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Getting a new kitten!
How much raw food do I give a kitten?
How many times a day do I feed them?
How much do I increase as the kitten grows?
How much does a full grown cat get?
Also...
I'm planning on feeding the cat raw meat
Anything else they like? Or is good for them?
Feed them as much as a can of catfood would feed them, as big as a large meatball. They actually eat less as they grow. Maybe 2-3 times to start but 2 meals are good. Look up BARF recipes. Some recipes grind the bones while others leave them whole.
I once had a bigger male cat that would eat a raw drumstick and crunch the bones until everything was gone. Get them used to eating spinach or kale to snack on when you are away for long periods of time.
If you have an enclosed backyard, you can cat-proof it so they could get some freedom and maybe kill a bird once in a while. It's in their nature to.
BARF is pretty damn cheap when you make it yourself.
The good thing about cats - unlike dogs - is, they only eat as much as they need/want. They will walk away from a half-full bowl, if they are satisfied. The other day I bought a couple of fryers, cut them apart, deboned them, and put it all through my Kitchen Aid meat grinder. I made individual baggies with about 3 day's worth of ground chicken, that's maybe 4-5 tablespoons full? I put them all in the freezer, except for the one I'm currently using and keep in the fridge. I just put out about a tablespoon and a half in the morning and my cat will eat pretty much all of that. I mix it with a tiny bit of warm water, just enough that it doesn't stick to the bowl (protein is sticky). If my very noisy cat didn't get enough, he'll let me know. Once he is done, the dog gets to lick the left-overs, if any.
Currently, I also have a bowl of high protein dry food (currently FROMM - Four-Star Nutritionals) available for my cat all the time, and he'll eat from it the rest of the day whenever he is hungry. That's how I make sure he gets everything else he needs.
'Tis true! They'll act like they're burying it. Kinda' cute.Quote:
Originally Posted by EmmaT
Not sure about a kitten, but when I fed my cats raw for about a month, they were getting fed twice a day with 4oz at every meal, each. This gave them about 1/2 a lb per day.
(In comparison, my ferrets get 2oz per meal, twice a day, each.)
I think it all depends on body weight. My cats are around 8-10lbs each and are all fully grown. (thought my big boy is probably more around 11 or 12lbs.)
Typically, raw food is fed as a percentage of your cat's current weight, usually 2% or 3%. So, convert your cat's weight from pounds to ounces, then multiply that by either .02 or .03 to calculate how much you should be feeding your cat per day.
If your kitty weighs 8 pounds, then the math looks like this:
8lbs x 16 = 128oz
128 x .02 = 2.56oz of food per day (or 128 x .03 = 3.84oz of food per day)
Multiply the daily amount by 7 to get a week's total.
2.56oz x 7 = 17.92oz of food per week (or 26.88oz of food per week)
Now, take that weekly total and break it up by 80% / 10% / 5% / 5% to determine how much of the weekly ratio is meat, bone, liver and organ respectively.
So an eight pound cat fed at 2% of his body weight should receive 14.34oz of meat, 1.79oz of bone, .9oz of liver and .9oz of organ every week.
Hope that helps!
A.C.
so, i'm going to order some ground rabbit offline and add the rest of the recipe to it. I'm assuming that if i get 5lbs of it it has the %'s right for bone/organ/.......whathaveyou.
Now the total oz's of food are for the end product right? i mean after you add the water the egg yolks and the supplements? that's not just the meat right?
so if i get the pre ground rabbit in 5lb paks, i can just divide that up by 17.93 oz's for an 8lb cat?
if i get chicken parts i would seperate the meat from the bones to weight out properly then?
thanks new to this and want to get it right, thanks!
I would let a kitten eat all she wants, several times a day if you can. Kittens pretty much cut themselves off when they're full, unlike a neutured, adult pet, who can often eat out of boredom.
Speaking of bored, neutered, and spoiled adult kitty, my girl is about 9.5 pounds and eats anywhere from 4 to 6 ounces of raw food a day. She is a bit plump, but since I'm an utter whimp and can't bear crying, I let her tell me when to feed her. (This includes a couple of midnight snacks. If I refuse to get out of bed, she "combs" my hair gently with her claws until I get up.)
Make sure your kitty gets the appropriate proportions of meat, bone and organ AND make sure she is getting enough taurin, which is an amino acid that cats cannot make themselves.
My kitty prefers to eat rabbit, which I feel is a bit poor in taurine, so I add extra heart muscle to her food.