Went to see my local butcher today. They sell poultry, beef, pork, rabbit, ox, lamb, venison, veal, pheasant, partridge, duck.. loooads of stuff! Both cuts of meat and whole carcasses. He did look at me like I was absolutely crazy when I said it was for my cats though unfortunately he said he just feed his dry!

Even better - he reckons he can sell me all sorts of hearts, kidneys, liver. Brilliant!

So my next question regarding raw feeding is this - If he doesn't have any fresh on the day, can I buy frozen liver/heart/kidney etc from him, and then grind them into the raw food... and then refreeze it all in little tubs for the feline overlords?

I think I'm going to try raw feeding. Couple of kilos of carcass, few hundred of offal, a few eggs, salmon oil, vits, taurine. Grinded together. Yum!

Anyone got any recommendations for grinders? Might buy one from amazon.

Nobody knows if I can buy frozen offal, Grind it and then refreeze? You can't really do that with meat for humans. And nobody recommends a good grinder?

If you're putting it through the grinder, you can put it through frozen, so you don't need to worry about defrosting it. I normally leave big items like hearts out for an hour just so i can manage to get a knife through them.

Oh by the way, don't add any of the egg whites to the mix, only the yolk.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&k...l_13phlwesqc_e

This is the grinder that I use.....but be warned, it handles most parts of a chicken carcass with ease, however the only time it had problems was handling partly frozen meat. It seemed to freeze the grinding mechanism and ruined the gear. Not sure which machine Tylah uses, maybe it is more robust.
The whole defrosting and refreezing thing is a bit of a pain TBH, to do it really safely you need to defrost slowly in a fridge but then you have bags of bloody meat all over the place for 24-36 hours! I tend to cheat and microwave defrost then refreeze immediately so I can do a whole batch in one short burst.

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Nellie Paddy Mitzy Milo Peggy Murphy

Millie and Monty, the White Devils!

ah okay, so it won't effect their health in the same way it would a human (refreezing meat) thanks

Cats have very strong stomach acid and a short digestive tract, so are far less likely than humans to suffer problems with bacterial overgrowth.
Someone recently made a very detailed post on here giving information on defrosting at room temperature as opposed to in a fridge. Basically the longer a meat is at room temperature then the more danger there is of bacterial overgrowth and thus food poisoning. I have also found that offal seems to spoil quicker than regular cuts of meat.
Sooooo.....don't leave offal sitting round at room temperature defrosting for too long and you should be safe, the actual refreezing is not a problem.

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Nellie Paddy Mitzy Milo Peggy Murphy

Millie and Monty, the White Devils!