet meter.
 
I'm very glad to hear that Sparky's weight has stabilised now, Mike. :) I must say that Sparky is one extremely handsome and elegant cat. How tall is he?

I hope you'll post an update of how you get on with the Alphatrak compared to the iPet meter. It would be really, really useful to learn about the differences.


Mogs
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Sparky thanks you for the compliment :) Standing up on all 4's like he's walking, he's roughly 16in to the top of his shoulders, kinda hard to get him to stand still for an exact measurement. Lengthwise he apx 19in from head to butt not counting his tail. He's at 16.5lbs and holding. He's not overweight at all and can probably use a few more lbs.
Chausie's are a very close bonding cat that has to know what you are doing at all times and needs to be there observing it too. They do not do well being alone and need company. Pretty vocal and have their own distinct noises but I absolutely fell in love with them. I have 2 rescues, him and Chandler who was a mix breed Chausie that came from San Francisco a week apart from each other.
Sparky is an early generation boy an F2 which means one of his grandparents was a Jungle Cat but you'd never know it by his personality but his looks show it. Think of an Abyssinian cat on steroids...he's my mini Cougar.
I got him into my rescue 4yrs next month from a dentist in NC who said Sparky would jump his 6ft fence and beat up his neighbors cat daily. I was prepped for the worse but Sparky's nature couldn't be anything but the complete opposite plus the owner had him front declawed when he was a kitten.
He has such a wonderful personality I simply could not believe what his former owner told me plus I think I found the real answer when I took possession of Sparky. He had real bad diarrhea and was malnourished but after talking to the old owner he confessed he couldn't do anything about it...Sparky's sister was still there last I knew and doing ok but I treated Sparky for a UTI and put him on my home made raw diet and he's been great till July 2014 when he had his first case of neuropathy in his back legs which was very devastating for both of us. I had to carry him to the litterbox to use it cause he just tried crawling. I took him to 3 different vets and after spending thousands and even trying acupuncture, none of them could find an answer but to put him on prednisolone so he's been on a 5mg dose almost daily since then but still had an neuropathy episode atleast 3 times a yr till last Dec when he was finally diagnosed with diabetes. I think this may have been the underlying problem all along but who knows. The pred can cause diabetes too and that's the answer I got from the vets. I put him on methylcobalamin just before he was diagnosed and hasn't had a neuropathy episode since and has been off the pred too so...knock on wood something is working.
He never did get his full jumping strength back though cause he used to jump from the floor to my shoulders but now the highest he will go is a chair. Gotta be some nerve damage in there somewhere.

I will post an update to you when I get this Alpha Trak...I'm also anxious to see the results. The only semi normal reading I got from the I Pet was the very first reading that was 266 at 6pm just before feeding and his shot but after that it never went below the low 300's even after passing several control tests....if the new readings are close to the old then its back to square one and I may need to try a different insulin.
 
Thank you for telling us more about Sparky: he sounds like one fine figure of a cat, and an absolute darling to boot! :) I'm sorry to hear he was declawed and that he has had such problems with neuropathy. :( I'm glad the methyl B12 has helped him.


Mogs
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