Raw food diet questions

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Taintedhalo

Taintedhalo

Member Since 2013
I am thinking of switching the kiddos to homemade raw food diet and have read all the info on catinfo.org a grinder that can handle bones is sadly not in the budget so I will have to use bone meal. I am thinking of using TCFeline's premix where you add the fresh liver. I want to make sure I am doing this right so I am asking for advice from people who are more experienced than me at this kind of stuff. As I understand it with this I only need to grind the meat then add water, egg yolk and mix then its done right? I can't afford to order meat from online sources would it be ok to buy the meat from the grocery store? I was thinking chicken thighs, turkey, beef and occasionally they have duck here. So what parts of the turkey and are any beef cuts better than others? Are chicken drumsticks a bad idea? I have read that her insulin usage might be lowered too is that right? Anything I forgot to ask???? As you can see I am confused a bit but figure if I can learn to bake and make candy I can learn this too. Thanks in advance!
 
Once it is ground at the store, there is increased surface area on which to grow bacteria. The longer it sits, the more that can grow.

That's part of the reason instructions are to freeze immediately after making a batch or to keep it in the frig for a limited amount of time.
 
I can get a hand crank grinder really cheap and grind at home but those can't handle bones. I can't afford the ones that do so I would be grinding at home just the meat though not the bones.
 
My mom had one of those. They can do a decent grind ... you'll get arm muscles.
 
I have fed my girls raw food since 2007. The first 5 years I fed Felines Pride and RadCat.

Even though I have an electric grinder, I am now making it myself with the Felines' Pride premix as you mentioned. I just do not like the bones, they seem to constipate my girls and I always worried about any sharp bones in their food.

I use exclusively chicken for my girls. Boneless chicken thighs only, the breast meat does not have enough fat and calories and should only be used as a treat.

I add the meat, egg, water as the package states but also add some chicken liver and psyillum powder and extra salmon oil. I basically follow Dr. Pierson's recipe for boneless food, her website is THE best place for info for this- http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

If you choose to add liver, you can eliminate the Vitamins A & D that Feline's Pride sends you to add to the food (it's the small gelcaps), you won't need it because they will get those vitamins from the liver.

Any questions you have at all, don't hesitate to ask. My girls have a lot better on the raw food and even better on the homemade stuff, I feel it's definitely the right way to go.
 
I have heard they eat less on homemade too do you find that's true? How do I figure out the carbs on homemade? Thank you so much for lending me your experience on this cause I am very interested in doing it this way. I can get chicken thighs cheap here cause a local store has a package deal on them all the time. Canned is costing me a fortune to feed and not as good as homemade from what I am reading on catinfo.
 
I really dont know how to figure carbs, it basically should have no carbs or just a tiny bit. If you look at Lisa Pierson's chart for carbs, (http://www.catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf),the Feline's pride's on pg. 28, has 0 or 1 carbs, except the duck that has 2.
Raw, IMO, is the best food for diabetic cats.
I do recall when they first started on the raw they leaned out pretty good and didn't eat as much. It's been so long since my girls ate canned, I forget how much of that they ate, but my 15 lb girl eats 7 oz of food a day, and my 11.5 lb girl eats 5 oz.
I usually make batches of food with 5 lbs of meat, add approx 1 cup water per pound of meat and the other ingredients and get nearly 8 lbs of food from a batch. Lasts us about 10 days.
Katie has issues with lipidemia (fatty blood), which the vets think contributed to her diabetes. By making the food myself, I can control the fat content of her food. Because she was on the raw commercial diet, and because this has been a lifelong problem for her, the vets didnt think her lipidemia was food related, but instead genetic. BUT.... and this is purely conjecture, but, since I started making the food myself, her blood work has shown her lipemia index drop dramatically from a +4 (very high) to a +1 (normal, for the first time EVER), and 2 months after I started making her food she went OTJ after being diabetic for 16 months. In that time frame, the only thing different has been the homemade food.
So for me, and Katie's unique problems, this works for us:)
 
Sounds excellent to me. Right now they are all eating about 8-10oz aday and they are 7lb and two 11lb kitties. They constantly beg for food even go as far as getting into the garbage sometimes. Something they never did before in 9 years. At first I thought it was because they had free fed dry food before all this. Now I am thinking it may be cause the cheaper wet foods don't have enough protein to keep them full enough. They seem to go poop more often now then they did before so its like its going straight through them. I might be wrong in that and am just noticing it now more than I did before though. That's one reason to switch them to raw ...the other is cost as I said before but the best one is that its what is best for them I think. So with that 5lbs chicken thighs how much of the skin do add? All of it or just some or none? I know Dr. Peterson adds it to her recipe is it the same in a premix? Sorry about yet another question. How long does a pouch of premix usually last you? I am trying to decide what size pouch to get.
 
