Help Requested with Possibly Changing Food Advice

Mochi234

Mochi234

New Member
Hi,

I would love some input into possibly changing food. I have been feeding both cats a raw diet for the past 1.5 years. Both have done well on the diet, their weight is healthy, and most importantly the cat with diabetes is in remission at this time. His BG levels are excellent and the vet is happy!

I live in the US and seeing more and more about bird flu every day. I believe I need to change the diet again to a wet can, but am unsure. I have not heard of cooking chicken to feed cats, I know we can do this for dogs, but is this something feasible for cats? And if so how would one go about it? Current feeding is done using ez complete for their nutrition supplements to add to the raw.

Unfortunately they are quite picky when it has come to raw meat and will only eat chicken. I have attempted turkey, duck, and pork. They have refused even putting fortiflora on it. Nowhere near me has rabbit, and I don't want to spend money on trying to source only for them to not eat it as I am a picky human and would not eat rabbit either.

My last concern is with cans, it seems the website I was using to help calculate the carb percentage has disappeared off the internet. If anyone knows how to calculate or a different website I can use that would be great. Any recommends for cans that are less than 5% carb content great as well. My cat with the diabetes seems to do ok around the 3% carb content when I have to go out of town & bringing raw with us is not very feasible. The only flavor they seem to sincerely hate in can form is beef, otherwise they will eat anything in a can.

Any advise on the above concerns is greatly appreciated!
 
As far as I know, the concerns about bird flu in raw pet food only concerns chicken and poultry based raw foods. I feed a freeze dried raw food in rabbit and am not concerned about bird flu.

Maybe give commercial freeze dried raw food or even just freeze dried treats in a non-chicken protein a try to see if your cats will eat it? Sometimes the freeze dried form is more appealing to cats than the raw meat. Bonus: freeze dried raw is shelf stable and can be fed straight out of the bag so easy for travelling.

Have you tried lamb?

Hare-Today.com sells raw meat for pet food use. They have a lot of different proteins. The only drawback is the minimum order of 10 lbs. See if your local independent pet store sells 2 lb rolls of raw meat for pet food use. Blue Ridge is one brand I see at my local pet store. A local butcher shop is another option to get rabbit and other meats from.

EZComplete can be used with cooked meat of any kind. Just cook the meat (boiled in water, roasted, etc), let cool and shred / chunk, add in the pre-mix and some water per the instructions. @Staci & Ivy cooks meat and adds in supplements.

Most people use this chart for canned food: https://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf
 
Hi!

thank you so much for all your advice! The texture of freeze dried being preferable to some raw I think make sense. As I do have freeze dried treats I feed them and they’re perfectly ok with rabbit bites and duck liver in freeze dried form. Though beef freeze dried is still a no for them.

Do you have a brand of freeze dried food you buy in particular? I’ve only ever seen treats in 1oz bags. The cats need about 7oz of chicken a day to maintain weight or they start losing weight when they’re already quite slim. They’re pretty active, so I am concerned about volume as well in regards to food.

I have not tried lamb as we don’t seem to get it here. We only have ground lamb in some stores such as Harris teeters. I know our local butchers surprisingly do not do lamb or rabbit. Sometimes they do duck and turkey which is where I got our cuts from. They also do bison & venison, but I’m not sure if those are fine for cats? Unfortunately we seem to be lacking in local pet stores too. The local ones are aquarium & bird specific stores.

I am glad to know I can boil the chicken for them and I will see if I can source Blue Ridge from somewhere as well! Thank you again for all your advice. This helps put me more at ease.
 
Any novel protein is fine for cats: bison, vension, lamb, kangaroo, etc. Hare-Today even has cavy (aka guinea pig) :eek:

A good independent butcher shop should be able to order any kind of meat you want. There may be a minimum quantity amount you would have to order.

I've fed different brands of freeze dried raw: Nature's Variety Instinct, Primal Pet, The New Zealand Pet Food Company, Stella and Chewy's, Vital Essentials. Some of these are also available as frozen. The freeze dried raw meals are usually in a 8 or 9 oz -ish size bag. The shape of the food varies from little kibble-shaped nuggets to a rectangular block to a square patty. I currently feed Vital Essentials which comes in square patties. I break up one patty into small pieces/powder, rehydrate in water, and feed as one meal. My diabetic alslo has IBD and food allergies so the only thing he can eat is rabbit. Before his health issues he ate everything although he didn't seem to like quail very much.

Oma's Pride is another brand that I've seen at the pet store. They have complete meals as well as plain raw meat meant to use as part of a homemade recipe.

I have a sample of a raw turkey cat food in my freezer. I can't recall the name right now but I'll look later.

There are subscription services for raw pet food that have non-poultry options. As you can imagine, it's pricey.

Boiled chicken is great as treats too :) Lots of people poach up a skinless chicken breast in water, shred the meat up, and freeze most of it to use as treats.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top