Feeding your cat(s) per month?

When we were buying our food pre-ground at $2.10/lb we were spending about $60/mth, now that we've transitioned to more chunks, I find our bills are even less! For the four cats, we're doing about $30-$35/mth!

I really don't understand why people say they can't 'afford' the raw diet.

What about your cats?

When I use to make the recipe on catnutrition.org it was about $0.073/oz. An average cat eating 6oz a day would be $0.44. And a month would come out to $13.14. Not too bad. Now I feed whole necks, liver, taurine sup, and salmon oil. Which is about $0.40 for one cat a day. Month is about $12

Wow! What a deal. It's awesome finding good suppliers after a while and getting everything so cheap!

Wow! It really can be cheaper! My canned foods cost about $30-35 a month, but the grocery store i go to has sales like 10 pounds of chicken quarters for $4 and 50 cent a pound whole chickens so I think it will be fairly cheap if I buy sales. Also a friend of mine hunts deer and doesn't like to eat them so I get the deer this coming season for the cost of processing!

It costs me 30-35 dollars a month to feed canned and he's still a kitten, technically. He always seems hungry, but doesn't gain any weight (I have a feeling he's going to be a big kitty!).

I'm spending about half of that for raw and he's still eating quite a bit more raw than recommended for his body weight (about 9 lbs), but he's still not gaining extra weight!

I've been going for sales lately. If you have asian market near by, check them out, they tend to sell every part of the animal. I can get about 2 lbs or more of just chicken gizzards for $1-2. Mine also has tripe and necks from different animals.

I can also buy small whole fish from there, too, but I've stopped feeding him fish very often, I don't think he likes it much and I've heard it's not necessary in their diet.

Celeste wrote:Wow! It really can be cheaper! My canned foods cost about $30-35 a month, but the grocery store i go to has sales like 10 pounds of chicken quarters for $4 and 50 cent a pound whole chickens so I think it will be fairly cheap if I buy sales. Also a friend of mine hunts deer and doesn't like to eat them so I get the deer this coming season for the cost of processing!

Lucky you! I wish I had a friend who would give me all that free-range, no hormone, etc food for free! (And really, if you can stomach it, i would cut it up yourself!).

artsiekat, thanks for the tip on the asian market! I think I know where one is, I will have to go this weekend and see what they have!

My costs went from $200 per month down to close to (if not below) $100, especially once I found a source of chicken leg quarters for only .59 cents per pound!

I went to and Asian store on the way home tonight and, finally!, found some quail. Unfortunately, the price wasn't on the package, but considering how long I'd been looking and the great deals I've been getting on everything else, I thought whatever it cost, it'd be ok.

Yea, um, no.... brace yourselves, folks - the quail cost me $10 FOR A SINGLE POUND!

I hope the cats enjoy it, 'cause it's sure gonna be a long time before they get THAT again!

Auntie Crazy wrote:Yea, um, no.... brace yourselves, folks - the quail cost me $10 FOR A SINGLE POUND!

Holy Moly! That is insane, my mom always said "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it!" and I guess that is too true here! *Kelly would have put it back on the shelf and walked out*

Chris, necks are too much bone. To model a whole prey animal the diet should be about 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% organ with half of that being liver. Bone in breast would be alot better.

I feed mostly whole prey so my bill is a bit higher but it's also much healthier.
An average week usually follows this (I try to get in 3 whole prey items a week which are GP, mice, quail and soon to be rats.. also have whole rabbit, duck and squirrel but that's sectioned and isn't eaten all at once so technically not whole prey):

Su- 3 XL mice $1.20
M- quail 89c
T- venison free
W- chicken 10c
Th- squirrel free
F- guinea pig 75c
Sa- beef/pork free

Total- $2.94/wk or $11.76/mo

I am currently working on getting rats to replace mice which will save 80c/mo. Often times I feed venison or beef twice a week and omit a whole prey item. Sometimes if I'm cleaning the freezer and I have stuff I want to get rid of (free stuff from CL or venison which equals about 250 lbs in my freezer now) I feed it 2-3 times in a row and Amos and Wav both eat it til it's gone. The week fluctuates, depending on seasonal foods too. I currently have about 5 ducks left from a hunter friend that I often feed once a week too and will omit chicken that week. I also have rabbit (10c a meal) and squirrel (free) that I will feed in place of whole prey because I get them whole and feed in sections which is just as good. Balance over time. So all in all I probably spend $10/mo feeding her.

Heather wrote:Chris, necks are too much bone. To model a whole prey animal the diet should be about 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% organ with half of that being liver. Bone in breast would be alot better.

Yeah the necks seem like they don't fit the prey model diet. USDA says it is about 36% bone. I do have a nutrient analysis (done by land o lakes food analysis lab) of whole ground chicken necks. It stats that necks are about a 1.1:1 Ca:Ph ratio. The same ratio that most try to achieve. I do feel that there is more bone than it states which is fine for me, also they only tested one sample. Since mice are about 1.38:1 or 1.73:1 depending on what study you want to look at. whole chicken is about 1.1:1-1.5:1 Ca:Ph ratio. Necks are not solid bone nor are they hollow. A mixture of both. I like to describe it as solid spongy material.

The site that had the info no longer has the page for the necks. So here is an archived page
http://web.archive.org/web/20040829165808/www.felineconservation.org/R3/Husbandry/CatCare/Nutrition/PoultryNecks.html

IMO its easy to overdue it on phosphorous, breast meat is 1:17.2, but harder to overdue it on calcium. Most say max is 2:1

Anyway those are my thoughts
Take care

The BARF model used to emphasize the Ca:Ph ratios as a guideline for what to feed but truly, BARF has been and always will be overdone on bone. Necks and backs is pretty much what they suggest. Prey model is alot more meat, closer to what nature intended. Admittedly I do not feed 10% bone, more like 15-20% but as long as there's boneless meats throughout the week we're good.

All cats and kittens have different appetites, so feeding amount vary. In general, an adult female requires approximately 200 to 300 calories a day. An average male needs between 250 and 300 calories daily.

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