I and others seem to have been answering a lot of questions regarding raw feeding in the past few months, so I have pulled together some of the info in one thread. (for dogs, please see KatieFranke’s excellent thread: Raw Feeding: everything you need to know!)

This thread contains the following sections:
1) Types of raw feeding
2) Raw feeding - baby steps and transitioning from dry/wet to raw
3) A note of caution
4) Feeding a balanced diet, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and whether you need to get the mincer out
5) Feeding kittens
6) Types of meat
7) Pre- prepared minces - updated
8) Making your own food but cat not eating bones?
9) Using whole prey
10) Differences between cats and dogs
11) Sourcing
12) To supplement or not
13) Worried about bacteria and parasites?
14) Pros and Cons of raw feeding by KatieFranke
15) Further info

Hope this helps

Types of raw feeding:

I would say that they there are four categories

1 – whole prey model - whole carcasses fur feathers feet n all
2 - prey model/frankenprey - chunks of carcasses without skin fur n feathers... trying to recreate as natural a diet as possible without resorting to feeding whole prey
3 - barf - the above but usually includes mixing about 5% vegetables/grains in with the diet and using supplements
4 - barf without the veg - the above but only using supplements.

Whole prey feeding is what we all strive for. However, that is not always possible as it may be a sourcing issue, the cat might just not accept whole animals or it might prove to be too expensive. In the absence of feeding whole prey, each of the other three forms try to mimic the proportions of a typical prey -i.e the mouse. Each of them has at its heart the 80/10/10 ratio of meat,bone and offal that is based on the make-up of a mouse and other natural prey (more on that later).

There sometimes is a lot of animosity in the cat raw feeding world between those who use supplements and those who do not (see later), between those who use small amounts of vegetables or grains and those who do not; between those who try to feed a balanced diet at every meal and those who do not.

IMO neither of the other three is right or wrong or one better than the other. The beauty of feeding raw is that it is about YOUR cat and you can adapt the diet to his/her needs. At the end of the day it comes down to personal conviction what type of model you feed; not by who shouts the loudest or the most forcefully.

Be open-minded and read around the subject as much as you can (links to further info later) and make up your own mind as to how you would like to feed your cat.

Raw feeding – baby steps

Raw meat and meaty bones are an excellent way to treat your cat to a healthy and nutritious snack. You don't need to worry about the raw being a balanced meal if you feed less than 20% raw a week. So if you typically feed your cat twice a day, then you can feed up to 3 meals a week raw without having to worry about it being balanced.

If you only want to feed a few meals a week raw, then anything goes as long as it is raw, not processed, cured or smoked, marinaded etc. You can feed meats of any animal as well as heart, liver, kidney, lung, tripe, spleen, sweetbreads etc – again of any animal. Try to provide your cat with as much variety as you can. Just try not to feed too much liver or heart as these frequently give cats runny tums in larger quantities (as well as possibly giving your cat too much Vit A in the case of liver, which is fat soluble and any excess therefore not secreted out - more on that later).



Raw feeding - transitioning from dry/wet
If your cat is currently eating dry food and is not accepting the raw food you put in front of him/her, then it is frequently advised to move them on to wet food first before raw food is introduced. For some rather detailed advice, see here: http://www.catinfo.org/#Transitionin...o_Canned_Food_

Alternatively, you can crush up your cat's favourite kibble and start coating the wet/raw food with that. That trick does work for a lot of cats.

If your cat is already eating wet food, then the transition to raw food is often much simpler. If the cat doesn't accept the raw food immediately, then start by adding little bits of raw food in with the wet food, increasing the amount of raw food you are adding over time while at the same decreasing the amount of the wet food (don't want the cat to get porky in the process ).

A note of caution:

There are lots of studies, primarily in the US, that have found homemade foods to be lacking and the cats of homemade foods to be deficient. Now, a lot of this research has been sponsored by pet food manufacturers, so is biased. There are also problems with selection, control groups, the kind of diets being compared etc etc.

BUT it highlights an important thing. If you don't make yourself knowledgeable about cats, their nutritional needs, what a raw food diet can easily provide, where it is lacking, and what you can do to rectify all that, then you are setting yourself and your cat up for potential later problems. And these are the types of cats that vets will see and form their negative raw opinion on imo.

While it is not rocket science, it is not just the case of putting a slab of meat on the plate and saying, oh wow my cat is eating raw. In those cases cats will be worse off than they would be on a junk food commercial diet imo.

