Home made pet food

I just read this whole website about homemade cat and dog food.

You can visit it here:
http://www.pet-grub.com/

It teaches you how to make food for your pets yourself out of finely chopped vegetables and ground moisturised meats. The whole site is an ebook on homemade pet food. The ebook says a lot how homemade pet food is actually better for your pet than the kind we find in stores.

Long story made short, has anyone ever tried making their own food for their pets? Or does anyone know if it's really any good? I thought it might be fun to prepare meals for Sherbert, but I'm not sure if it's really as beneficial as the site says it is.

 

Fresh foods are definitely superior to processed foods, but when it comes to your pets diet, unless you know what you are doing and have the TIME to do right, then I wouldn't do it for more than an occassional treat. Vianne gets a variety of fresh foods, including things like cottage cheese, yogurt, green beans, spinach leaves, lettuce, grilled chicken, rice, meatloaf, blueberries and other things. These usually don't go over more than around 20% or so of her entire food intake for the day,( and not always EVERYday) but every once in awhile if i have good leftovers she gets a nice hot dinner. Other than that I'm just pretty choosy about which cat foods I buy for her and try to give her the best I can. No by-products, corn, chemical preservatives, things like that. Plus she gets a kitty vitamin everyday just in case. So far her favorite canned food is the Blue Buffalo Spa Select they sell at PetSmart. I had her on a premade raw diet from Steve's Real Food for awhile, which she loved, but unfortunately i had to quit that cuz of all the moving around we were doing, it was too much of a pain with keeping the food frozen and thawing it out. I definitely think fresher is healthier tho, and Vianne really seems to love it. Although I have tried a couple of cat treat recipes before and she didn't seem to hold interest too long. Oh well :roll: Lately she's developed a thing for baked beans, lol. But then, whatever food i set down too low she will come and try it out for me...without asking of course! lol. My fault for trying to eat on the floor while i watch TV, haha.

 

I started making home made food for Chester & Lizzy when we found out they had CRF. I basically just made sure I had a meat of some kind (either fish or chicken), a grain (usually rice or oats), some veggies (usually broccoloi, carrots, green beans, peas, etc), and some kitty vitamins.

After they died (not because of the food), I offered it to the other cats but they didn't like it. So now they get Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul. It has no by-products, everything used in it is fresh & not frozen, and it has no chemicals added. It's almost as good as homemade food.

-Chelle

 

I'm sure homemade dog and cat food is definitely superior to processed foods but how does one guarantee that the raw food won't be infected with e-coli and other bacteria and germs?

 

:0011: I'm not sure how you'd be able to make sure there're no germs or bacteria in the food... the woman that wrote that E-book didn't seem too concerned with bacteria and such, so, i don't know...

 

Concerning bacteria in raw food: (source)

According to Veterinary literature such as 'The Cornell Book of Cats' or 'Feline and Canine Infectious Diseases' cats are
"...extremely resistant to experimental infection with salmonella spp. and clinical salmonellosis is uncommon in cats".
"...few references [to salmonellosis in cats] exist in the scientific literature".
"Contamination can arise from rodent and bird faeces, raw or under-cooked contaminated meat and table scraps, or commercially prepared foods that are contaminated during processing". The likelihood of cats contracting salmonella through their environment or commercially prepared foods is equivalent to contraction through raw meat.

E. coli (Escherichia coli) is not mentioned when referencing feline clinical pathology in either the 'Merck Veterinary Manual' or the 'Cornell Book of Cats' and 'Feline and Canine Infectious Diseases' briefly notes that "Little is known about the role of Escherichia coli in canine and feline enteric disease. E. coli is part of the normal flora of the gut...". Although some studies suggest that it may be implicated in certain cases of acute diarrhoea, it is not recognised as a feline disease.