Canned food and chicken / tuna diet

[bluegoo06]

I have done a lot of searching for food diet information on this site and havent seen many discussions regarding canned food and supplementing that with some raw food. Maybe I missed it I dont know.

Due to the fact that I dont have time to chop meat, freeze it nor figure out a balanced cat raw diet. I need to go with canned food. Unfortunately , canned food is ridiculously expensive. According to my calculations it would cost 5 bucks to feed 4 cats on strictly "good" canned food.

Supplementing tuna / chicken seems to help cut the canned food cost since you can buy both in bulk fairly cheaply. Would doing a diet half canned / half tuna / cooked chicken be a good combination for cat health?

[Caturday]

I'm feeding my cats half canned and half raw chicken/cornish hens at the moment. Raw hens are so much cheaper than canned food and are much higher quality. I buy 2 cornish hens for $6 and each hen can last at least 4 meals for my 2 kitties. I don't see why having a diet like your cats' would be bad, other than that you may have to add some taurine supplements to home-cooked chicken or other meats.

[marie73]

Here's an article on fish you might find interesting:

Why Fish is Dangerous for Cats | Little Big Cat

[saitenyo]

Thanks for posting that article Marie, I found it very interesting to read. I've been creating a list of the foods I want to rotate my cats on, and that article definitely helped convince me to keep the foods with fish in them less frequent.

[doodlebug]

Originally Posted by bluegoo06

Supplementing tuna / chicken seems to help cut the canned food cost since you can buy both in bulk fairly cheaply. Would doing a diet half canned / half tuna / cooked chicken be a good combination for cat health?

The half of the diet that is not canned food still needs to be properly balanced since it's a significant portion of the diet. Cooked chicken by itself is nowhere near balanced and tuna shouldn't be a significant part of a cat's diet for the reasons outlined in the article Marie posted.

Since cost seems like a major concern, do you have a Trader Joe's near you? Their brand of cat food is better than mid-range but not quite up to par with the high quality brands. But it's a very decent compromise for very little money...about 59 cents for a 5.5 oz can.