I don't mean to put anyone off raw feeding, but it is quite a responsibility that one is taking on that I think everyone needs to be aware of. For a link on what the Pet Food Manufacturing Association (PFMA) thinks of raw: http://www.pfma.org.uk/images/file/R...s%20190509.pdf

In the words of BillyBoysMammy:

A COMPLETE raw diet will imo ALWAYS be better than ANY commercial food
but
Even the lowest quality COMPLETE COMMERCIAL food will be better than an UNBALANCED incomplete raw diet

Feeding a balanced raw diet

How much to feed? They say about 2-3% of the cat's weight as a rough guide to daily amounts. Unless they are kittens in which case anything goes (within reason).

The ratio
To feed a balanced diet you need to feed your cat approx these ratios:
80% muscle meat, including intestines, gizzards, tongue; of which up to 15% heart;
10% bone;
5% liver;
5% offal (kidney, lung, brain etc).

The need for calcium
Calcium is not a dietary supplement for cats but a necessity. So the 10% or thereabouts are not negotiable. You will need to get the correct balance of calcium in their food to prevent problems later as well as to prevent runny tums and calcium deficiencies (not enough calcium) or constipation (too many bones). If you cannot feed enough bones, then see whether you can get ground ones or ground eggshells or calcium supplements (such as bonemeal, calcium phosphate etc). More on that later.

Bones
Most people seems to think the opposite - that bones are fine when they are boiled but no no no, they splinter more easily when boiled and become a hazard. Bones must be fed raw. Try and feed meat and bones that a cat might find in the wild, such as:
* quail
* woodpigeon
* cornish hen or poussin
* rabbit ribs, legs or even a whole rabbit
* chicken necks
* chicken wings
* chicken ribs

Big, weight-bearing bones will be too big for cats, so a cat will struggle if not find it impossible to do much with lamb or beef bones.

There are also the animals that are typically termed whole prey in raw feeding circles, which include
* day old chicks
* pheasant chicks
* mice
* small rats
* hamsters
* guinea pigs

These can be bought online or in store from good reptile shops.


Eggs
A lot of raw feeders also feed a raw egg once or twice a week. Raw egg is a great source of Biotin as well as Vit A and E and helps to keep the coat in great condition.

It is often said that you should only feed the egg yolk raw, not the egg white as that contains a protein called Avidin which inhibits the synthesis of biotin. However, according to the latest thinking that thinking is no longer correct as the egg yolk contains enough biotin to counteract the biotin-binding effects of avidin. So, you no longer need to leave the egg white or you no longer need to lightly boil it.

Amino acids
Although cats can synthesise some of amino acids, there are some essential ones that cats cannot make themselves and which therefore need to be provided with their diet. These include:

Taurine
Taurine is an essential amino acid that needs to be provided in their diet. Unlike other animals, cats cannot synthesise taurine from food themselves. There are various natural raw sources of taurine, including heart, dark meats, or muscle meats, such as tongue. As said, dark meat contains more taurine than white meat, so choose leg meat over breast meat if you can. Alternatively, you can get a taurine powder that just needs to be dissolved and added to the food.

If you mince meat, then you will need to feed more taurine as processing, such as mincing, lessens the taurine content by providing bacteria with more surface area. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18608559

Please note that you will frequently read that freezing has a detrimental effect on taurine. That appears to be a raw feeding myth as to my knowledge there are no studies that have directly explored the effect of freezing on taurine. For an indirect source of info that freezing doesn't alter taurine content: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2144588

If you add soluble fibre to your cat's diet (such as rice or other grains) then you will also need to add a little more taurine : http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/132/6/1745S

Read up on the importance of taurine in any cat’s diet, including raw: Taurine in Cats and http://web.archive.org/web/200801280...urine_chmr.htm


Arginine
Another essential amino acid in cats is Arginine, which is necessary for normal protein synthesis and ammonia detoxification. A complete lack of arginine in a cat's diet can have immediate consequences, such as ammonia intoxication.

Meat sources of arginine are fish, poultry, eggs, pork and beef. For more info on arginine sources: http://www.dietaryfiberfood.com/larginine-high.php

For more info: http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/...ct/108/12/1944
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/109/8/1368.pdf


Vitamins
There are some vitamins that a cat can synthesise for itself (e.g. Vit C) but a cat needs to regularly ingest all vitamins in its food.

