the raw stuff you buy for cats.....is there any reason why I cant buy the mince from an ordinary butchers? it would only work out pennies more expensive than cat food and infinitely better for them

No reason at all.

I buy my meat from the normal shop, from butchers, from online shops, etc. As long as it's meat that's meant for humans it's fine. Also offcuts that would not normally be sold as human food are fine, although I don't feed that myself.

I've heard of people who collect roadkill and feed that as well - wouldn't recommend that though, as you never know if they'd ingested any poisons etc.

You should make sure you feed whole pieces of meat and bone as well as the mince though, as feeding mince only would not be sufficient and their teeth would suffer.
The ratios you need are roughly:
90% meat (including heart)
10% bone
10% organ meat (liver, kidneys, etc)

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probably a really silly question but how do you feed bone to cats?

You give them bones that are small enough for them to eat

So, chicken wings are a great place to start. Or if you want to go smaller, you can get a poussin, or a quail. The soft breastbone is also a good piece to start with.

Now that my cat is adult, he eats bones from rabbits fine (except the thicker bones) and if I'm feeding chicken I tend to go with the poussin rather than the regular chickens, just because he can eat every bone in the poussin, but some of the chicken bones are too thick for him. It'll be different for every cat though, some are much better at chewing than others

It's very important that the bone and meat is RAW, not cooked, as cooked bones go brittle and can be dangerous.

It's also important (unless you're feeding raw meat just as a treat and you're feeding a commercial, balanced diet as the main food) that you get the balance right - the cat needs meat, bones and organ meat so you can't just feed meat and expect it to be fine.

Hope that helps - there's many threads on raw feeding on this forum so have a search and a read

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