Ashton and Newton have been eating raw, ground cat food for about six months now, and I have been making it for them for about three months. A lot of my friends have been curious about how I make raw cat food and what it looks like, so I thought I’d tell you a little about the process.

It’s important to add the proper supplements to be sure your homemade diet is safe and balanced for your cat. You can’t just feed your cat some meat and expect kitty to stay healthy. The recipe I use is based on one from Dr. Lisa Pierson on her CatInfo site.

Raw Cat Food Recipe

Since I really don’t enjoy spending time in the kitchen, I make a lot of cat food at a time so I don’t have to do it too often. This recipe makes 30 lbs of raw, ground cat food at a time.

Ingredients

24 lb bone-in poultry thighs  (not leg quarters)

2 lb poultry liver

8 – 16 cups water

16 egg yolks

40,000  mg  salmon oil or fish oil (not cod liver oil)

3200 IU (2969 mg)  vitamin E

400 mg  vitamin B-complex (I like capsules)

16,000 mg taurine

8 tsp  Morton lite salt with iodine

Other Things You’ll Need

A grinder
I bought a beastly-strong Weston #12 grinder. It doesn’t have any problems at all handling raw chicken bones. You can get a less expensive grinder like the Tasin TS-108 that a lot of people who make raw at home use and be just fine. Avoid buying preground meat, unless you are buying it from somewhere that prepares and handles it specifically for use in raw pet food. Ground meat at your grocery is handled and packaged assuming it will be cooked. There’s less time for bacteria to grow in the ground meat if you grind it yourself.

Freezer space
Don’t underestimate how much space 30 lb of cat food takes.

Freezeable containers
A 4 cup container holds a little over 1 lb of cat food. Freezer-safe glass containers are best, but my family drops things a lot, so we’re using plastic right now to avoid breakage. Because of my limited freezer space, I bulk pack 20 lb of food in 4 cup containers and 10 lb is separated into smaller containers.

Something really large to mix in
Unless you are running a commercial kitchen, you don’t have anything big enough in your cabinet to mix 30 lb of cat food in. I use a beverage tub intended to hold bottles of beverages of beer on ice.

Disposable gloves (optional)
Making cat food is messy business. Being able to switch gloves periodically, especially when you are between steps or when the phone rings unexpectedly, is a big help to avoid cross-contamination.

Instructions

Prepare the Chicken for Grinding

First, prepare the poultry thighs. Since we are serving Ashton, I like to use chicken. Remove the bones from 25% of the thighs. The rest of the thighs will be ground with the bone in so that the marrow and uncooked bones are included in the food.

Also, remove the skin from half of the thighs. I actually removed the skin from 75% of the thighs for this batch to see if it helps manage Ashton’s weight. One of the great things about grinding your own meat is that you have control over how much skin you include in the ground meat so you can tweak the calories of the mix.

Grind

Run the chicken thighs and liver through the grinder using a small grinder plate around 4mm or so. I’m using a 4.5mm plate right now because that’s what came with my grinder, but Ashton doesn’t like the bone bits and leaves them in the bottom of the bowl. I may upgrade to a 3.5mm plate to see if it helps in the future.

When I’m making this much food, there’s no way to put a container in the sink that will catch all of it. I have to empty the catch bowl several times during the process.

When I’m making this much food, there’s no way to put a container in the sink that will catch all of it. I have to empty the catch bowl several times during the process.

Mix the Supplements

I mix the dry supplements (vitamins B and E, taurine, and lite iodized salt) together first. You can just open the capsules and roll them between your fingers so they will pour their contents out into a bowl, where you can mix them up.

In a separate bowl, count out the salmon oil capsules. For this quantity of food, you get quite a pile of capsules! Pour at least 2 cups of very hot water over them and let them melt. When you think they’re melted, put your hand in the water and squeeze them to be sure the outer gelatin of the capsules have melted enough to let the oil out. This is a great job for a disposable glove, because otherwise it’s pretty slimy.

Once the oil is out of all of the gelatin capsules, pour the oil/water mixture into the bowl with the supplements. A big glob of gelatin remains at the bottom of the bowl. I like this method of emptying the gelatin capsules more than the idea of puncturing each capsule and squeezing the oil out, but if a big glob of gelatin is going to gross you out, you can do the more labor-intensive puncture and squeeze method.

Prepare Eggs

Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites. Put away the whites in a storage container and promise yourself you are going to make a fabulous egg white omelet tomorrow.

Mix Ingredients

In your large container, pour your supplement into the meat and liver mixture. Add the egg yolks and water, then start stirring with a sturdy spoon.

It seems like a lot of water when you first start mixing, as you continue to mix, it takes on a thick, soupy texture.

(Yes, my beverage bucket has”Boo!” stenciled on it. I bought it on clearance after Halloween.)

Package and Store

Fill your freezer-safe storage containers for storage. Best practice is to use glass containers, but I use BPA-free plastic. Either way, fill the containers but leave room for expansion when the food freezes, since it contains quite a bit of water, and water expands upon freezing. Don’t leave too much air in the containers you are going to store the longest of the batch to help avoid freezer burn.

Because I have very little freezer space, I package about 10 of the 30 lb in smaller serving-sized containers. I weigh each of these contains as I fill them to ensure they contain enough food for one meal for Ashton and Newton. My freezer holds 48 meals on the designated cat food shelf.

I bulk package the remaining 20 lb of ground, raw cat food into 4 cup containers. Since I can’t fit a chest freezer into my garage, my sister, who lives nearby, donated a shelf of her freezer to storing cat food for my cats.

Making nutritious and balanced raw food for your cat isn’t hard, and both Ashton and Newton agree that it’s the cat’s meow! Newton even wants to help make it.

Newton: I am the official taste tester!

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