Anyone try EZComplete Fur Cats raw food additive

[merlinmarshall]

Hi all,

I saw a Facebook post about this stuff. Apparently all you need supply is the raw meat and you mix a measured amount of this additive in with the meat. It is low phosphorous, so can be used with kidney disease.

I know nothing about raw - most of the commercial stuff has fruit and veggie additives.

Merlin

 

[merlinmarshall]

Nobody who feeds raw here uses this?

 

[Jessica & Conan]

I feed homemade raw, and I have done a huge amount of research on it, but I use Alnutrin supplements and am not familiar with EZComplete. I've taken a quick look. It includes liver and pancreas and a calcium additive and so clearly is made to be used with muscle meat only (presumably it is designed to take care of the 10% organ and 10% bone; you supply the 80% muscle meat). However, it doesn't specify the type of meat, so I'm not sure how they can know they have the Ca: Ph ratio correct - probably they assume you'll use chicken or turkey for a cat and it will be close enough. Overall the ingredients seem sound, and it contains nothing I'd object to for a cat, unlike some of the raw-food supplements I've seen. But that's just a rough first impression, not personal experience. You might try asking in the raw feeding forum on The Cat Site:
http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-home-cooked-cat-food

 

[merlinmarshall]

Thank you! Yes from what I have read on the website, you use muscle meat, but are supposed to rotate meat sources.

 

[Jessica & Conan]

Hmm. Different meat sources do have different amounts of phosphorus, so I'm not sure how you could always use the same amount of supplement (i.e., the same amount of calcium) for every type of meat and be sure you were ending up with your Ca: Ph ratio in the right range. Because of this, for example, Alnutrin has a "nutrient calculator" on its site so you can figure out how much of their supplement with calcium to add depending on the kind of meat you're using. (I've actually wrote my own "nutrient calculator" program for this purpose). [Just FYI, unlike EZComplete, Alnutein's supplement is for use with muscle meat and organs, which means at least liver; they also have one without calcium added, for use with meat, organ, and bone.] Also, if I read correctly the EZComplete people say it can be used with raw or cooked meat - but cooking can affect the phosphorus content significantly, further complicating the ratio. It's really not so simple to ensure a homemade diet is nutritionally sound (tons of information and advice to be found on the forum I cited above - takes some work to sort through and make sense of though).

Again, I only took a brief glance, but if it were me using it, I'd definitely have questions for the manufacturers and would be inclined to be cautious if they weren't very well informed about all these things and able to answer this type of question thoroughly. Then again, as long as you know what you're doing, all you really need from them is the complete nutritional profile of the product (which, as I said, seems on the surface to be good, I like the composition) and you could work it all out yourself, but it's a lot of work.

Sorry I can't be more helpful!

 

[merlinmarshall]

Thank you!

I know very little about raw diets, but I do know that you must be careful to include all the essential nutrients. I've fed my guys some commercial raw with mixed results (some like it, some won't touch it). I'm not sure I want to make my own raw, but I could just cut up muscle meat and add a supplement, if that would make a balanced died, hence my question.

 

[Jessica & Conan]

In my own personal view it is not as easy as that, though I know some say it is, and if you are going to feed only homemade raw as the sole diet you have to be willing to get more deeply involved in understanding the nutritional needs of the cat and the nutritional composition of the diet and ensuring the needs are met. Not that it has to be perfect - but there are a lot of elements, and it's possible to do a lot of damage if you don't understand what the cat needs and know that he's getting it. I do not believe you can ever be sure your cats are getting their needs met just by adding a supplement to any sort of muscle meat, without that deeper understanding (as opposed to, say, feeding them whole mice - I'd be more comfortable with that!). That is why I am not a proselytizer for feeding raw - I think it is much more work than is usually acknowledged, it's not easy to know if you're making mistakes, and in my view a cat is better off with a good commercial diet than an inadequate homemade one.

But that is my own view, and others might have a different opinion or think I am being too fussy or demanding. Also, it assumes that the raw food is the cat's only source of food. There's a lot more leeway if it's supplemental or in addition to a commercial canned diet.

 

[Laurie G]

Nobody who feeds raw here uses this?

Hi Merlin! I'm one of the co-founders of the company. You posted this question two days after we announced the existence of the company (Food Fur Life) and our first product (EZcomplete fur Cats). We'd shipped our first orders, but people hadn't received them yet! It's been about two weeks now, and the first reports are coming back. You can see for yourself how things are going on our Facebook page, that we finally got up.

I'll address Jessica's comments and thoughts.

 

[Laurie G]

I feed homemade raw, and I have done a huge amount of research on it, but I use Alnutrin supplements and am not familiar with EZComplete. I've taken a quick look. It includes liver and pancreas and a calcium additive and so clearly is made to be used with muscle meat only (presumably it is designed to take care of the 10% organ and 10% bone; you supply the 80% muscle meat). However, it doesn't specify the type of meat, so I'm not sure how they can know they have the Ca: Ph ratio correct - probably they assume you'll use chicken or turkey for a cat and it will be close enough.

No, no assumptions are made. Actually, the amount of phosphorus in meats doesn't vary enough to need to pinpoint the amount of calcium used to balance foods. As you've pointed out, the prey model raw diet is 80% meat, 5% liver, 5% other secreting organ, and 10% bone. Well - that's for dogs. Cats usually need less bone (dogs have a higher calcium requirement), and PMR for cats is usually 82% - 83% meat and 7-8% bone. Plenty do fine on 10%, but many develop constipation at that level. The amount of bone doesn't vary dependent on which meat is being fed. When using an appropriate amount of fresh bone alternative, in this case eggshell, there's no need to use an exact amount depending on which meat is used. Yes, Alnutrin has a calculator on the site so you can do that if you want to, but the instructions on the bag are to use the measuring scoop that comes with it. There isn't a different scoop for each protein.