For 29 pounds of cat, you need from 0.5 to 1.0 ounces of food per pound, divided into 2 or more meals. So about 15 oz in the morning and night. You may not be feeding enough.

Remember that dry food is more compact due to minimal moisture. Canned food is around 78% moisture, give or take.
 
Sorry I wasn't clear ...they are eating 8-10 oz a day each. So all together its 24-30 oz of food split up over 4 feedings. That's 1 oz more than Patches weighs and 1 oz less than the boys weigh. So that's the right amount for them right?
 
Taintedhalo said:
Sounds excellent to me. Right now they are all eating about 8-10oz aday and they are 7lb and two 11lb kitties. They constantly beg for food even go as far as getting into the garbage sometimes. Something they never did before in 9 years. At first I thought it was because they had free fed dry food before all this. Now I am thinking it may be cause the cheaper wet foods don't have enough protein to keep them full enough. They seem to go poop more often now then they did before so its like its going straight through them. I might be wrong in that and am just noticing it now more than I did before though. That's one reason to switch them to raw ...the other is cost as I said before but the best one is that its what is best for them I think. So with that 5lbs chicken thighs how much of the skin do add? All of it or just some or none? I know Dr. Peterson adds it to her recipe is it the same in a premix? Sorry about yet another question. How long does a pouch of premix usually last you? I am trying to decide what size pouch to get.
Click to expand...

The premix comes in tubs, you want the "Raw Made Easy Kit I" . The 16 oz tub makes 32 lbs of food. You want to make sure and get the kit for boneless meat and WITH iodine (they have an iodine free premix also, you dont want that). Since you aren't using the whole chicken, you need the iodine.

As for the skin, it's up to you. Dr Lisa recommends- 'If your cat is thin and needs the extra calories, leave all of the skin on the meat. If your cat is chubby or has had pancreatitis, remove ~75% of the skin. (Some cats that have had pancreatitis do better on a low fat diet.) If he is just right, remove ~50% of the skin. "
Katie needs the lowfat diet, I use no skin, so I buy skinless and boneless thighs and supplement with more salmon oil for fat for her.

If you choose to add liver, add 4 oz of liver per 3 lbs. of food. Remember if you use liver, you dont have to add the Vitamin A & D gelcaps that come with the premix. If you dont add liver, use the gelcaps. The dry premix in the tub also comes with 2 different capsules to add, a large capsule which is the salmon oil, and a small gelcap which is the Vitamin A & D.

Remember basically the premix has the bonemeal, vitamins, taurine, lite salt, all the dry ingredients, but everything else in regards to the meat and other ingredients are the same as Dr. Lisa's recipe.
I have tweaked it a bit for our circumstance, but I just overall use the premix for the dry ingredients and follow the Dr Lisa's recipe for the other meat, liver egg amounts.

Their poo will be a lot different on raw, a lot less, and light colored and dry and crumbly and wont smell. Just a heads up so you wont think something is wrong, it will be a change from what you are used to seeing.

I am glad to help, I dont mind the questions, anything I can do to help. I was so kind of scared and confused when I first started making the food myself, so afraid I was going to screw something up...I mean this was for my babies...what if I did something wrong??? I just poured over Dr Lisa's website and Anne's website at catnutrition.org and made the plunge! So I know how you feel:)

Have you fed raw to your cats before at all?
 
Oh so the smaller one is better? I was thinking of the jumbo kit since it would last longer and seems more economical but if the 16 oz raw made easy kit 1 is better then I will just get a couple of them. Hmm Patches is still a bit too skinny and the boys are just right ...thinking it would be ok to leave the skins on until she gets up to weight then go to 50%. Got it leave out the vitamin A & D but add the momma bean love. :lol:

Exactly these are my babies that got me through some really dark days when they were kittens. I was so afraid I would mess this up. I read both those sites but had questions and feel better now that I have been able to ask them and get answers. I have more confidence in this choice now.

