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Raw Pet Food

A forum for raw-feeding families to chat, discuss, and learn!


    Need advice on transition and supplimentation

    greyloucat
    greyloucat


    Posts : 1
    Join date : 2015-04-23

    Need advice on transition and supplimentation Empty Need advice on transition and supplimentation

    Post  greyloucat Tue Apr 28, 2015 10:28 am

    Hi everyone! I'm new here, trying to transition to raw but need some help.
    This is going to be long but its a little about his past diet..you can skip to paragraph 2 if you don't want to read it haha. My cat had been on friskies (terrible, I know) for the first 2 years of his life due to me being in school and my parents paying for his food. I had been feeding him the recommended amount for a 10-12 pound cat. He loved this food, obviously, since its basically cat mcdonalds. I would usually give him a half serving of friskies and a half serving of a healthy dry food since I wanted to make up for the lack of nutrition in the wet food (I didn't know dry food wasn't so good for cats at the time). However, he got very sick and was vomiting for a few days and wouldn't eat very much. My old vet had retired so I brought my cat to his replacement, who turned out to be terrible and wasn't even concerned that he had lost almost a pound in a few days from vomiting, so I brought him to a new vet who turned out to be pretty brutally honest lol At this point after losing about a pound, he weighed 14 lbs. She said that he was 2 pounds overweight at this weight. So, I decided no more friskies, and started to feed him healthy canned food, in addition to healthy dry food. I tried weruva wet food, whole paws, earthborn, and a bunch of other healthier wet foods that weren't pate (he will never touch pate). Each time he would love it the first day or two and then stop eating it. I was feeding him for a 10 pound cat, half dry food and half wet, but he was hardly eating any of the wet food. This went on for months. Still, when he went for his next checkup at the vet....15.5 lbs! She wanted me to put him on a prescription canned diet...purina..I took 2 cans from her but told her I wasn't too happy with feeding him purina and that I would do my own research. I knew I was going to get rid of the dry food altogether, but also that he wouldn't eat any healthy wet food. Enter raw diet..

    On facebook, I saw that an old friend of mine fed her cats and dogs a raw diet. At the time when I would hang out with her, 2 of her cats were overweight and another had skin problems. None of them would ever eat their food. She told me that after a tough transition, they're all a healthier weight and her cats skin is perfect. They'll also eat whatever she puts in front of them if its raw. She gave me website to order from, reelrawdog, so I ordered some. While waiting for it to arrive, I went to a pet store and picked up some primal freeze dried raw to see how he liked it..he LOVES it. He eats it more than any wet food or dry food I've ever given him. Unfortunately, it's pretty pricey and I don't think I could afford to feed him this at every meal for the next 15 years. So I awaited the raw ground food (80% muscle, 10% organ 10% bone) that I ordered and fed him the freeze dried in the meantime. After 2 weeks, it arrived! After letting it thaw I started to separate the meat into separate containers...as I was doing this, my cat jumped up on the table, and STARTED EATING SOME! cheers I was so happy. I mixed it with a little water to make it more wetfood like and gave it to him for his dinner. He finished all of it. The next morning I tried to give him more. He kind of sniffed it for a second..was hesitant..and didn't eat it. I was discouraged, but I know cats are hard to transition. So I sprinkled some of the freeze dried raw on top, and he ate it. After that, I started to try ti mix the raw food with freeze dried...he ate it in the beginning, but then stopped eating it. I would put less and less raw food in, but he would eat around the raw food every time. I would try to mix it with a hot water, or cook it for just a second so it wasn't as cold (since I heard that may be why he wasn't eating it) but nothing. The other day, I tried to just give him some of the raw food, alone, no water or anything, cold, just how he ate it the first time. He ate it again. But after a few meals, he stopped again. Now I'm back to freeze dried at every meal. I'm just looking for tips as to how i can get him eating the ground meat. How can I slowly transition him? If I mix the raw food with freeze dried, he won't eat it. If I just leave it in there with the freeze dried, he eats around it. Also, I've been adding taurine to all of his food, but I'm not so sure what else I should be supplementing with. Please help!

    Sorry for the long post!

    Rachel

      Current date/time is Thu Mar 28, 2024 4:07 am