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Old September 1st, 2012, 07:44 AM
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Love4himies Love4himies is offline
Rescue is my fav. breed
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Boating in the 1000 Islands
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Hi Lise C. Yay for making your own cat food

The 80-10-10 ratio is the ratio that would make up a cat's prey.

I used the recipe that used to be on this website, but they've changed it since:

http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood#The_Recipe

I don't add water or salt when I make my food as I heat up water in the cat dish when I am preparing each meal, then add the raw so it is somewhat warm for them. It's easier to judge salt by individual meals, than in a huge batch.

I went by the weights on the packaging and yes, I had to add different cuts of chicken (to make up a whole chicken), or add other meat types to make up the 80% muscle meat. After knowing how much bone & muscle meat I have I bought the other 10% weight of organs (heart/kidneys/liver, of which 50% was liver/25%kidney/25% heart). I do leave some skin on the chicken (cut off the fatty part ) as cats get their Vit D from skin of their prey, not from the sun.

Chicken backs or thighs are much too high in bone content so you would have to add other meat to it. You will be able to tell if you meat has too much bone and their feces would be whitish and hard, and they may become constipated.

I buy meat that is on sale and freeze it until I make my next batch. I do prefer to buy whole chickens, so when I can get them at 1.99/lb I buy a lot and freeze them. Would love to get some rabbit, but can't find any here in Kingston.

I have 4 cats who eat half raw/half quality canned. Raw costs me about 15 bucks a week, commercial canned costs me about 30, so twice the cost of raw .

All my cats prefer venison, so if you have a hunter friend that will give you some scrap meat, that will help with the cost. We used to have one that hunted goose, but he's moved .
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