[Lulusmum]

I am slowly trying new things for my 9 before I make the full transition to raw.

I now have a supply of rabbit, but I don't no what to do with it. It has been skinned for me and chopped into about 4 pieces.

How large a bit can you give the cats? To be honest I can cut the small bones but I am having trouble getting though the spine, so I am thinking of just cutting the meat of.

Any advice would be truly grateful

 

[hobbs2004]

Is this fresh rabbit or has it previously been frozen? I could be wrong but the advice is that any "wild' meat, such as quail, venison, rabbit etc, is frozen first to kill some bacteria/parasite or other. BillyBoy'sMammy or the Twins (or Merlin'sMum :thumbup will most certainly know...

I am not sure I understand your question Do you mean how big can the individual pieces be? I typically feed goulash size pieces of meat.

I am not all sure I have helped

 

[MerlinsMum]

Lucky you!

A strong pair of good quality kitchen scissors may help, or just a combination of cutting and trying to pull/twist apart at the joints, etc. If your cats like it, I'm sure they will be able to cope with large pieces on the bone.

If they don't, and you really can't get it into smaller pieces, then cooking it might be better but it's a real pain trying to sift out the myriad of tiny bones afterwards.

Cats usually do enjoy rabbit - it's one of the very few prey animals they can catch themselves, that you can give them. The main parasite to worry about would be tapeworm so if it is wild rabbit, make sure you keep up to date with your worming.

 

[Lulusmum]

The 2 youngest will eat most things but I have 4 over 11 that still need convincing, and an 8 year old with no teeth that has a go.


My stud will eat it, am I okay giving him a whole rib cage or should I break that down a bit? not a lot of meat on it but it will give him somthing to crunch with a few chunks I have taken of the bits I can't cut?

You will have to put up with my silly questions for while I am a complete raw novice.

 

[Daisyandchlo]

I tend to use pruners (or heavy duty kitchen shears) for the jointing of thick bones. Rabbit spines are difficult to get through though. What I find works is to use the pruners to crack/weaken the spinal joints, then break it by bending the joints with my hands.

If your cats' can manage to strip the meat from the bone, and are eating whole bones (like chicken wings) then even a whole rabbit wouldn't be classes as too big - especially for 9 of them. It all depends on the size of the rabbit and how many it's feeding in one go.
My cats' aren't eating whole bone yet. But once they are they'll get a large chunk (a whole quarter rabbit) to deal with

 

[Lulusmum]

As I said the two young boys will eat bones, just not the others, so really its just feeding them the bones and the others will have to have the meat cut off.

I had to stop feeding the chicken wings, it kept upsetting their tummies

 

[MerlinsMum]

Rabbit spines are difficult to get through though. What I find works is to use the pruners to crack/weaken the spinal joints, then break it by bending the joints with my hands.

Yes, that's about it! The piece with the spine & meat each side is the 'saddle', and can be broken using that method.

Lulu'smum, maybe you could take a slightly diferent approach with your oldie? From reading the raw lists, there are other ways to get the calcium into them that would come from the bones, if they can't or won't deal with bones. If you keep all your eggshells, dry them out then use a coffee grinder/spice mill/pestle & mortar to grind them down ino a very fine powder, this is a pure form of calcium that can be added by the pinch to muscle and offal meat.

If you take the meat off the saddle, then find you're left with a length of spine that nobody will tackle, then that's a good candidate for cooking, poaching to make a rabbit stock as it'll be easy to separate the vertebrae from the stock when cooked. This could be frozen and used to add as a gravy to other meals, or would be ideal for tempting the appetite of a sick kitty... possibly could even be syringed in if liquidised enough.