Meet our newest Little Carnivores....

Mouse aka Mou Mou is our newest cat, she is a 'foster failure' she is about 12 weeks old now and I have had her since she was about 4 weeks old.  She is a spunky little kitten and took to raw like a duck to water.  She loves her raw meals. 

Then this is Ruby, she is a Yorkie/Shih Tzu mix.  She was up for adoption through the vet I work for because her owners couldn't afford/didn't want to pay for her systemic yeast infection (all over skin as well as in ears and on her ear flaps) it was/is a chronic issue probably due to poor quality food.  That's okay I am working at switching her to raw.

Beginners Guide to Feeding Raw

This is a very valuable tool if you are looking into feeding Raw.  I can't tell you how many times I am so grateful that I bit the bullet and decided to switch my dogs to raw.  It literally saved Zoey's life. 

Here's an awesome PDF on feeding raw:
http://www.chanceslittlewebsite.com/prey-model-raw.html

My Cat Recipe

 3 pounds of poultry thigh meat/bones/skin
     1 cup water (or, preferably, more if your cat will eat it with more water)
    2 eggs - use the yolk raw but lightly cook the white
    5000 mg fish oil  Do NOT use cod liver oil!
    400 IU (268 mg) Vitamin E (powdered E in capsules is the easiest to use)
    50 mg Vitamin B-complex (capsules or tablets)
    2,000 mg taurine (use powdered - either in capsules or loose)
    3/4 tsp Morton Lite salt with iodine when using chicken
    Liver - add 4 ounces of chicken livers per 3 lb of meat/bones/skin.
    If using boneless meats add: (½) teaspoon of eggshell powder is needed per pound of meat and organ
    1/2 capsule 10mg Manganese per 3#

My Additional Supplements:  (Right now the 2 kitties I have both have severe arthritis and joint issues, one has heart problems and the other one has early kidney disease)
5  Glucosamine MSM Tablets 1500mg per 2 tablets = 125mg per meal.
3 & 1/2 teaspoons Lysine 500mg per day so 7000mg is what is needed  the stuff I have is 522mg per 1/4 teaspoon
800 IU Vitamin E Additional  (have read cats need 100IU per day.
9000 additional fish oil (to get about 1000mg per day)
2,000mg more taurine

Daily added to food with each meal for Munchie (Cardiomyopathy and Arthritis)
1 tablet Zeel (homeopathic for arthritis) twice daily
7mg Hyaluronic Acid once daily  (for joints)
250mg L-Carnitine once daily (for heart health)
30mg CoQ10 once daily (for heart health)
250mg Microlactin twice daily (for joints)

Daily added to food with each meal for DeeJay (arthritis, megacolon and early kidney disease)
1 tablet Zeel (homeopathic for arthritis) twice daily
7mg Hyaluronic Acid once daily  (for joints)
250mg Microlactin twice daily (for joints)
1/4 teaspoon Miralax for megacolon twice daily

Teaching an old cat new tricks....

DeeJay is my 14 & 1/2 year old kitty.  She has a lot of health issues and we are slowly getting them under control.  She has pretty severe arthritis in most of her joints.  We have been feeding her canned, but we learned that it is a lot cheaper to feed her raw so we are transitioning her over to raw too.  To feed both of my cats raw just for the chicken we buy it's $5.22 per week.  Now we add supplements and liver but the costs are minimal compared to each daily meal.  I love how inexpensive it is and am glad that I figured out it's only gonna cost us $20 per month instead of $40.  We *may* be able to afford to switch the rest of the kitties to raw too.  We shall see.

Here is DeeJays 1st raw meal

 

Almost all gone, mind you she had only been eating about 1/4-1/2 of her normal meals this week

 When she was finished with her meal she ate 1/2 of my chihuahua's then got mad at her when Zoey decided she better eat her own food LOL

Zoey Bone In Meal

 Tonight was bone in meal for Zoey.  It is a cornish hen spine.  She loves to chomp on bones and it's healthy for her teeth.  She gets a boney meal twice a week. 

Munchie Bone In

 So tonight was bone in night.  Munchie still isn't too enthused about eating boney pieces which really shocks me as he digs chicken bones out of the garbage can and eats the nobbys off the end of the bones.  He would take a bite into the chicken, feel the bone in his mouth and quit.  So I had to resort rto smashing the bones up in my Ninja.  He still wouldn't eat it so I had to mix maybe a teaspooon of canned food in with it to get him to eat it all..  Here are some pictures of him biting into the piece. 

. 

