cat food

Cats are obligate carnivores unlike dogs. They really can't digest vegetation of any sort very well. They also need organ meat.

Ground up whole animals or birds would probably be perfect for them. There can actually be some issues with fish.

According to my cats and dogs, rats don't taste good. Field mice, jumping mice, and shrews are ok. Head is the best. Townsend voles are the absolute best. They fight over them if someone catches one and can't eat it quick enough. The dogs will steal them from the cats.

Even the chickens only like really young and small rats.

Ehh… yum?

I'm trying and failing to remember, but there is a certain nutrient that cats need more off… Goodness, what is it now, niacin, thiamine? I read this ages ago.

Has anyone tried the "raw food" diet for their dogs? I used to chat with someone that did and she was convinced it's the best. She added me to a FB group where they talked about it too, but I left it.

When I grew up we had a few Bullterriers and they loved mice. Dead or alive, they ate them.

@sumi - funny that you mention the raw diet for dogs. I have done it before with a dog that had skin issues. Maybe mine was a modified version....but it involved lot of raw chicken - bones and all. Raw chicken bones aren't the threat that cooked bones are. Raw bones are soft and pliable where cooked bones splinter and create very sharp shards. I also cooked some vegetables and brown rice together and would add bits of raw organ meats to that mixture. For whatever reason my dogs weren't that fond of liver so I had to hide it in their rice/veg mixture. I would give the rice/veggie/organ mix in the morning and the raw chicken at night.

At the time I was feeding two little Westies - total weight 35 -40 lbs for the two of them. I also ordered raw tripe from somewhere (need to see if I can find that website again) that they LOVED and is really recommended as being very nutritious. Seems like I added a fish oil capsule, and a multi-min tablet to their mixture. (been quite a few years ago and my memory isn't what it used to be, lol)

DISCLAIMER - I got all my info from the internet - so not an expert at all. However, the Westie with the skin problem cleared up and had the most luxurious coat after just a few months and the other Westie thrived on it also.

Now I'm considering switching my 2 LGD's and Gracie (the farm dog) to raw - however the total weight of those three dogs would be 250+. That's gonna take a LOT of raw meat. But, I feed them a premium dry food now and it's very pricey. I think for about the same money I can feed them raw. Great sale on Chicken legs and thighs right now so I'm on a mission today to get as much in the freezer as I can and will work up the rest of the menu when I can. (29 cents a pound) If I like how they do I will start raising quail again and that will be the main protein in their diet. They will be skinned and fed whole which will contain all the organ meats also.

FEM - cats need taurine, which mice happen to be particularly rich in. Taurine deficiency causes cardiomyopathy, among other things. Dogs do not require taurine. http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vmth/small_animal/cardio_kittleson/cases/case32/text.htm

The diet above is also deficient in calcium. A cat who is mousing and eating the mice would be ingesting bone, which is about 30% calcium, so the effects would be less devastating.

A more appropriate recipe would be ground up chicken backs and necks which have a better ratio of meat to bone, plus mice and a variety of rotated "supplements" to aim for micronutrients and micro minerals.

Interestingly, a more appropriate diet costs a heck of a lot less money! . Chicken necks and backs run about $0.60/pound if you buy in cases, and, of course, you can raise your own!

I don't feed raw on my two dogs only because I can't afford it. They do get the best quality kibble I can afford and not the really cheap stuff. The GSD cannot have wheat without getting horribly sick.

They do get old hens or roosters to eat as they come up. Supplements the food and makes the dogs happy. One bird will go two days for them. They get the short ribs half the time from our half beef.

I've fed raw diet to dogs and cats. I've seen dogs die from raw diet, and most of the info on the internet is **not quite right**. You can pick up a veterinary nutrition textbook on amazon or eBay for about $25 and get the correct information, plus USDA's nutrition database has just about every food possible broken down all the way to micronutrients. The Google Scholar is a tremendous resource, if you dig hard enough you can find the nutritional composition of various animal organs and insects. The information is available to do raw diet safely. It requires persistence and mathematical calculations though!

I stopped feeding raw diet because it is a human health risk - even when the dog is asymptomatic and healthy. I'm a supporter of the "hygiene theory" and believe an uber-clean environment is unhealthy. However, at the time I stopped feeding raw diet, my dog was a therapy dog and I couldn't rightly take a dog shedding e-coli and salmonella into a nursing home. I have a toddler now, but he's getting old enough and enough immune system, uh, exposure that I'm less concerned about human health risks of raw diet and considering returning to raw feeding.

Raw diet can be incredibly inexpensive if you're willing to do the work of sourcing ingredients and calculating out a diet. I used to get most of my dog food for $0.05/pound by visiting a butcher on kill day. They legally can't give me anything out of an inedible bin, but I could bring my own bins and they'd dump straight into it. Getting whole cow heads was the best/cheapest/easiest.

My cat gets 1 Tablespoon of cat kibble per day. She catches mice and shrew in the barn, and steals scraps we throw to the chickens.

When we butchered roosters this past summer, I canned the back pieces and feet scalded, skinned and toenails cut off) with rice and squash for the dogs. They love it.

I feed my dog home made food and also my cat sometimes. It's a lot of work and learning but i think it's worth a try keep at it if the food is affordable and available.