Raw diet for cats

Urchhhh

Tonight we realised we had forgotten to buy cat food, normally they have Aldi tinned cat food. In a blind panic I raided the cupboards and we gave them some tuna and sardines which they loved. One of them who is very fussy and doesn't eat much, scoffed it. I noticed the same last week when I gave them some raw chicken breast.

We've decided after a bit of reading to switch them to a raw diet. I just wanted to hear some opinions from some moneysavers how much it costs them, what they feed the cats per day. I read that I shouldn't feed them too much fish and its all a bit confusing so would love some real peoples advice

sheramber

Do plenty research into what you need to feed to give a balanced diet

They need 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% organ meat.

Meat is needed to for taurine and bones for calcium. Organ meat as a vitamin source.

I don't feed cats but have raw fed dogs for many years. I buy the bulk from a raw meat supplier , topped up from Tesco for chicken wings and my local butcher for organ meat, I pay far less to feed my dogs than buying decent processed food.

NotNormal

I'm looking into switching mine to properly raw feeding as they currently have a bit of a treat occasionally that they love.

Do plenty of research and decide on a plan.

Do you plan to do full raw feed? If so you need to look up taurine, can you supply enough naturally or would it be best to include a supplement?

Or will you be mixing? Raw instead of wet, but keeping dry? For me personally, I will be keeping dry as I have a sleep disorder my schedule varies. For example for the last two weeks I've been sleeping on and off from half nine until five-six am. The last two nights however I've tossed and turned until almost one and not woken until after eight am and still been tired. So for me, having dried biscuits out means I know they have something to eat rather than waking up in a blind panic.

You can search out raw feed places locally, often they'll do the legwork for you. Or you can use supermarket/butchers stuff and make your own. If you speak to your butchers sometimes they'll save you off cuts and organs or meat that they can no longer sell (a bit like reduced counter in the supermarket).

Urchhhh

Preferably I would just switch over fully, they don't like dry food anyway and I'm always around to make sure I can give them fresh food.

NotNormal

I found this link interesting for the type of food to feed.

And this link is great for questions.

"The excellent news is that taurine is found in virtually all meats, especially beef heart. By feeding a cat a raw diet, the cat should receive the best, most bioavailable form of taurine via its food. There is one proviso: do not grind the food."

As I said taurine supplement MAY be needed if they're not getting enough naturally, worth just having a little google of what contains how much and how much they need for their age/size.

GwylimT

There are many ready made raw options such as natures menu, natural instinct (who will send a free 5kg trial pack), nutriment and purrform. The only issue is these are 10% bone, ideally they should be 7% so if you use them just remember to add a little muscle meat to each meal.

Our cat is raw fed, we tend to make our own but we do sometimes buy natural instinct, if we just fed this she would cost 90p per day to feed.

We recently changed butchers so making our own costs around 40p a day, this doesn't include the original cost of our grinder for larger bones, I think it was about £60.

Her diet is balanced over all, but not all meals are balanced. For example todays breakfast was a chicken wing, so bone heavy and protein and taurine deficient, but her lunch and tea wont contain bone but will be muscle meat heavy and will contain the right amount of offal for the day.