Cat Raw Recipe

My recipe is modified from this site for Munchie who has heart disease:
http://catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

 3 pounds of poultry thigh meat/bones/skin (If using Boneless add the eggshell or bonemeal powder)
 Liver - add 4 ounces of chicken livers per 3 lb of meat/bones/skin.  * For future recipes I am probably going to give 2oz of Liver and 2oz of Kidney as I feel they need the variety of the organs)
    1/2 cup water (or, preferably, more if your cat will eat it with more water)
    2 eggs - use the yolk raw but lightly cook the white
    5000 mg fish oil  Do NOT use cod liver oil!
    400 IU (268 mg) Vitamin E (powdered E in capsules is the easiest to use)
    50 mg Vitamin B-complex (capsules or tablets)
    2,000 mg taurine (use powdered - either in capsules or loose)
    3/4 tsp Morton Lite salt with iodine (contains potassium and sodium - make sure that it contains iodine)         (½) teaspoon of eggshell or bone meal powder is needed per pound of meat and organ ONLY if using Boneless meat
   
My Additional Supplements for Munchie's specific needs for arthrits, bladder and heart health.
2 Glucosamine MSM Tablets 1500mg (so he gets 250mg per day)
Lysine 12 scoops (needs 1 scoop twice a day) 500mg per day so 6000mg is what is needed
2,000mg additional Taurine
400 I.U. addition Vit E

It calls for 1 cup of water but that made it really liquidy so next batch am just going to do 1/2 cup of water.  I put the water in a bowl, then added the eggs and all the supplements and stirred until they dissolved, then added that to the meat mixture and liver, and then blended it up using my Ninja processor.

Munchie my 15# cat needs 2oz per meal twice a day.

Munchies Transition

Munchie is transitioning over to raw. Munchie has severe arthritis and was recently diagnosed with heart disease.  We are having an ultrasound done tomorrow to determine exactly what is wrong with his heart.  He is on a bunch of medications, but has decided he no longer needs to eat cat food, so we are making the transition to raw.

 

Munchie is a proud member of the clean bowl club

 

Pork grind

Here is my little 4# chihuahua eating some yummy pork grind.

Zoey's Mix

So little Miss Zoey (4# chihuahua) is extremely picky when it comes to organs.  So I make her up a mixture of everything she needs for a balanced diet.  I still give her boney meals a couple times a week alternating between rabbit, cornish hens and whole prey mice.  The she gets either chicken, pork, beef, turkey, fish, duck for her other meals that are made into little ice cube shaped cubes.   Zoey loves these little cubes and what she doesn't know is that she eats the organs without problems......won't hurt her :-)  Here is my 'recipe' that I use for her:
14oz meat (beef, chicken, pork, turkey, duck, fish)
4oz beef heart or chicken or rabbit hearts whatever I can find
or 1# Meat
1 oz Liver I use beef or chicken liver.
1 oz Other Secreting Organ kidney, spleen, thymus, pancreas, lung, testicles, or brains.  I mostly used Beef Kidneys as that is what was readily availabe.  I am running low on it so I am going to have to go hunt down some other organs.
1 sardine
1/2 teaspoon ground egg shell
1 raw egg
1 fish oil capsule (1000mg)
2 & 1/2 Vit E (400IU) Capsules
2 oz Vegetables/Blue Berries (I use these as antioxidants for Zoey since she has so many health issues).  I mainly use pumpkin, spinach, broccoli.  Notice if you feed Prey Model Raw, the veggies are usually omitted.  But after research I decided to include this small amount as she needs the antioxidant properties of them. 

Here is her meat thawing

 I put everything into the Ninja and chop/mix it up.

Here it is portioned out in the cubes.  After they are flash frozen, I put them into snack bags and then into a gallon sized ziplocked labeled with what meat it is. 

They are a little more than 1oz per cube, Zoey gets 1 cube twice a day.

Another great Dogster Post!

I have learned SO much from Dogster where as it pertains to feeding raw.  Here is another great post by Charlie about different cuts of meat: http://www.dogster.com/forums/Raw_Food_Diet/thread/737490

Griffin Update

Griffin in 11 weeks old now, and eating raw like a champ (well ground it is), he'll be starting to get some regular cornish hens in the next week, and hoping to add organs soon too.  He gobbles it right up, which is awesome because he wasn't a good eater on kibble (although who can blame him?)  His health is greatly improved as he was dealing with a chronic respiratory from the time he was born (he was LITERALLY on antibiotics up until he was about 7 weeks old, when I got a hold of him and got him on natural remedies.  He has been keeping my husband company while he's been out of work recovering from surgery on his elbow and then surgery 2 weeks later on his shoulder.   Griffin is doing awesome, I love how easy it has been to transition the 2 puppies (Ziva (RIP) and Griffin to raw, I don't think Griffin has even had a soft stool yet.  YAY RAW!  

