Meaty Monday: Raw Cat Food Resources

In all our research, the web has definitely been our best resource-finding tool.  To begin learning about raw feeding cats, we searched for others who switched their cats and kittens to raw food.  Our favorite site we stumbled across is rawfed.com. Through this we were able to find information on raw feeding both dogs and cats.  Following the link to rawfedcats.org, Linda Zurich's website about the ins and outs of feeding cats a biologically appropriate diet. Being a cat aficionado herself, Zurich understands and addresses the difficulties of switching cats from kibble, or "doom nuggets" as she calls them, and gives a step-by-step guide to converting your cat.  We also searched through Amazon.com to find any raw feeding book specifically for cat owners.  The only one we found was Whole Health for Happy Cats by Sandy Arora.  In this book, she gives an in-depth explanation of not only feeding raw, but also providing holistic care for your cat.  Arora provides numerous recipes and colorful pictures to make the book an interesting and fun read.

Meaty Monday: Freezer Organization

With five dogs on a raw food diet, we have to stock pile meat and veggies, unless we want to go on daily visits to the grocery store to feed our dogs.  We decided that we did not want to have to go to the store weekly, either, which means that we can not simply refrigerate the dog food.  So, that means that we buy in bulk and freeze the dogs' meals.  In the books we read, the recommended method was to buy a big box of meat, stick it in the freezer, and chip off the parts we wanted to feed every day.

Since a giant 40-pound block of chicken backs will not fit in our tiny freezer in the laundry room, and the kitchen freezer was declared "human food only", we couldn't freeze the way the books taught.  We also wanted a way to facilitate feeding, and so we would remember what to feed who and when, so Olivia came up with what we dubbed "the bag method." This consisted of having a baggie for every meal of the week for each dog.  Then, we put the bags in containers labeled with the dogs' names and stuck them in the freezer.

 This method sufficed for a little while, however there were some pretty prevalent issues that could not be over looked.  First and foremost, this method took up wwwwaaaaaaayyyy too much room in the freezer.  There was also the problem of the meat freezing to the bag, so if we ever forgot to thaw the dogs' breakfast or dinner, we had to pry the meat off of the plastic while praying that we didn't rip a giant hole in the bag and have to replace it.  We also had to wash the bags by hand if we didn't want to spend a gazillion dollars buying plastic baggies.  This meant that at the end of each week we ended up with a sinkful of dirty bags that no one wanted to wash and dry.
So, that left us stumped. We wanted a simpler storage method that also had an easier washing solution.  Ideally, we could toss the meat into containers and stack them in the freezer. But how could we make the RMBs not stick together? 

Here is our solution:

Chicken wings are Tucker and Spryte's favorite RMB!

When we buy the food, we grease two of our "dog" cookie sheets with olive oil and lay out the meat so that it freezes in individual pieces. That way, when all of it is put in a container, it doesn't stick together.  The first day or two is spent freezing all the meat, but once it's done, it will last for three or four weeks! After freezing, we pull the trays out of the freezer and quickly dump all the RMBs into their designated container.  Daisy's RMB's are too big to fit in any of our containers, so we still use baggies for her.  However, instead of putting individual meals in the baggies, we use them as mass storage devices. Usually, we can fit 4-5 chicken leg quarters or 6-8 chicken backs into one gallon-sized freezer bag.

We found an old dry-erase calendar, wrote out the feeding schedule with the amounts for each dog and stuck it to the front of our freezer. Now, we just check the schedule and pull out the pieces we need as we need them.  Then, when a container is emptied, we can just throw it in the dishwasher and grab a different one to fill! Our freezer is also now spacious enough for the all important half gallon of ice cream that can't fit into the kitchen freezer.

So much more room!

 Eventually, we removed the ice maker to create even more space, and now we can fit in enough meat and veggies to last us almost a month and a half!

--Emma

Meaty Monday: New Research Opportunity!

In June our local animal shelter hosts a huge cat adoption event called KittyPalooza, and my aunt Laurie adopted a little tuxedo kitten!

Meet P.K. (that stands for Poor Kitty)

Recently, Laurie was over at our house and we started to talk about P.K.  Emma and I had mentioned raw food to her before, and she was interested when we started our dogs on their new diet, but she decided to not switch P.K.  She started to complain about how terrible his litter box smelled, which turned into the perfect segue for persuading her to switch P.K. to a raw diet.

Why?  Because feeding a raw diet for both cats and dogs results in smaller poop that has an extremely low odor.  As in, almost no smell.  We usually can't even tell if one of the little dogs has had an accident inside until we see the poop!  (OK, that's pretty gross, but it's the truth.)

After hearing this, Laurie decided to try out a raw diet.  The only problem is that neither she nor I has any experience with feeding cats raw.  It's the perfect (or should I say, purrfect?) opportunity for more research!

I'll keep you updated on my progress!  :)   

--Olivia

Meaty Monday: Adventures in Raw

Seven years ago, Olivia and I traveled to Houston to pick up Brego from his breeder. When we got to her house, she introduced us to all of her Papillons and told us about Dr. Ian Billinghurst's B.A.R.F. diet, which she fed to her dogs in patty form. She encouraged us to keep up with the diet and included Dr. Billinghurst's book The B.A.R.F Diet in Brego's puppy packet. 

We ordered some of the patties and fed them to Brego for the first few weeks, but the patties were expensive, the book too science-y for us at that age, and Brego seemed too picky. Since Brego liked the kibble that the Labs were eating better than his B.A.R.F. patties, we switched him to dry food.


One year ago we started feeding raw.  Here is our story and what we've learned along the way:

After battling Brego's bad teeth and breath, fondly referred to as "death breath," Olivia and I decided to look into a raw diet once more. We were inspired by a few of our agility, trainer, and breeder friends who swear by a raw diet and by the fact that our expanding pack of five all had different health needs: seasonal allergies and dermatitis, gingivitis and bad breath, lack-luster coats, not to mention digestive "issues". So began the long, exciting, stressful, time-consuming, fascinating, and over-all successful venture into raw-food land.

The first mission on our raw quest was to acquire as many books on the subject as possible. Being college students, we decided to take another crack at Dr. Billinghurst's book and found it to be a fairly easy read. Anyone with an understanding of basic biology should be able to easily comprehend everything in Billinghurst's book.  The other books we acquired are: Work Wonders by Tom Lonsdale; Unlocking the Canine Ancestral Diet by Steve Brown; Raw Dog Food by Carina Beth Macdonald; and Raw & Natural Nutrition for Dogs by Lew Olson.  Lonsdale's book was a very easy read but he promotes a "prey" driven diet that was not conducive to how we wanted to feed our dogs.  Steve Brown's book proved to be fairly interesting but very tedious to read, it also focuses on supplementing a kibble diet rather than feeding raw.  The last two books on our list proved to be the most helpful.  Carina Beth Macdonald is not a veterinarian or a nutritionist but her insight and instructions prove to be the most helpful.  She explains everything in plain, simple, straight forward terms--there's even a chapter about poop!  The second most helpful book is Lew Olson's Raw & Natural Nutrition for Dogs.  Olson is a canine nutrition specialist.  She lays out nutritional values for various proteins, supplements, etc.  in tables that make figuring out portions a breeze.  She also outlines diets for several types of dogs from puppies to seniors.

And so, we delve into the world of raw food and BARF diets. We'll keep you posted on our progress. :)