by Kirsty – Eden-Lea Ragdolls
(Australia)
Ragdoll Cat Loving Raw Food
I am a Ragdoll cat breeder and I feed my cats raw food - what a difference it makes to their long term health.
If your readers would like to see real cats eating real food, there are some photos of what my cats eat here:
Natural Food For Cats
Kirsty
Hi Kirsty.. thanks for visiting and sharing your thoughts on a raw food diet.
I'd like to try and summarise the page that you refer to in the link above if I may for the simple, technical reason that the page is too short to be found by Google and to be formatted properly unless it is lengthened!
You use the "Bones And Raw Food" diet model (BARF). This mimics the prey of a wildcat.
You recommend: plenty of variety of meats especially for cats new to a raw food diet, the feeding of bones and big chunks and following BARF recommended ratios that should be in place in the long term (as opposed to in each meal) as set out on your page and below here:
80 – 85% of the diet should be flesh, namely: fat, skin, sinew, connective tissue.
10 – 15% should be edible bone, while:
5 - 10% of the diet is internal organs with 50% of this being made up by liver.
You ensure that your cats eat in an enclosed place with a soft floor - a large cage. The enclosure stops food being carried off to places used by people. The soft floor allows the cat to chew on the food more easily. You recommend a towel or carpet sample mat on the floor.
You also recommend a Yahoo Group called Raw Cat that is quite lively. Ideas can be exchanged and advice sought in active Yahoo Groups.
The meats that you feed your cats are: chicken liver (a favorite), whole chicken, chicken wings and necks, chicken drumsticks, beef, beef tongue, lamb heart (high in Taurine and tough to strengthen jaws), lamb off-cuts, lamb liver (around 5% of the overall diet but don't overfeed as it causes diarrhea) and kidney, pork roast, pork ribs, bacon, raw fish (feed occasionally as not a usual part of a cat's diet), rabbit.
You also feed treats such as prawns, human food left overs, canned tuna and so on.
OK I have summarized very briefly. Please visit the linked page for more detail.
Comment: I note that you assume that there is enough Taurine and Arginine and other essential nutrients in the bought meats. How do you judge this to the correct amount? Also true prey includes the contents of the prey's stomach. This includes vegetation. How does the BARF diet deal with this?
Thank you once again for sharing, Kirsty.
