Homemade Diets

[xkitxgirx]

So I was trying to figure out how to do a homemade diet for a cat. I've always wanted to do this but cook the meat(I'm squeemish with raw meat). Does anyone have any specific recipes they do? And what do you do about taurine and stuff? I make homemade dog food which is really easy because dogs don't need the same things as cats. I'm just not really sure how to go about this and need some good info. I think it would be a lot cheaper for me to make homemade, if I could make enough for a month and freeze you know. Any advice would be good. But if you do have any recipes that are easy and have everything a cat would need that would be nice too.

[doodlebug]

Moving this to Cat Food Recipes for you....

[chris10]

A basic diet for a carnivore is
Protein - muscle meat ,organs (heart and liver)
Fat- animal fat
Essential fatty acids- brain, eyes, or salmon oil if making yourself
Vitamins/minerals- muscle meat, bones, and organs.

Here are two websites that have essentially the same recipe but each of them has a lot of good information(these promote raw but can be cooked with a calcium supplement instead of bones). www.catnutrition.org www.catinfo.org

Also if you do a search on this site you will find almost all the information you need to know about feeding your domesticated carnivore. This topic has come up a number of times. In my opinion raw is better than cooked meat. No cooked mice in the wild. But do some research and determine it for yourself.

Good luck

[Sol]

Maybe this site will give you some help: http://www.charlesloopsdvm.com/catdiet.htm

[vernylynn]

No matter how 'squeamish' you are about raw meat, you should not cook the food. Cats are not humans, and cooked meat can actually be bad for them. Just make sure you do your research on it. I think a raw diet is great b/c you know exactly what goes in the food, and more importantly what's not in it. http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Raw-Cat-Food I know other people have left other links, but this link helped me the most. I guess I like pictures..haha
I haven't tried it yet b/c I haven't gotten a grinder, but I have all the vitamins already for when I do! Good luck

[chris10]

Originally Posted by vernylynn

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Raw-Cat-Food

This is from catnutrition.org . No mention of that on the page. So no real work went into making the write up. Just copy and paste. But your right Anne's pictorial on catnutrition.org is very helpful. You don't need a grinder to enjoy the benifits of raw. Just chunk the meat by hand and either chunk the organs by hand or chopp them up in a food chopper/blender. Leave the bones out and add the supplements for them. This will be fine until you have a grinder to grind the bones. Check out http://www.catnutrition.org/recipes.php for how to make the recipe without bones. It list the supps that you would need to add.

[Konafa]

Originally Posted by vernylynn

No matter how 'squeamish' you are about raw meat, you should not cook the food. Cats are not humans, and cooked meat can actually be bad for them.

I don't mean to go off topic but you're trying to say that cats should eat meat raw? I never knew that.
According to my thoughts, raw meat can be harder for them to digest. I'm wrong, right?

Excuse my ignorance but I don't know much about cats' nutrition. So next time, when I want to feed my cat meat, I should give it raw to her...and not add anything on it?

[hoofmaiden]

Originally Posted by Konafa

I don't mean to go off topic but you're trying to say that cats should eat meat raw? I never knew that.
According to my thoughts, raw meat can be harder for them to digest. I'm wrong, right?

Excuse my ignorance but I don't know much about cats' nutrition. So next time, when I want to feed my cat meat, I should give it raw to her...and not add anything on it?

It's a LITTLE more complicated than that, but not much. This is really off-topic for THIS forum, but come on over to the raw section and we'll fill you in.

But yeah, sure they're supposed to eat raw meat. What do you think wild cats and wolves eat? No stoves or extruders out there, LOL. They evolved to eat raw meat and they do best when fed that way.

[xkitxgirx]

I think it's funny that I posted I was squeemish. This was around when I started doing research on pet nutrition. Not long after posting this I started feeding my dog raw. She had bad allergies and it was the only solution I could find. I now love it! And I'm sad I was ignorant for so long. Tyger I still can't get to eat raw other than ground turkey. I am trying to save up to buy a large amount of ground turkey bone in since she just doesn't like to chew anything. Then add organs to it. and some chicken hearts, which I think if I got a cheap hand grinder I could probably grind those up myself and mix them in. For now though I can't afford the ground turkey with bone in. On catnutrition.org she has the recipe for making the raw diet without the bone. But she says only use it in a pinch. So would it be ok if I used it for just a couple months until I start my new job and have enough money to go buy the turkey/bone in bulk?? Or would that be too long to have her on that recipe?


ETA: I forgot to add I also have a 5 1/2 month old bengal kitten that is on the raw diet. I started him on it right when I got him home at 10 weeks. He was on royal canin and he took right to the raw diet bones and everything! I haven't been on here in awhile so I think I will go post some new pics now!