When I first transitioned to raw, I quickly learned that my cats preferred eating chunks. Yet many were seniors when we transitioned, and they weren't chomping bone (some still don't). So I needed an alternative. What I learned is published in an article on whole bone alternatives in the raw diet, hosted on Catcentric, here: http://catcentric.org/nutrition-and...n-and-how-to-use-them-in-a-raw-fed-cats-diet/

As you can see from the tables in that article, when balancing the phosphorus in muscle meats, the amount of calcium needed isn't sufficiently different to need to fine tune how much eggshell (or any whole bone alternative) is used. With 1/2 teaspoon of eggshell per pound, the calcium: phosphorus ratio will almost always fall within the AAFCO defined 1.0:1 to 1.5:1 ratio. Of course, cats actually do best at 1.3:1 to 1.0:1, anything higher tends to be a bit much calcium for them. But actually, as with any diet, especially raw or cooked, we encourage people to use both a variety of proteins and cuts of those proteins - ensuring that one isn't using just one meat that will result in a higher or lower Ca: P atio.

In fact, we have analyses up on the site: with the turkey breast we sent to the lab ( turkey breast + EZcomplete) and the Ca: P ratio is 1.3:1. If one has turkey breast, chicken thigh, and pork loin in rotation, the Ca: P will be 1.2:1. If one has rabbit, venison, and pork in rotation, the Ca: P will be 1.2:1. We didn't publish all possible meats and diet possibilities, but chicken, depending on cut, is 1.2:1 or 1.3:1; beef is 1.3:1, turkey thigh is 1.4:1, breast is 1.2:1 - so as you can see, with a healthy rotation, it will average out to 1.2:1 or 1.3:1. But you can take a look at the tables in the article linked to above. And please don't feed only gizzards.

Oh - edited to add the link to the analyses, hosted on our website: http://www.foodfurlife.com/ezcomplete-fur-cats---chicken-liver---analysis.html

Overall the ingredients seem sound, and it contains nothing I'd object to for a cat, unlike some of the raw-food supplements I've seen. But that's just a rough first impression, not personal experience. You might try asking in the raw feeding forum on The Cat Site:
http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-home-cooked-cat-food

Interestingly, I learned about raw feeding on forums of TheCatsite, and how to use eggshell in a modified prey model raw diet is information that evolved in discussions on TheCatSite! I joined in 2002 when it was less than a year old and have over 40,000 posts there. I am user LDG. I actually created their raw AND cooked feeding resource posts (sticked at the top of the forum - you can only see them if you're on a laptop/desktop, or in desktop mode on your mobile), and wrote many of their nutrition articles and the entire series on raw feeding, hosted in the Healthcare section within Articles, along the top tabs. So yes, I'd have to agree, the forums of TheCatSite is a great resource.

 

[Laurie G]

....Also, if I read correctly the EZComplete people say it can be used with raw or cooked meat - but cooking can affect the phosphorus content significantly, further complicating the ratio...

I'm not sure where this information comes from, but cooking at home temps does not alter the mineral content of food. Those temps do not affect calcium or phosphorus or copper - they don't evaporate or cook off and are not damaged by cooking at temps we can achieve on a stove or in an oven. If you are relying on the USDA database information, please bear in mind that that database is meant for analyzing what humans eat - and they assume that if meat is boiled or poached, we do not drink that water. They assume that if meat is baked or fried, we do not eat the grease that bakes off or is left in the pan. The exception would be the pan scrapings used for gravy, but that would have its own nutritional profile to reflect the added ingredients to make it.

No, the amount of a mineral in a raw meat is the amount of mineral that is in the cooked version - IF - IF all the water or pan juices are used / recovered. That's why it's plastered all over the instructions on the website that if you cook, you MUST include the water or pan scrapings. Valuable nutrients are in those: water soluble vitamins, minerals, etc.

In fact, when those things that leech out during cooking are included back in, there's very little actual damage to the nutrients in meat. Yes, amino acids, B vitamins experience some damage - thiamine is the most affected. But as those are water soluble, we address the cooked meat being complete and balanced without harm to any animal eating raw. We also include digestive enzymes in the supplement - this benefits both, but replaces the enzymes destroyed in the meat by cooking, as that is really the most dramatic loss, and also in my opinion, likely the biggest long term problem for cats eating cooked food. It may explain why 67% of cats upon necropsy examination have enlarged - inflamed - pancreases.

 

[Laurie G]

In my own personal view it is not as easy as that....

Actually, feeding a fresh, minimally processed diet based on the prey model is far more forgiving than trying to provide a cat a nutritious diet via kibble or canned. Sure, an entirely homemade, fresh food is best, of course! But just like many use Alnutrin exclusively, we simply provide the liver in freeze dried form. As I'm sure you're aware, (with all the commercial freeze dried foods available) freeze drying retains the nutrients virtually intact - the enzymes, too. In fact, we also provide a second secreting organ (pancreas), digestive enzymes, and an omega 3 with additional health and nutrition benefits via the green-lipped mussel. We simply make it easier and simpler to provide a homemade food. If a cat needs fiber, that does have to be added. And we recommend including a probiotic, as that is one of the primary immune system nutrients missing from ANY diet, other than a whole prey diet.