Interested in feeding my cats a raw diet or switching to mostly canned food, help?

I was asking a question last night about a cat food by Taste of the Wild and I had a couple answers that informed me of how bad dry food really is for cats...I was shocked to find this out. So apparently more canned food would be better or just switching to a raw diet. I would like to do the raw diet if someone can give me a good, easy, cheap recipe to do it. I also don't have a meat grinder, so is that something you HAVE to have in order to feed raw since cats are supposed to eat a small amount of bones?



If you feed your cats raw, please list what foods you buy and how much you feed them daily and WHAT meats you feed them daily. Also, how much a month approx would it cost to raw feed 2 cats? Tell me all you know! I looked at some sites, but none were really explaining the types of meat to buy.



One last question-one of my cats is a kitten, would a raw diet give him all the nutrients he needs?



THANKS!Interested in feeding my cats a raw diet or switching to mostly canned food, help?
First of all, it is the quality of the food that is most important. After all, a poor quality canned food will serve no value. There are tremendous passions about dry versus canned food. My cats have dry quality kibble available at all times, and canned food once a day. My oldest is over 15, and in perfect health.



Raw food diets that a person prepares takes a lot of attention to details, to avoid bacterial contamination, and to make sure all the trace ingredients are present. I do know of one instance where the person lost all their cats when their meat got contaminated with a deadly e coli bacteria strain. But a raw food diet can be done properly. The real issue is that your cat is the decider, so if your cat doesn't agree, your cat won't eat it.



There are commercial raw food diets that you can purchase. Although some of them had problems with bacterial contamination so even commercial companies can sometimes have problem.



So I would see if your cat would be interested in any of the commercial canned raw food diets before you would try and make your own. After all, you really don't want to spend hours making a special diet only to have your kitten refuse to eat it.



Remember, any transition to a new food should be done gradually, to avoid tummy upsets.Interested in feeding my cats a raw diet or switching to mostly canned food, help?
Don't get scared off look at www.catinfo.org or www.feline-nutrition.org for more info on the benefits of raw feeding. I personally like the Fegnion.com brand because they use skin, bone and organ in their food, which is what makes their food completely balanced.

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I would not do a raw diet, cats have nutritional needs that are difficult to meet with a raw diet, so go with canned.My only concern with an exclusively canned diet is his dental health, dry food prevents the build-up of tartar. If you feel strongly about going with just canned, ask your vet about brushing your cats' teeth, you should be doing so regardless.Interested in feeding my cats a raw diet or switching to mostly canned food, help?
I alone have had 5 cats over the years and one of my cats got a kidney failure and died from raw food. Don't even use it there is plenty of nutritious dry cat foods out there.
raw food for cats isn't good either i use meow mix for over 10 years all healthy cats never a problem with food if i feed my cats canned food gives them diarrhea always herd canned food was the worst thingInterested in feeding my cats a raw diet or switching to mostly canned food, help?
raw food aint good
Raw diets are easy and can be cheap if you know how to shop for meat. Don't let people scare you away. Ask questions on this website and get answers from other raw feeders
http://www.catster.com/
I spent about $70 a month on canned for 2 cats and about $20 a month on raw for 2 cats. It is cheaper.
Getting the nutrients right is not hard. They need muscle meat, liver, kidney, bone, and need to be supplemented with taurine and fish oil. It may seem confusing at first but once you start doing it its easy.
If you feed kibble dont leave it out all the time. Cats are not grazers. Free feeding can lead to obesity. And at least feed half canned.

And kibble does not clean teeth. It sticks to their teeth making them rot faster. Saying kibble cleans teeth is like saying if I eat pretzels they will clean my teeth. And your cats will not get kidney failure if you feed a BALANCED diet. Thats why you need to do research first.
The risk of bacteria or contaminated meat is very low. Cats are designed to handle bacteria. I have fed my cats slightly rotten meat and they had no problems. The risk of anything is VERY low.
You do not need a meat grinder. You can feed chunks. My cats eat chunks.
It can be very confusing to try and grasp everything from different individuals. I use to work as a vet technician in arizona. There is several individuals out there with stories almost like yours. I personally have recently researched all the foods once again as a nutritional advocate.. Taste of the Wild is a good choice of food. I would actually like to suggest another cat food that you should compare with. Blue Buffalo. Its an all natural diet. I have to agree with the other postings, please stay away from the raw diets. If you by chance don't get the exact amounts of nutrients and such in the food you could harm your pet more so than doing good. An all-canned diet consists of more water than that of the dry which is also not a good thing. A combination of the two is an excellent choice. I defintely would recommend checking into brushing your cats teeth as well more so with canned food involved versus dry only. Feel free to email me at angel0heart at yahoo dot com if you have any questions. I'm always researching and keeping myself up-to-date on the different foods that are available, so I can help people out!!! take care
http://www.youtube.com/user/SilentKhayos

My youtube channel. It has a video called Intro to Raw feeding. There's also a lot of videos of my cats and dog eating a raw diet.

