I'm thinking of going raw... any advice?

[MedusaIsHavingaBadHairday]

Portia is 15 and a small eater who likes 'real' food and still likes to kill and eat her own.
Obie and Ophie are now 9 months, and have constant dodgy tums. Morph was the same and I wonder if MC are prone to sensitive stomachs. They can't eat any supermarket cat food.. goes straight through them, even dried is hit and miss (and boy does the miss make a mess) and they have gone off Animonda which they originally tolerated reasonably well.

I am willing to try raw, because it seems a logical thing to do..but I'm not not sure how to go about it. They like a bit of chicken anyway.. gradually cook it less til it's raw and try tiny pieces? Do I just go to a butcher and buy heart (my Mum used to buy it for her cats but cooked it) liver etc. How about bones? I know they are designed for bone crunching but I'm not sure how to introduce it! I'd like to try slowly moving them to raw to see if it would improve the cat-shit-ometer factor. I have been much stricter with them recently ..removing food so it's not freely available between meals because they had got so fussy, but I don't want them just on dried . Ideally I think I'd like them to have some dried (so if we are away for the day I can leave a bit down) and some raw.

Any tips on how to start please?

[RubbishMantra]

Don't feed raw myself yet, but been researching it.

To start off with, I think it's best to give them a ready made up one, which has the right ratio of bone, muscle and offal. And it also has the right supplements.

Natural Instinct seems to be well thought of.

[RubbishMantra]

Oh, and just a thought, have you had the kittens tested for giardia? It can cause recurring poo parties. Pop a shit in a bag and present the vet with it and they'll test it for you.

MKitten needed probiotic paste when we brought him home, he was very loose and smelly. Now they're lovely and firm.

[givemushypeasachance]

My two came from the shelter last summer on a mixture of dried and "any wet food in jelly", and I introduced them to a partial raw diet - they share a pouch of food in the morning and have a raw meal in the evening, with biscuits down all the time (except if they're being fussy with the raw when I confiscate the biscuits till they've at least had some of their meal!).

I did a lot of googling beforehand and there are many websites out there with different advice and guidelines. I found other forums like this one useful too so I could read other peoples' stories and questions. There seem to be a couple of different "styles" of feeding, ranging from people who effectively make their own minced-up raw cat food to people who feed mainly whole prey items or big chunks of meat and bone, and "frankenprey" which is trying to overall recreate a cat's natural prey animal in a hodge-podge of meals across the week. I didn't fancy the mincing option myself, because a) lot of prep and b) it seems to remove a lot of the chewing and gnawing benefits that giving chunks of food brings. I also haven't plucked up the courage to try giving the boys something like a feeder mouse or half a skin-on rabbit for the "full prey experience", but I might still get there one day.

When I started as I recall the first thing I did was buy some chicken wings and I just plonked one down on a plate for them. While they were somewhat interested, unsurprisingly they didn't just leap in and start gnawing away - I don't think they understood it was food. Since they'd mostly had cooked bite-size meat in jelly from a pouch, I'm not surprised! I then dialled it back a bit and tried giving them some bite-size pieces of raw chicken breast, which they liked. From there I moved on to chicken legs with most of the meat cut off in chunks, but gave the bone too - the first time Rolo carried the leg-bone off and started crunching it my heart was in my mouth because I thought he'd break his teeth or choke on a splinter, but he was perfectly happy! He's very good with bones while Monty is less thorough, but only the knobbly ends are left after they have chicken legs now.

Thighs or big leg portions are the main chicken source I use, and wings and ribs don't have much meat on but are good for crunching and providing edible bone. The boys also have beef and lamb meat occasionally - whatever is fairly cheap in terms of things like stewing steak, sometimes mince though I don't like to give that too often. I tried them on raw fish a couple of times but they weren't keen - they have tinned sardines sometimes, and egg yolks as a treat (they shouldn't have the white raw - only cooked).

The offal component of a raw diet is important as well - I don't get too hung up on the proportions as the raw is only maybe a third or so of my boys' diet, but for a full raw diet the recommendation seems to be matching the proportions of prey species in terms of meat-edible bone-organs. Heart doesn't count as organ since it's just made of muscle - the organ proportion needs to come from secreting organs like kidney and liver (often the liver proportion is given separately as regardless of what else they eat they have to have some liver). But heart is useful to give as some of the muscle meat since it has high levels of taurine. Where I live you can get chicken hearts cheap from the butchers in the Bangladeshi part of town, but even the small Tesco near me sells lamb heart - as well as several types of liver. Asda has lamb kidneys. I've tried asking a local butcher about sweetbreads and he said he could order me some in so may try that soon. My pair can be a bit fussy with the offal sometimes, Monty will usually eat the liver but Rolo often avoids it, but we persevere - I tried cooking some chicken livers recently and he had some of that, so he will cooperate sometimes!

Good luck if you decide to give it a try. I'd suggest starting small and taking it a day at a time - it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing experience.

[Archfarchnad]

How much cereal content does their normal food have? The biggest single improvement in getting rid of Archcat's dodgy tum was getting his diet practically grain-free.

We feed part raw - one meal a day every evening. He gets one 100g tray of grain-free animonda in the morning and a bit of dry Applaws (80% meat and grain free) lying around in his bowl for overnight.

The first time I fed him raw chicken he puked it up that night - all of it, only half-digested all over my rug in the living room. Apparently that's not uncommon for a first experience with raw meat. But it only happened that once. Now we have a pet raw food shop down the road from us, so I get a few kilos worth of assorted meats, pre-cubed, once a month and keep them in our freezer. I defrost one portion a day in the fridge and feed that in the evening. Because of the need for extra taurine I feed him a cat supplement as a powder sprinkled over the meat, and then warm water added and all mixed together - this is great because he loves the taste of the 'juice' so it keeps his liquid intake high.

The only meat you need to be careful about not feeding raw is pork.

He gets chicken/turkey heart (again, pre-diced) once or twice a week, and a chicken neck several times a week too, which he eats complete with the bone. We didn't have any great struggle getting him to eat these things, though, because he used to live on the streets for an unknown period of time and is pretty competent at self-service mouse-catching.

I'm not in the UK, though - my impression is that most British people use a raw food delivery service which delivers a month's supply of various meats pre-weighed and pre-portioned, so you just need to defrost it and it's ready to use.

[BagelwithButter]

You could join this FB group. Mostly about raw feeding of dogs but there are some cat owners there too. If you use search box and write in "cat" it will show specifically cat stuff - apparently there's also a cat raw feeding page as well!

Sardines, sprats, raw eggs a couple of times a week is good too. Dogs love tripe (so I assume it would be good for cats too?). When you start offal, add tiny pieces or you could get a poo explosion. Taurine is found in heart and dark meat (and doesn't need to be added artificially).

There's tons of info on this site, including a suppliers list so you can order online if you want...

[BagelwithButter]

Natural Instinct

Nutriment

[RubbishMantra]

Weird isn't it, that dogs can choke on chicken bones, but not cats.

Wonder why that is.

[MedusaIsHavingaBadHairday]

Thank you for the info. I am going to give it a try at least... their poo explosions are so bad it has to be worth a go (I'll also get some poo tested at the vets too)
I won't go 'pure' raw as I need to be able to put some dried down if I go out for a long day and also I won't worry so much about getting the balance perfect if I know they get some taurine etc in the dry, but I'd really like them to be able to east something that doesn't give them the runs!