Can you see the benefits of a raw food diet if you feed it only like 4 times a week and then give high quality?
wet food the rest of the time. I was thinking of using Nature’s Variety raw food, but if anybody else has a better brand or an easy recipe they use that would be great. How often do you feed the raw food to your cat and do you think I need to do it for every meal? I mean, what are the specific benefits? Is it like breast milk, even some is better than none? Thanks.
Val, you don’t know what you are talking about. Dry food is awful for pets!
Tagged with: breast milk • dry food • easy recipe • pets • raw food • wet food
Filed under: Raw Food Diet
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I just started using raw diet and am planning once or twice a day feeding of it, depending on how much the cats like it. I think adding it in any amount will be a good thing, it has complete nutrician, plenty of calories, etc. If you can’t afford it for every meal, don’t beat yourself up.
The only question I would have is why even bother with the wet food, it isn’t much, if any, cheaper than the raw if you have a good pet store. (I have priced it at two here, and one is twice the price as the other, for the same food.)
I think some is better than none.
Right now my three cats are on a diet of canned and raw. They get three meals a day and one is raw. Additionally, they get some extra pieces of raw if I am preparing meat for myself ( I don’t eat meat every day).
The canned is a very wide variety, EVO, EVO duck, EVO venison, Wellness chicken, chicken and herring, turkey, turkey and salmon, Natural Balance Ultra and the chicken and liver, a couple of the Merrick’s and occasionally a fish variety of Evanger’s or BG.
About half the raw is chicken (usually) prepared with a supplement mix called Instincts TC from Feline Future. I order it online and it is a bit pricey.
The other half is cut up meat with bone. I often add some chicken or beef heart, lamb kidney or chicken liver. Occasionally I add a probiotic supplement, extra taurine or extra fish oil. My cats especially love rabbit but will eat any meat except lamb. I have fed them chicken, turkey, beef (w/o bones -they won’t eat them), goat, and venison. Most often rabbit or chicken.
If you want any easy starter "recipe" I would just start with one type of meat like chicken (with bones). Chop some up and leave some in chunks and see how they do with it. Or,cut up some beef for them.
With straight meat w/o bone, I would not give it as a large part of their diet because it would be deficient in calcium but to start out it should be fine. You can also serve either of the above with a little chopped liver, heart, or kidney.
In this site I am giving there is a reference to the Pottenger cat study of raw vs cooked diet: http://cats.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/rawfooddiet.htm
Here is another site on raw food and making it:
http://www.catinfo.org/makingcatfood.htm
The site above is mostly about recipes involving grinding bones along with the meat. You can still do the recipes without a grinder if your cat will eat bones and you use a meat with easy to cut up ones like rabbit or cornish hens. If the cat will eat the bones, you really just need a cleaver.
Also, I just yesterday realized that I DO have a meat grinder – its an old hand-cranked one my grandmother owned and I can’t wait to try it out! Forgot I had it. Anyway, I saw similar ones on EBay for about $15.00 under "antique meat grinder" if you want to try grinding w/o spending 10x that for an electric one.
So, yes, I think 4x a week is better than no raw. I don’t think you need to buy the expensive Nature’s Variety. If you want to, I suggest you try one of the small sample packages. I saw these on their website. I think the meats you would buy for yourself are fine for your cats.
For specific benefits with my own cats I cannot list improvements because 2 of them are barely out of kittenhood and have been eating canned and raw since they were tiny. Their mother was a pregnant stray I took in. Her condition has improved dramatically but I cannot honestly say it is because of a raw and premium canned diet since she was eating garbage (literally) before.
I do know they are all very healthy, active, happy and have beautiful coats.
i wouldn’tt feed my cats raw food and wet food should be more of a treat then a meal they love it but hard food should always be available to them
I think it’s better than none, but a high quality food can be just as good in terms of the vitamins and minerals that can be deficient in raw food. If you do start feeding raw food on a normal basis and it is making up more than a treat portion of your cats’ diets, add a multivitamin to their diet so that minerals and vitamins are not depleted. I like Vermont Naturals Daily Best. They are soft and chewable like a treat.
I believe you have a great analogy there – even some raw is better than none. I do feed some raw chicken once a week or so, but mostly it’s high quality canned. If I didn’t foster, I’d switch mine over to a totally raw diet (where I can – I have one dry food junkie who won’t give it up). As it is, I’m trying to find one of the commercial raw diets that they’ll eat, so I can feed that at least once or twice a week. So far, mine don’t like any of those freeze-dried medallions that you reconstitute with water, but eagerly gobble up real raw chicken.
That’s fine, and I think you will see an improvement, beginning with their coats – that was the first thing I notived. Their energy also went up.
Nice to see someone who knows a bit about feline nurtition, and why dry food isn’t all it;s chalked up to be whi thinke beyond their own convenience to a cat’s health.
If you are willing, why not make your own, just get the foods, prepare them, add the supplements, and freeze them?
I give my cats chicken mostly, and they absolutely love it. Start with one meal a day raw, and then add more as you go so the change is gradual.
We currently feed a mix – dry in the morning, canned at night and raw twice a week.
If you can afford more raw that’s great. But unless you add a lot of supplements to it to be sure it has everything, I’d stick to the quality canned foods too.
When we give raw, the beef or chicken is put on top of the canned food (about 4-6 bites each) and they eat it all together. I only give them about 1/2 the amount of canned food when adding the raw – just to be sure they are getting the proper nutrition.