I do not grind my pet food. At all. You loose the teeth cleaning benefits of the bone if you do. Now some cats will NOT eat large chunks. It's much easier to transition a kitten than an adult cat. Your kitten will do great on raw.

First two weeks or so I feed chicken hindquarters. You can usually get a 10lb bag fairly cheap. I usually get it for .50/lb. I also post ads on craigslist asking for freezer burned meat.
I try to feed a diet high in read meats and hearts. Heart has a lot of taurine same with red meat and cats need taurine to survive. You can supplement it as well, cats cannot overdose on taurine so it wouldn't hurt.

You do not slowly transition with a raw diet. It's cold turkey. You may have to cut the raw meat up and mix it with canned food to get an adult cat to see it as food though.

pppfffft! It's EASY! Look there's a lot of misinformation out there. Your cat will do better on a raw diet, at the very least switch her to a wet food. Cats get most of their water from the food they eat. Dry doesn't have nearly enough =(

http://feline-nutrition.org
My cats eat premium canned food and raw. The only dry food they eat is a very small amount of Wellness Core they get as a treat or when we do a hunting game a couple of times a week (I can't throw wet or raw food around the apartment!).



Two of my cats have been eating some raw food since the time they first began to eat solid food and it has certainly had no deleterious effect!



Dry cat food is associated with a number of health issues such as urinary tract blockages and diabetes.



Raw food is the most natural food for cats. Wild cats don't cook their food. Premium canned foods which attempt to replicate the nutrients AND fluid content found in wild prey are next best IMO.



Cats do not get sick from "infected meat". Consider what wild cats do when they catch something they can't finish - they cover it up (with dirt and leaves!) and may not return to eat the rest for some time.



My cats get one raw meal a day and it varies all the time. It is basically 80% muscle meat, 10% organs, and 10% edible bone.



Today it was a chicken meal I prepared yesterday consisting of a medium chicken thigh with some of the extra fat removed (it was fatty chicken) cut into small pieces (including the bone) with the lobe of one chicken liver minced fine. It was the same yesterday but the day before they had rabbit.

Rabbit is lean and bony so sometimes I add some saved chicken fat to it. The boniness is good to offset some meals that aren't so bony though. The rabbit portion was cut up and mixed with chicken liver and hearts.

Because rabbit is low in taurine I often open a 500 mg taurine capsule and sprinkle it over their rabbit meal.



I also feed turkey regularly. Other meats like beef, goat, venison they have only once or twice a week mostly because of the bone issue. Cats need to eat bones but they aren't able to eat bones form those animals. Sometimes I add a bone meal supplement and sometimes, if I have a chicken or turkey neck I'll add that.



It is inexpensive to feed a cat raw. If raw was all a cat ate it would probably eat no more than a total of 3 ounces of food per day. Possibly more for a kitten.

Cats use more of the nutrition in raw food so the total amount they need goes way down. Must be that they digest more of it.



If you want some raw diet info written by a veterinarian, read this article: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfo鈥?/a>



The author of the article above uses a grinder but you do not have to. I cut the food up into pieces the cats will eat.



You also do not have to use the egg or the fish oil. The fish oil is a nice extra though. Even if you don't choose to do raw do consider giving your cat a fish oil supplement a couple of times a week.
There is no cheap way to feed a raw diet. In addition to needing a good meat grinder, you'll also need additional supplements to add to the meat and you'll have to find a good quality source for your meats, preferably organic. Some organ meats are good to use, so you'd need to find a source that you trusted for that. It's not in their best interest to skimp or skip on the supplements, as there are some additional nutrients that they really do need to maintain optimal health. It all adds up in a hurry. If you want to know more about how to make it and what you'll need, the site below offers tons of great information.



http://www.catinfo.org



I agree that a grain free wet food diet is ideal, and this is what I have had my cats on for a few years now. I feed them primarily Wellness Core. I was feeding them Innova EVO as well, but recently heard that they were bought out by Proctor %26amp; Gamble, so I'm not as confident about the quality. Recently I've tried Merrick's Before Grain and they seem to like it okay, but not as well as they do the Wellness. I do have a couple of crunchy food addicts, so I keep a sample bag of Wellness Core dry around to give them a few kibbles as treats. For the overall cost and convenience, I personally believe that a quality commercial diet is the better choice. It really does come down to how much time and money you have to spend producing your own cat food.