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Thanks for all this information. So in a nutshell, which supplement would be best to mix with raw meat with bone? Which for raw meat without bone? I will be making up 1 to 2 lbs at a time (maybe more), not ounces, since I have 4 cats and go through almost a lb of food a day. I plan to buy beef, pork and whatever poultry I can find in the supermarkets - meaning turkey and chicken. Liver would be the only organ meat I would find locally at this time.
Does anyone feed any kind of cheeses like cottage cheese? How about cooked eggs? I know raw egg is no good. What about fresh or canned fish? The safer ones that is? What are you feeding other than the usual meats?
If you're going to be able to find liver, then I would just follow Dr. Pierson's recipes on catinfo.org. It involves buying vitamin E, vitamin B, taurine, fish oil, low-sodium salt, and if you don't have bones, bone meal. Most supplements will last you for a long time before you run out. I think you'll find that buying the supplements separately is always much cheaper than those pre-mixes you can find online. You can modify her recipes with different proteins (which she talks about), though you will find that she and some other raw feeders heavily lean towards feeding poultry and fowl (and rabbit, but you're not feeding that) over red meats, because the former are closer to a cat's natural diet. I do feed pork about 1/4 or 1/5 of the time though, they like it. I've never fed beef.
I have seen a multitude of poultry-based recipes from people who have done this for many years, and the only organ really required in their recipes is the liver. Some use hearts (which is a muscle meat instead of a secreting organ) for the natural source of taurine, but that's about it.
Does anyone feed any kind of cheeses like cottage cheese? How about cooked eggs? I know raw egg is no good. What about fresh or canned fish? The safer ones that is? What are you feeding other than the usual meats?
I don't feed any cheese.
Raw egg yolk is very nutritious. Not the white, just the yolk. Uncooked white contains avidin which can bind to boidin a B vitamin, causing a deficiency. There is some disagreement about this, some say it is not enough to matter, or that the vitamin in the yolk balances it out, but I choose to avoid raw egg white, and give only the yolk.
Most raw feeders feed 2 or 3 raw yolks a week. Most ground recipes call for egg yolks (or whole eggs)
I have one cat with a possible motility problem. Egg yolk is rich in acetylcholine, which improves digestive motility. I have increased her egg yolk to four times a week, since she cannot eat a whole large yolk on her own. The other two cats take turns getting the other half. They lick them right up (usually with a little incentive dusted on first) and say yummy!
I can't advise on how much supplement to use since I don't feed that way. The best thing for you to do is to contact the manufacturer of the raw feeding supplement you have chosen and ask them. I've been told that both Alnutrin and Wysong Call of the Wild are very helpful with any questions a raw feeder may have about their products and how to use them.
As Sparrowmint has mentioned, I use only liver as organ, since I can't find anything else.
Last edited by catsmom21; 05-05-2013 at 01:50 PM..
Oh, the reason I didn't join any of the raw feeding forums is I just have to parcel out my time online and feel I just can't handle any more forums. I spend too much time online now.
Oh, the reason I didn't join any of the raw feeding forums is I just have to parcel out my time online and feel I just can't handle any more forums. I spend too much time online now.
I don't find the raw feeding forums helpful anyway. There are some overly ridiculous people on all of them who don't think ground or frankenprey methods are acceptable and will try to browbeat you into feeding them whole mice, etc. And then some go even further and think it's acceptable to feed live mice. I swore off all of them long ago. Try to get help on questions of supplements etc, and you just get a bunch of criticism about how you should be feeding whole animals that don't require additional supplements.
I don't find the raw feeding forums helpful anyway. There are some overly ridiculous people on all of them who don't think ground or frankenprey methods are acceptable and will try to browbeat you into feeding them whole mice, etc. And then some go even further and think it's acceptable to feed live mice. I swore off all of them long ago. Try to get help on questions of supplements etc, and you just get a bunch of criticism about how you should be feeding whole animals that don't require additional supplements.
That has not been my experience. In the raw forum I frequent, the members there are very helpful and welcoming and most seem to agree that any raw is better than no raw, even it's it's just a chicken wing once a week.
Perhaps a forum that advocates for only feeding whole prey diets would not be a good fit, but there are others. Sadly there are also raw forums and websites where there is much misinformation.
That has not been my experience. In the raw forum I frequent, the members there are very helpful and welcoming and most seem to agree that any raw is better than no raw, even it's it's just a chicken wing once a week.
Perhaps a forum that advocates for only feeding whole prey diets would not be a good fit, but there are others. Sadly there are also raw forums and websites where there is much misinformation.
But I understand the OPs time limitations.
I must have only found the bad ones then, would be my luck. The two or three I tried have been like that (and they weren't marked as whole prey forums, just general cat forums with a dedicated food section), and I have found it so weird to attack frankenprey/ground raw using owners whenever most people out there are still feeding kibble. There's a bunch of rhetoric about teeth, and increasingly, about how feeding whole prey is better for their "mental health." I have seen so many who can't begin to understand why someone wouldn't want to feed whole baby quails or mice to their cats, and it's just crazy. I think it's just a general drive to always be better than someone else. Whenever there's no more kibble people around, got to start creating divisions amongst the raw feeders.
Regardless, I think there's adequate information out there from websites without having to go to forums, mainly cat info (Dr. Pierson's site), catnutrition.org, and feline-nutrition.org/ and finding one's own way from the wealth of info on there.
I don't find the raw feeding forums helpful anyway. There are some overly ridiculous people on all of them who don't think ground or frankenprey methods are acceptable and will try to browbeat you into feeding them whole mice, etc. And then some go even further and think it's acceptable to feed live mice. I swore off all of them long ago. Try to get help on questions of supplements etc, and you just get a bunch of criticism about how you should be feeding whole animals that don't require additional supplements.
Yikes! OK, I hadn't noticed that. I just took a look at a few recommended forums and saw I would be online another hour or two a day should I join them.
I imagine there are fanatics just like in any group of people. I know pet shops sell frozen mice, baby chicks and rats and some people will feed them to their cats. I couldn't afford to take that route even if I wanted to. Not with 4 cats. At this point all I need to know is how much "supplement" for raw meat needs to be added to meat when preparing their food (chicken, pork, safe fish, whatever). But we're still here at the lake so I'll get more into that when I get back home. It's not fair to leave my husband sitting outside alone while I'm in the RV online doing what can be done at home.
A problem I've had all along is them "sorting" the raw meat. I'll find the liver left behind one time and another time it'll be the heart or the gizzard. Another time one or more cats will reject the raw meat altogether and skip a meal, not even touching the canned food it's mixed with. So then another cat eats all that raw meat and not the canned food. I'm pretty sure I can switch them to mainly raw once I get the needed supplements to make sure it's as balanced as possible. It looks like most if not all can be bought in any Walmart Pharmacy or Health Food Store.
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The two or three I tried have been like that (and they weren't marked as whole prey forums, just general cat forums with a dedicated food section), and I have found it so weird to attack frankenprey/ground raw using owners whenever most people out there are still feeding kibble. There's a bunch of rhetoric about teeth, and increasingly, about how feeding whole prey is better for their "mental health." I have seen so many who can't begin to understand why someone wouldn't want to feed whole baby quails or mice to their cats, and it's just crazy. I think it's just a general drive to always be better than someone else. Whenever there's no more kibble people around, got to start creating divisions amongst the raw feeders. 
I'm pretty sure I can switch them to mainly raw once I get the needed supplements to make sure it's as balanced as possible. It looks like most if not all can be bought in any Walmart Pharmacy or Health Food Store.