Three of these essential vitamins are A, D, and E. Because these are fat soluble and are therefore stored in the body and are not secreted out, it is important to read up on those as it is possible to overfeed on them.

Vit A - essentially the reason why you feed the 5% liver. Cats cannot synthesise Vit A out of its precursor beta-carotine, so it is essential that a bio-available source of Vit A is fed. Vitamin A is need for healthy sight, growth and immune function. Cats require 100iu per kg of body weight per day.

PS: Essential vitamins, minerals and amino-acids and their sources will be added here in due course

For more information on the nutritional needs of cats, see FEWill's PF post: Nutritional Needs for Cats
More resources are found in the section at the end.



To mince or not to mince

No need to mince your food. Minces remove one of the great benefits of raw feeding from the diet - chewing! If you make your own food and your cat doesn't eat bones then cut the meat in big chunks so your cat still needs to tear and chew. Not quite as good as eating bone but better than minces. Mincing also lessens the taurine content in meat by providing a greater surface area for bacteria to do their work apparently.

If you are set on mincing then there is also a halfway approach. Mince the bones and some of the muscle meat but dice up the offal and a proportion of the muscle meat. That way your cat also gets something to chew on.

Raw feeding kittens

You feed a kitten the same food that you feed an adult cat. BUT you provide it in smaller portions over more frequent meals. With young kittens it may also be necessary to cut the meat more finely or to mince it. Kittens should also only get smaller bones, such as from a one day chick, rabbit ribs, quail. They may also only tear meat of the bone initially without crunching the bone itself, but that is ok. They are exercising the jaw muscles and aiding dental health.

As said earlier, kittens can eat as much as they want. While it is possible to feed the above mentioned ratio of 80/10/10 over time in adult cats, it is advisable to feed a kitten a balanced meal imo to make sure that they get all the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that they need to grow.



Type of meat

Any meat goes (even pork in the UK but not elsewhere on the continent) as long as it is raw, not marinaded, not processed, cured or smoked.

In terms of offal, anything goes that you can lay your hands on: lung, spleen, kidney, sweetbreads, brain.

Keep in mind that the likes of heart, tongue, gizzards, intestines do not count as offal in raw feeding but as muscle meat.

If you are feeding lean meats such as chicken, then leave the skin on. Cats need fat in their diet.

There are some meats that you should freeze before feeding raw - particularly wild meats, such as rabbit, quails, venison to kill off any possible parasite.

Most importantly of all, try to feed as much of a variety as you can.

Pre-prepared minces

The easiest way into raw feeding would be to get pre-prepared raw minces.

Darlings Real Dog Food - Working dog minces

Darlings (Real, Raw, Organic Dog Food Supplier - Home) do an introductory offer of 3kg of minces for £15 including delivery. They updated their website, and now have some info about their cat minces: http://www.darlingsrealcatfood.com/.

They do rabbit now (with lamb) and chicken wings from free range chickens. Darlings minces are made to the 80/10/10 ratio but are quite expensive as they only use free-range, local meat. Quite expensive at £6 per kilo but it comes to less than £1 for an average sized cat per day. Minimum order is 15 kg now I believe. So you need to have freezer space.

They also do some fab snacks now, including some dried venison! Worth a try.

For a review of Darlings by pf member BSH see: Review: Darlings Minces for Cats (well, for Working Dogs really!)


DAF minces & Raw To Go

DAF (Durham Animal Feed) minces are cheaper than Darlings and coarser. They do a variety of minces, including beef, chicken, lamb, rabbit venison. Please note that the ingredients in these minces vary according to season and what they get in from suppliers.

Overall, there is some uncertainty imo as to whether these minces contain meat/bone/liver/other offal in the rightish proportions. It appears that the rabbit and venison minces come closest to the required ratio. The chicken minces contain hardly any offal, and the beef one contains too much bone. It also appears that their minces are low on liver. If you are interested in feeding those minces then please phone up DAF and confirm ratios and ingredients of the minces you are interested in feeding. I have talked to them numerous times now over the past few months and the answers tend to differ.

They also don't include enough heart so would you need to add heart or taurine powder. You would have to anyhow considering that this is a minced product.

Also check out Raw To Go (Home). They are in Wales but deliver DAF minces. For a review of Raw to Go by pf member Janee see: Review: Raw to go

In both cases the wait for delivery would be 1 day. They need to deliver it quickly as it is fresh/frozen meat.


