Hello all.
I am working on a page that discusses home cooked cat food as an option, because some people who don't want to feed commercial food are not comfortable feeding raw (yet
)
I know that several of the raw premixes (TC Feline, Alnutrin, etc) can be added to cooked meat and still be complete, and I know at least one company (
https://www.knowbetterpetfood.com/cat_food_u-stew) makes a pre-mix that is designed to balance cooked meat. However, I would like to include some recipes that don't use pre-mixes, and I can't seem to find any good ones. All of the ones I have found include species-inappropriate ingredients like grains, sweet potatoes, oat bran, soy lecithin, etc. The closest I have found to a good recipe is this one from Artsy Catsy:
Homemade Cat Food Recipe
* 2 whole (preferably organic) chickens (boiled, de-skinned, de-boned and chopped – reserve broth)
* 2 containers organic vegetable baby food (without onion powder, toxic to cats)
* 3 jars chicken baby food
* 6-8 teaspoons canola oil
* 6-8 teaspoons flax oil
* 6-8 teaspoons fish oil
* 5-7 rounded tablespoons human-grade bone meal (We use Solgar Bone Meal Powder with Vitamin B-12 from the health food store)
* One 6 ½ ounce can minced clams with juice (for taurine – a MUST)
* 1-2 or more cups reserved broth (to make it Lucy-juicy!)
Mix all ingredients well, and freeze in ½ to 1 cup portions in snack or sandwich bags. Thaw bags in hot water or in microwave before serving. We adult divakitties will eat ½ to 1 cup per day.
Important: Once a week, add 1/2 cup organic organ meat (kidney or liver) and once or twice a week add one or two hardboiled organic or high-omega eggs
http://artsycatsy.blogspot.com/2007/01/healthy-cat-food-recipe-from.htmlEven this recipe isn't what I would consider "good." I feel as though the canola and flax oils shouldn't be there, and neither should the vegetable baby food (though amber goes nuts for sweet potato baby food; at one point I was adding small amounts for fiber); chickens can vary greatly in size so a specific amount of meat should be indicated, as should a specific amount of bone meal), and there should be a vitamin e supplement include in there as well (and possibly a vitamin b complex, but that one is debatable); I would like to see the liver included in the recipe, and this recipe indicates that kidney and liver are interchangeable - which they are not. According to NutritionData, for example, beef kidney contains roughly 9X the amount of vitamin D and 1/3 the amount of vitamin A that beef liver does. I also feel like since raw bone isn't being used, there should be a source of digestible collagen, like gelatin, added (my research on bone composition and the importance of collagen led me to start trying to include it in Amber's diet). Clams are extremely high in taurine, but I don't yet know if they are an appropriate substitute for a crystallized taurine supplement because I haven't done adequate research to determine whether or not they are safe to feed every day.
I plan on attempting to contact Dr. Pierson, Anne Jablonski, and possibly Michelle Bernard to see if their recipes are adequate when the meat is cooked, but in the mean time, does any one know of a balanced, species-appropriate home-cooked recipe for cats?