No before now they have only had occasional small bits of human food. I was thinking of trying a bit of shredded chicken to see if they will eat it before I order anything. I doubt it will be a problem though since they will eat bits of chicken and roast beef lunch meat.
 
Taintedhalo said:
Sorry I wasn't clear ...they are eating 8-10 oz a day each. So all together its 24-30 oz of food split up over 4 feedings. That's 1 oz more than Patches weighs and 1 oz less than the boys weigh. So that's the right amount for them right?
Click to expand...

Oh! All right, that sounds OK in terms of volume. Fat and protein typically take longer to digest in humans; it may be the same in cats.
 
lol yeah I didn't think how it read when I submitted it. When I read back I realized it did look like I said 10 for the 3 of them to share. :o I think if I ever tried that I would wake up with them nomming on my arms and legs. :lol:
 
Hi there,

Just wanted to share what happened to me with the raw experience. Having had a cat that died of complications due to kidney disease I researched all about the raw food diet. After my Emma died, three other kitties came into my life: Tsering, Digger & Daphne. I fed them strictly the raw diet. I have the expensive grinder. I was afraid to use it by myself so I had to have my chef husband help me with it. After awhile he wasn't too keen on spending a day grinding meat with me and I ended up storing the grinder in the closet. I resorted to using meat from the grocery store with adding TC Feline powder.

This is kind of a warning just in case you are thinking of using the store bought ground meat. That's what I did. Sometimes my kitties got turkey other times they got chicken. Sometimes I ordered rabbit. I used the TC Feline PLUS chicken liver version.

What happened is I did this for three years thinking I was giving them the best possible food in the world. When I took them all to the vet for their pre-tests before dental exams I got a HUGE shock :!: :o :shock: All three of them had kidney values that were through the roof, and one of them was peeing dilute urine. It completely freaked me out!! It wasn't suppose to be like that.. I didn't even feed them treats. The vet told me to switch them to a high quality canned food ASAP with protein values of 9% or less for at least 6 months and then bring them back in for a re-test.

You cannot imagine the amount of crying that I did and the six month wait horrible. I think I might have used the Janet and Binky's page to evaluate the level of phosphorous in the canned foods because getting them less of that was key. As well, because they were not diabetic, I did feed them canned foods with rice as the only grain in them once in awhile during that six month wait as well.

Thank goodness upon re-test all three of them were back within normal range.

I still completely believe in the raw food diet for cats *if* you are going to grind the meat and bones together. I no longer believe in the macaroni and cheese "boxed" meat meals to save time and money.

I noticed you are feeding 9-Lives food and I wanted to also share my recent experience with it. This happened in December, one week after I brought Rocky home from the hospital after is DKA. My kitty Digger could barely pee and when he did, he peed blood!! I was freaked out. The ONLY thing different I had done was to switch their food to 9-Lives Tuna for about 4 days. I will NEVER feed any flavor of 9-Lives food to my cats again. I am positive it was the food change that did it. In the 7 years that I've had them I have never feed them 9-Lives. I just decided one day, "Why not?"

My opinion is to keep your diabetic kitty on the best canned foods with high protein and low carbs that you can afford until you an afford that meat grinder that will pulverize the bones.
 
:o :o :o ummm yikes!! Are you talking about for store ground only or are you saying the problem was with the premix you think? With the 9 lives what was the dr's diagnosis of the peeing blood? I had that happen with a cat a long time ago they were both on dry food at the time. She had stones in her bladder and had to have a surgery to correct it. Vet said she needed more water intake so we started changing the bowl 3 times a day cause turns out she is picky. Now I include about 1/2 can of water in the wet food to make sure they get enough water to combat the phosphorus of the wet food.
 
When I made raw, I purchased whole, fresh organic chicken and turkey. While organic is a little pricier than not organic, I felt that it would be better as it would have less hormones and others things that non-organic has. Additionally, I purchased a whole chicken and not parts and used it all. The pieces that I didn't include in the food, I put in a pot, added water and made broth to add into the mix with. So nothing was wasted.

Yes, I bought the grinder Dr. Lisa recommended and one my lesson with that is - NEVER put it in the dishwasher! Hand wash only! Now if only I read the instructions, I would have known before doing it..... @-)
 
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