Tag Archives: Raw Feeding

Raw feeding : six months later

After six months of raw feeding, here is a first review :

Preparation

Claire uses a ceramic knife and a board to cut the meat roughly pieces which we shall have to rip and chew. Meanwhile, Momo separates the frozen necks of chickens with an ax and cuts them in two, because they are too much tall to enter the containers. He also separates the frozen chicken hearts and prepares small dice of liver (frozen also). It needs approximately 30 minutes in all (20 minutes for two) to prepare the portions for two cats during a week.

We eat mainly chicken, turkey, and beef, and sometimes rabbit or duck. Zorro eats finally his chicken necks without Claire has to cut them in slices, but Pixie still toys with the liver : thus the meal which contains giblets keeps being ground just before being served to prevent she from sorting out. Once a week, we eat small whole sardines, but Pixie does not like it very much.
All the used utensils as well as the chopping blocks are then carefully washed with soap then disinfected with vinegar. They are dried then immediately.

Storage

For the moment, Claire prepares the portions for seven to ten days only because we have a quite small freezer. But soon, we will be able to have more reserve. We are delighted, because we will be able to store whole chicks and whole mice also.

Quantities

With raw feeding, it is necessary to count between 2 and 4 % of the weight of a grown-up cat in food. As we are young and active, and as we can go out, we are at 4 %, that is 220 grams for Zorro and 140 grams for Pixie. This quantity includes meat (60 %), meaty bones (30 %), and giblets (10 %, of which half of the liver). If the food is well balanced, our veterinarian confirmed to us that you do not need to add food complements.

Claire prepares three bowls a day of about 100 grams for our first three meals. The food went out the day before the freezer to defrost in the refrigerator. She completes the quantity with high-quality commercial wet food for practical questions : it happens that we are not hungry for a meal because we hunted and ate a prey outside, most of the time at the end of spring, in summer, and at the beginning of autumn. The commercial wet food supports to be kept one day in the refrigerator, while Claire does not like letting wait raw food.

Frequency of the meals

We are fed four times a day : between 6 and 7 o’clock in the morning, between 11 am and noon, between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and at about 10 pm in the evening. Claire leaves our bowls 20 minutes at our disposal, then puts them back to the refrigerator if we did not eat (but that never happens, ha ha !).

Benefits

We are alert and healthy.
Our hair is beautiful and brilliant.
Our breath is pleasant.
Our poop is small, firmer, and smells almost nothing.
We vomit much less often.
Our water intake is guaranteed.

Next Sunday, Claire has a whole training day on cat feeding : we are looking forward to compare our experience with the course content !

Do you see other benefits to raw feeding ?

At the veterinarian

ZORRO : We are beautiful and healthy. It’s not us who says that, it’s the veterinarian.

On Tuesday morning, we went to the veterinarian for our annual visit : as you can see, we were delighted.

Mr Burnand checked us from every angle (yes, he looked there also !) ; we are grateful to him, because he did not consider to play with his thermometer … He dewormed us, and weighed us : I weigh 5,4 kg (11,9 lb) and Pixie 3,4 kg (7,5 lb). We have magnificent eyes, quite clean ears, dense and silky hair, no fleas, in brief, we are beautiful and healthy.

He found that I had lost 100 grams since the last visit, what is very well, and that’s where Claire dropped her small bomb :
– They eat raw since 3 months…
– And what do you give them ? simply asked the veterinarian.
Claire explained the fleshy bones, the giblets, etc, etc….
– Ah, that’s all good ! said the veterinarian. It’s important to give also bones and cartilages, they need it. They should not eat only steak !
Claire was over the moon : she had heard a lot about veterinarians who were fiercely against Raw Feeding. She enjoyed that ours is also favorable to this feeding mode, as far as it is done correctly and in a well-balanced way.
The only concern of the veterinarian was that we could have too much vitamin A, what would be bad for our joints. According to him, it is not necessary that we eat liver every day.
– It’s a feeding mode that is respectful of the needs of your cats, he added, and close to what your cats could eat in nature, but it’s a little longer to prepare than a can…
Claire answered that that take her only half an hour a week to prepare our portions for 7-8 days.

– You are someone organized ! said Mr Burnand.
We didn’t dare to tell him that Claire had to have an additional gene for that, because we were afraid that he keeps her to run some tests !

Raw Feeding : from theory to practice

A little more than four weeks ago, we turned to Raw Feeding (model Franken Prey).

The theory of the Franken Prey model is the following one : the meat is roughly cut into pieces, and every meal represents artificially a whole prey (meat, giblets and bone) in the good proportions.

But in the practice…
– Pixie doesn’t like giblets.
– Zorro doesn’t like too much meaty bones (chicken necks most of the time).

If Claire lets us do, Pixie eats all the chicken necks, Zorro eats all the giblets, and our respective nutritional contributions are unbalanced.

How to do ?

Claire has to use trickery : to be able to watch that each eats correctly, she gives giblets and half of meaty bones in the morning, and the other half of meaty bones in the evening.

Zorro always comes to eat first while Claire is having breakfast. She cuts the half chicken neck in slices, and coats them with crumbs of crushed treats. She gives them to Zorro at the same time as giblets. When Zorro has finished, he receives then his ration of meat. Claire will do the same thing with the chicken neck for the dinner.

Pixie comes to eat when Zorro has ended. The first meal of Pixie is ground (meat and giblets). Miss cannot sort out and eats gladly her swill. When she has finished, she receives a piece of chicken neck which she gnaws and chews with great pleasure!

The meal of the middle-day mainly consists of meat : no need to watch. Once a week, Claire enriches this meal with a food complement (vitamins, minerals, trace elements and taurine) and a little salmon oil.

We like chicken, turkey, beef, and duck, but we like less rabbit. Claire wants to let us taste sardines : do you think that we’re going to enjoy it ?