Cat Gang - crystal prevention

[JB]

How long does it take to freeze them enough to put into a bag? I worry that by the time I got the last set of sheets into the freezer, the raw would have been sitting out too long

I probably still won’t do it LOL Only because I have the room for the containers, and once they’re in there and in the freezer, I’m DONE, and since I do this on a weekend afternoon (can’t do it on a week day since hubby works a full time normal job from home), I don’t want cookie sheet duty lasting into the night LOL

[ASBJumper]

100% get not wanting to waste the bag of expensive dry food, but… dang… the ingredients… UGH…

“Corn gluten meal, poultry by-product meal, rice, tuna, oat fiber, soybean hulls, canola meal, soy protein isolate”…

(ps - to anyone lurking and reading this thread… just FYI, when pet food ingredients say “chicken/poultry by-product meal”, that does NOT mean good quality, high-grade chicken meat… )

[deweydee]

I usually give it like two hours ish to where the edges hold their shape, but they’re not frozen fully through. I just put the remaining mix back in the fridge between.

[JB]

Thanks, and yeah, that won’t work for as much as I make, but that’s ok!

[SMK]

It sounds like you already have a plan of action, but just adding this in case anyone in the future could find the info helpful. I have a 15 year old who has had non-bacterial urine issues her whole life.

I personally wanted my cat on a fancy, grain-free food, but taking her off the urinary specific diet always meant a relapse within a few months for us. And unfortunately, my cat has a chicken allergy which means none of the rx wet foods work for her.

If you’re stuck with dry for one reason or another, I add water to my dry food to make a pseudo-wet food. I add in some wet treat to make it a bit more gravy-like.

[barnesthenoble]

Just wanted to chime in as another person who has fought crystals and urinary issues in cats. Two of which resulted in PU surgeries–I really truly think I could have avoided the first PU for my guy Kevin (whose blockages were all caused by struvite) had we switched off of dry food sooner. His PU is what finally kicked me into gear to getting the cats off of free-fed dry food (even high quality stuff like Orijen) and onto wet, then eventually homemade raw (with some canned included in my rotation so that if I need someone else to feed for any length of time, they’ll eat canned even if they’re not happy about it). The second PU kitty has been much more complicated, but thankfully crystals haven’t ever been his issue.

I will second/third the suggestion of homemade raw (or cooked). I use meat completers balanced to AAFCO recommendations, because I don’t want to worry about making sure I have all of the supplements just right etc. I primarily use Alnutrin and EZComplete, sometimes TCFeline as well. With Alnutrin you need to add liver and water to boneless meat, EZComplete just water to boneless meat, TCFeline has a few different options. All of these completers can also be used on cooked meat, you just need to cook and cool the meat prior to adding the completers.

I’m feeding eight cats on this diet and have been for the last three years. It is SO much cheaper than doing canned food–I fought the raw transition because of a lot of the fearmongering I’ve seen online and from my vet, but was finally forced into it when I just could not afford to keep all of my cats on canned food. Until 2021 I had a decent rotation of higher-end and lower-end canned foods with acceptable ingredients, but the supply chain issues resulted in many different brands being reformulated or discontinued, and prices skyrocketed. I couldn’t do $600+/month to feed the cats, much as I wish I could.

I started with EZComplete, which is really quite simple. You’ll need a kitchen scale that is accurate to grams, and containers to store the food in–I use primarily 16oz mason jars because of how many cats I’m feeding. I go through approx 3 mason jars a day. You feed raw by weight (usually 2-4% of cats bodyweight, adjust within depending on need to gain or lose), and I have some pretty large cats so most folks not feeding 8 of them would go through a lot less, lol. I also have a standing offer to accept any wide-mouth jars from coworkers–my favorites are the Lays’ queso/salsa jars, they’re a great size and easy to fill I started with ground meat from the grocery store, which over time evolved to me buying a small meat grinder from Costco so I could take advantage of sales. The grinder’s not strong enough to grind bones, but I just use completers that call for boneless meat. I live in a HCOL area, and meat prices have definitely risen over the past few years, but with the grinder and freezer space I can consistently make cat food for less than $3.50/lb. I go through about 2.5 lbs per day, which is light years cheaper than feeding canned (when I did the math, averaging canned costs at about $2.25/can which is honestly low for what I would be paying now, each cat needing from 1-2.5 cans per day…eye-watering). I rotate through proteins, primarily beef/pork/chicken/turkey but also occasionally bison, lamb, venison, rabbit, and elk from the fancier grocery store. There are also multiple websites catering to raw feeders where you can order various meats, but they are of course more expensive.

Added bonus is that my cats are all much happier and healthier than they were. Much shinier coats, with more energy, improved bloodwork and urinalysis. It’s also eliminated the GI symptoms in one of my kitties–even on high-quality canned and prescription diet, with added probiotics and other meds, he would have intermittent diarrhea and frequent blood in the stools along with truly heinous gas. This had been an issue since he was kitten. He was around 4yo when we switched to raw, and in the last three years his GI issues have completely resolved.

The vet practice I use has multiple vets, and I’ve seen all of them depending on the timing of appointments. Some of the are pretty savvy with raw and are interested in the completers I use. There are some I definitely prefer over others, and a few of the more recent grads have given me the raw lecture and occasionally still try to. I remain respectful but firm that the results are pretty evident in the bloodwork and health of my animals. It certainly hasn’t cured every ailment (like my ongoing battle with FIC in my second PU kitty Sylvester), but I haven’t had crystals pop up in any of the UA in the last three years! knock wood I haven’t had any issues identified on UA for 7 of the 8 cats (Sylvester being the outlier) since the switch.

I do understand that a lot of folks do raw incorrectly, and an unbalanced diet can absolutely have negative effects and is a worse option than wet food. It’s not as simple as just feeding an 80/10/10 mix, and certainly not okay to feed plain raw meat without balancers. I understand the vets’ concerns, but most have been reassured when I’ve explained the idea behind using a completer, having the nutrients balanced to AAFCO standards, weighing out each individual cat’s meals, etc.

[JB]

@barnesthenoble

EZComplete

Thanks for that info on the EZComplete! I’m going to look into that. I still have enough supplements to make another couple of batches of raw, but it WOULD be nice to occasionally swap out chicken for another protein, and I don’t have a recipe for that.

[barnesthenoble]

I love EZComplete, it’s super straightforward and all of the cats love it. It’s the most expensive of the three completers I use, but it has a kidney-friendly calcium/phos source and I don’t have to worry about mixing/grinding liver into the batch when I use it. It made the transition to raw really easy and made me much more confident about branching out to other completers. https://www.foodfurlife.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html#/

I also like Alnutrin, but have to make sure to do the math re: liver (sometimes I use freeze dried, sometimes I use fresh depending on whether I’m grinding meat or using pre-ground). TCFeline is also good, but has the same thing re: liver although I think they just released one with liver included.