? Homemade Food

[Sisu]

Hello everyone hope you are doing well.

I wanted some insight from people who make their own homemade food, I have been doing a lot of reading but have some questions still unanswered from the web.

The cat food Mumu is on is just too expensive to keep buying I have spent a small fortune, it is Tiki Cat Food chicken. I have looked for other alternatives and have not found anything that is as good for a price reduction, so I thought to maybe try homemade.

My questions are for the people who do homemade diets, should I use raw or cooked? I have read that bacteria, parasites, etc can obviously be detrimental. Is this common or very rare? I am thinking of using chicken as he is on that now.

https://mycatfoodstore.com/TCfeline-%E2%80%93-ORIGINAL-720-g--makes-180-days-of-food_p_37.html

The link above is the nutrient product I would be using.

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated, even to alternative wet cat food brands. I am not set in stone on anything I just would like to have a more affordable option for keeping my boy healthy.

Thank you for reading and take care.

 

[Veronica & Babu-chiri]

I've been giving my cats homemade food for a while now, and it has been great for all of them, I use Dr. Lisa's recipe so it's all from scratch I'm not using a nutrient quite frankly Dr. Lisa's recipe is quite amazing as it is and none of the nutrient products manufacturers would ship to where I live so that's not an alternative but if you can get some I guess is just ok and it is really a lot cheaper to home cook than comercial food but it does require some dedication since it is a bit time consuming.

Given the fact that to actually use raw you do need to be very sure it is really really fresh (which I'm sure I can't get where I live) , otherwise you do have a risk of some nasty bacteria etc. developing, I kind of went mid way, that is I do cook the chicken but I do not get it totally cooked more like medium rare sort of speak, that way with the little cooking it gets I make sure all the bacteria etc gets killed and they still get the benefit of a bit of rare meat.

What I do is put the chicken in the oven at 356 °F (180°C) covered until about 20%- 50% of the outside of the chicken is cooked (between 15-20 minutes for chicken thighs which is what I use) You could cook them more thoroughly if you want but I think with this you can feel safe to give Mumu the meat ( keep whatever juices the chicken leaves and add it to the food more liquid especially one with nutrients is always good)

Here's the link to Dr. Lisa's recipe and a lot of tips, suggestions and information she has regarding home cooking cat food
https://catinfo.org/making-cat-food/

 

[Sisu]

@Veronica & Babu-chiri

Thank you so much! I didn't see this link I had found a different one so I appreciate it.

I am still a bit nervous to try, i think i will order once more batch of the tiki cat to give me more time to research.

Have you encountered any problems in the process or has it been fairly easy going?

 

[Veronica & Babu-chiri]

Actually is quite simple to do, really it is just time consuming, of course I'm making big batches since I'm feeding 3 cats and make enough to last about 3 weeks so everything is a lot, but actually is not difficult to make. Without doing anything to the thighs I place them in the oven resistant pan I cover it so that I can preserve the juices better put them in the oven, mean while I mix all the supplements ( which you won't need to do since you will be using a premixed product) when they are ready I take them out let them cool and debone them, I have to debone since I'm making a low phosphorus diet and that means no bone, then I put them in a meat grinder.

Although I do recommend you consider buying an electric meat grinder, I may seem pricey but it is a one time investment I bought one 5 years ago, not even a fancy one, and it made all the difference in the world, first times I prepared the food I used a food processor or manual small meat grinder but it's not the same, with the electric one I just throw everything in to the meat grinder and in less than 15 minutes I'm ready to start filling the containers that I freeze and so that I just take the one I will be consuming out.

I started doing my own food because there were not low carb low phosphorus options where I live and that's what Babu needed as a diabetic with CKD but I has been the best decision I could have made for Babu and for the other cats too I do believe this diet has been one of the main factors that has allowed them to be ok as long has they have (Babu is 20 already and one of my civies is 17 spite having had CKD for over 10 years now)

 

[Bron and Sheba (GA)]

I feed my cats a homemade raw diet and have done since they were kittens. They are now nearly 7 years old.
I buy human grade meat from the supermarket or butcher that is well in date. I cut it into portions and freeze it that day. With raw food you need to freeze it for 3 days before using and for game meat such as kangaroo you need to freeze for 3 weeks before using.
The hardest part is in the beginning deciding what to do and making sure you are happy with what you have decided to do and that it is a nutritionally complete diet. Once you have made the decision, it is straight forward.
I live in Australia and find it is much cheaper for me to feed a homemade raw diet to my cats than feed a canned diet.

 

[Lisa and Witn (GA)]

I make Simon's food because he has IBD. Right now I can't afford to feed all 6 of my cats homemade food. I do cook the meat in an instant pot and then add in the supplements. If you decide to cook the meat do not add the supplements before cooking or you will lose a l lot of the nutrients. If I am using meat with no organs or bones I use TCFeline mix https://www.thetotalcat.com/index.php. If I use a blend of meat that already bones and organs the I use Alnutrin https://www.knowwhatyoufeed.com/eshop/product/alnutrin-for-meat-and-bone-regular/. There is also a lot of good info on the Raw Feeding for IBD Cats Facebook group about making your own food

 

[Larry and Kitties]

I would first try a commercial raw food similar of what you want to feed to see if your cat will eat it. Years ago I was considering feed raw and I tried a couple of commercial diets and none of my cats would eat it. My dog liked it though.

 

[Lisa and Witn (GA)]

I would first try a commercial raw food similar of what you want to feed to see if your cat will eat it. Years ago I was considering feed raw and I tried a couple of commercial diets and none of my cats would eat it. My dog liked it though.

I am lucky that I have a raw pet food store near me. I tried making Simon's food with their house blend of beef, turkey and chicken. He doesn't like it. Fortunately my other pets do so it is not going to waste.

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

I use a pre-mix -- I used to use TCFeline and switched to EZComplete (from FoodFurLife) when there was a problem getting TCFeline shipped to the US after they lost their supplier here. I make a batch of food using ground meat I get at the supermarket and freeze the food in ice cube trays. I defrost a day's worth of food every evening. I've never had a problem with bacteria. When I first started using a raw diet, I did try a commercially prepared raw diet. This is going back quite a few years -- there were problems with many of the purveyors having problems with bacteria contaminating their processing plants. I had much greater control if I ground the meat myself. In recent. years, there's been an upswing of what I can purchase at the grocery store. One of my cat's has IBD and I need novel proteins for his diet. Pre-IBD, grinding my own chicken was easy. Now I'm using ground pork, venison, or bison.