RIP Sweet Ziva

I have been really stressed and haven't updated for a long time.  I just wanted to share this as I realize I never posted about losing my sweet little Min Pin Ziva..  We lost Ziva on November 30th.  Here's what happened, I took her to my dad/vet as she threw up like 17x in a few hours.  And was acting 'loopy'.

Written Dec 1, 2011:  My sweet little Ziva is at Rainbow Bridge now.

I took her to the vet/my dad, by the time we got there (35 minute drive) we got her temperature up from 94.8 to 97.1 (had her on a rice heating pad), she was a little staggerish on her feet.  Just the fact that she let him draw blood and place a catheter without a fight indicated that something was seriously wrong, she does not like to be worked on.  Bloodwork confirmed it was pancreatitis so we started her on IV's and gave her some medications for it, about 5-10 minutes later she collapsed and essentially went comatose.  Her heartrate was 80 which is slow for her and the breed she is, she was throwing her head back & stretching her legs out stiff showing neurological signs, then all the sudden she stopped breathing, her heart rate was over 200 bpm, and we tubed her and breathed for her for about 5 minutes before her heart stopped.  Necropsy was done, that showed an abnormal pancreas that was the worst inflammation my dad has ever seen in 40 years.  It was BRIGHT pink, it's supposed to be kind of creamish colored.  She threw a blood clot to her heart (which was enlarged)...had never heard a murmur on her before.  As well as a blood clot to her brain.  My dad/vet said that as inflammed as the pancreas was, she probably would have come down with pancreatitis regardless of whether or not she got into the turkey fat it just sped up the process by triggering it.  He said it probably would have been less than a week.  There was nothing that we could have done, even if I would have taken her to the vet as soon as she started vomiting.  He said that the enlarged heart and pancreas abnormality could have been why she was so active, and always starving, and had to eat 8% of her body weight in order to maintain weight, as well as why she was so small (barely tipped scales at 4#).

My sweet little Ziva started her life out in a puppy mill, I rescued her from my cousin who bought her at the puppy store when she was 4 months old.  She was almost 19 months old and was such a spunky, happy little girl.  I will miss her tremendously.  It has been a very very hard night.  I do know one thing though, that my next puppy will come from a Naturally Reared breeder to help give her a better start on life.  It is so hard to believe that she has gone, she was running around like her normal mad woman self yesterday afternoon, then in a matter of hours she is gone.

Meet the newest little Carnivore.....

Meet Griffin....our little foster failure....he is 8 weeks old today and had his first full raw day today....cant quite figure out the chewing so he got ground up cornish hen.  Right now he weighs 1.4#

In honor of Veteran's Day

http://kuma.chipin.com/operation-kuma-acl
Veterans day is fast approaching and is a time to honor, pay tribute, and thank our Veterans and our Active military for their service to our country.We are asking for your help to enable an injured Veteran get a big part of his life back and let him know that his sacrifices mean something to us. His name is Sgt Josh Hansen. His Service Dog, Kuma, needs surgery to repair a ruptured ligament in her knee. We need your help in making this happen so that Sgt Hansen can have his Service Dog back at his side to help him with his disabilities including PTSD. We need to raise at least $2500.00 to cover the surgery, physical therapy, and supplies to aid her recovery. Please consider taking this opportunity to help this brave Veteran who gave up so much. Any amount will help. If you aren't able to help at this time, Please pass her story on to anyone you think might be able to help. Donations can be mailed to the Veterinary clinic;

A Gentle Vet
"Kuma's Fund" (Josh Hansen)
4663 W 6200 S Ste C
West Jordan, UT 84118
(801) 968-9932 Operation Kuma on FaceBook;http://www.facebook.com/OperationKuma?sk=photos#!/OperationKuma?sk=wall Remember....every dollar will help meet our goal of getting Sgt Hansen and Kuma back on their feet! Thanks for your time and consideration.

Feed Me! Feed Me!

Yes she gets so excited at meal time she barks at me if I'm not fast enough :-)

 Mid Bark

Happy Teeth!

One of my FAVORITE Benefits of feeding raw is how nice & shiny my dogs teeth are:

Ziva is about 15 months old and normally Min Pins have loads of tartar on their teeth at this point, she has minimal if any.

Determination

We are still going strong with Raw Feeding my girls, sorry I haven't been posting a lot lately, I am super busy, working 1 full time job and 2 part time jobs.  Here are some 'new' pictures of my girls:

Zoey my 4# chihuahua eating chicken

Before & After Pictures

Zoey before raw...well 2 or 3 days into raw notice the redness on face/legs

Zoey about 3 months into eating raw, notice staining going away, notice lean body?

 Zoey 14 months into eating raw, absolutely no more staining on face/feet/legs

Contentment...

Such. happy contented girl eating some venison vertebrae