cat food

[tortoise]

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.

 

[tortoise]

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.

 

[tortoise]

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.

 

[baymule]

Welcome to the forum @Annabellam !!

 

[Annabellam]

Tilapia is quite expensive here as well. Quite a pricey meal that is.

 

[tortoise]

I believe that the primary source of calcium for hunting carnivores is the blood of the prey, not the bones. That may be one of the reasons the typical "raw diet" is incomplete.

I find this fascinating! You're inspiring me to investigate and crunch numbers.

The online-advise-givers like to say to feed muscle meats with some egg shell for calcium. (Hah) Or feed raw meaty bones, and a little pat of liver (hah) The first is too low in calcium, and the second has so much that dogs tend to get constipated. Raw feeders extol the virtues of white crumbly poops that deteriorate quickly and don't require yard cleanup - the same effect can be achieved by feeding bone to a dog also fed kibble. The crumbly poops are not a virtue of raw diet, but the effect of excess bone/calcium/mineral/ash. Hence internet-advice-givers then prescribe pumpkin puree to treat constipation (caused by excess bone).

I think it's extremely difficult to describe or teach raw diet to a person without experience butchering heritage livestock or wild game. A chicken back and neck from one of my Rhode Island Reds is different than what arrives by the case ordered from a meat market! The stuff by the case has excess skin - enough skin (fat) to kill a dog. There's much less meat on meat market cases of back and necks - hence, constipation can be a serious issue.