Other companies

More raw food, including minces as well as bones, tripe etc are available from The DogFood Company: http://www.thedogfoodcompany.co.uk/. The rabbit mince is again the closest in terms of the required ratio. The beef one doesn't contain any bones and the chicken one contains too much bone.

Rabbit minces you can get from places like Woldsway. English Rabbit Meat

There are other pre-prepared minces available for dogs. Personally I would stay clear of minces such as Prize Choice as they do not contain enough bone (calcium) or offal.

While I personally don't recommend that your cat stays on these minces for any length of time, as you don't get the teeth cleaning benefit from minces (unless you supplement that with meaty bones a few times a week), I do think they are a great first step into raw feeding while you get your head around sourcing your meats and making yourself more knowledgeable. (Please note the the yahoo rawcat group does not support minces).

Making your own food but cat not eating bones?

If your cat is not eating bones then there are several options to introduce calcium into the food. You are trying to achieve an ideal calcium/phosphorus ratio of about 1.2:1.

1) you could ask whether your butchers will grind them for you. My experience has been that many are loathe to do that because it blunts their blades but you could be lucky!

2) buy ground eggshells, they contain about 38.8% calcium and are a good alternative to bones.

3) if you eat eggs, keep the shell, get rid of the membrane/skin inside it, wash it out, dry it and store it in the fridge as you are collecting. Once you have a few, grind them in a grinder and you have ground eggshells.

4) calcium carbonate - contains about 37% calcium. As a guideline, you need about 0.5g per 100g of meat to balance the calcium/phosphorus - that is only a guide, some meats need more or needs less but that is a good average

5) bonemeal - the one i get has Calcium 35,7 %, Phosphorus 25,6 %. As a guide, you need about 1,6 g of bonemeal per 100g meat every 4th meal.

6) calcium citrate - about 21% calcium. As a guidelines, you need about 0.9g of citrate per 100g of meat. Again that is a guide.

7) Dicalciumphosphate - Calcium 25,5%, Phosphorus 18%

8) meaty bone meal - contains about 14% calcium but also include protein 49%, phosphorus 14%, fat 8%, ash 39%, sodium 0.6% and magnesium 0.26%.

9) Lithothamnium calcareum powder - Depending on product but around Calcium 34%, Phosphorus 0,08 %. Derived from an algae (Lithothanium Calcareum) Calcium/phosphorus ratio of around 420:1.



Finally, get your hands on some gelatin to add some cartilege into your cat's diet if you are using calcium supplements as outlined above.

Using whole prey

One way to feed your cats raw is to feed them whole prey. This is the most ideal way to feed them (in that the food is ideally balanced by mother nature to provide good proportions of meat, bone and offal).

What prey can you get? You can pick up insects, mice and chicks from reptile shops. You can also see whether you can get other whole animals such as rabbit, quail, poussin, duck, vole etc. Maybe you are lucky and have a local game keeper who will be able to get you things.

If you are going to feed whole prey only, then you need to make sure that there is enough variation in their diet. A cat just fed on chicks and farmed mice does not get the most nutritionally balanced diet imo.

Chicks while nicely proportioned in terms of the 80/10/10 ratio do not contain enough taurine, calcium & phosphorus (their bones are still growing too - well or are just a day or two old and the muscles haven't really worked yet, so is lacking in taurine). If you feed a lot of chicks then you will need to press out the yolk sack or else your cat will get too much Vit A.

With factory farmed mice, well i don't think they get the same diet and exercise that a field mouse would get. That is speculation as to my knowledge no one has compared the nutritional value of a field mouse and a factory farmed mouse. Personally, I also have issues with animal welfare when it comes to farmed mice and i would be careful about my supplier and their ethics.

A link to a doc that outlines the nutritional value of prey fed in zoos, which might be of interest: http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/zoo/Who...nal02May29.pdf

Differences between cats and dogs


There are a few very subtle but important differences to feeding your cat raw. First is that a cat needs to have taurine in their diet. Typically, heart is included in their diet as this is a taurine rich meat - about 15% of the muscle meat can be heart. Overall there is more taurine in muscles that work a lot ,so dark meat (such as leg or shoulder meat) contains more taurine than paler meat. If you choose to feed vegetables and grains (BARF) then that cannot be more than 5% of the overall meal (unlike the up to 30% for dogs).

For more info between the nutritional difference between cats and dogs: http://www.thepetcenter.com/article.aspx?id=3405