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The Making of a Raw Fed Kitten with Darwin’s Natural Pet Food

I knew that I wanted Cupcake to be a raw fed kitten. I wanted her to have balanced, species-appropriate nutrition, so when the folks at Darwin’s Natural Pet Food gave us a chance to sample their premium raw cat food, I thought it was a great way to get Cupcake started on a raw diet.

Black and white tuxedo kitten with box of Darwin frozen raw cat food

Receiving Darwin’s Raw Cat Food By Mail

Darwin’s is a mail-order company, and one of my concerns was making sure the food arrived still frozen. Everyone knows that Florida is hot in the summers. On top of that, when I’m not home, food is delivered to my porch, which gets the full afternoon sun.

So I was really pleased to find that the box was lined on all sides with thick Styrofoam to insulate it. I was even happier to discover that there was still dry ice left inside, working hard to keep the food cold. As a result, the food was still frozen. Win!

black and white tuxedo kitten unboxing Darwin frozen raw cat food

The cat food is packaged really conveniently. Four vacuum sealed 1/2 lb amounts are attached to a perforated plastic sheet. That means each one holds 2 lb. That makes it easy to tell at a glance how much food you have on hand.

black and white tuxedo kitten looks at Darwin frozen raw cat food in packaging

What’s super convenient is that each 1/2 lb portion fits nicely into a 1 cup storage container. That allows me to thaw a portion overnight in the fridge in its original packaging. Once it’s thawed, it’s easy to store it safely while Cupcake eats it over the next couple days.

Darwin frozen raw cat food and bowl

Transitioning to Darwin’s Raw Cat Food

Starting Cupcake eating Darwin’s wasn’t hard. Kittens usually are happy to try new foods. She had a little bit of Darwin’s raw food on the side with her canned food meal, and slowly the amount of canned food became less at meals and the amount of raw became larger. Success! A healthy, happy, raw-fed kitten.

I don’t even like being in the kitchen to make my own meals, so having Cupcake eating raw cat food without my having to make it was great. I loved having my little obligate carnivore kitten eating a diet from a company I trusted to use the best ingredients to make a wholesome food for her. And the convenience of their grab-and-thaw packaging was just awesome. Happy, healthy Cupcake, and happy me, too.

black and white tuxedo kitten looks into freezer containing Darwin frozen raw cat food

Cupcake’s Setback

Then something happened that is the reason this review didn’t happen months ago. We ran out of our sample of Darwin’s raw cat food. This would never have happened if we had been enrolled in the Drawin’s home delivery program, since it is set up to ship to you on a schedule. But since Cupcake ate eating large, growing-kitten portions, we ran out of our sample more quickly than I expected.

This was when we discovered Cupcake wouldn’t eat any other raw food. She rejected the homemade raw I prepare for Newton for his unusual urinary pH needs. Then she rejected raw made another cat food company. Since a growing kitten has to eat something, I let her go back to eating canned food.

blackand white tuxedo kitten reaches under Darwin frozen raw cat food

I wasn’t quite ready to give up yet, though. I ordered some more Darwin’s food. The second transition didn’t go as easily as the first.

Cupcake would avoid the raw food paired with the canned food on her plate. When I put some raw food on top of the canned, she would eat through it, pushing it to the back of the bowl with her nose. She ended up wearing more on her face than she ate.

When Cupcake started eating some of the raw food again, we found she wasn’t keeping her meals down, which was puzzling. I finally tried giving her a full raw meal, and that stayed down. Her stomach apparently didn’t like meals mixing both raw and cooked ingredients! It turned out the biggest barrier to getting Cupcake eating raw food was her human being overcautious in transitioning her.

black and white tuxedo kitten eats Darwin Naturals food

So Cupcake is a happy, rambunctious raw-fed kitten again, and she loves her Darwin’s raw cat food meals. She knows they come from the refrigerator, and she comes running when you open the fridge to see whether you’re bringing out food for her.

How to Try Darwin’s Natural Raw Cat Food

If you want to try Darwin’s Natural Pet Products premium raw cat food for your cat, they offer a great trial offer for their food. You can get 10 lbs of their premium raw cat food for the price of shipping. It’s a great way to try raw food for your cat with very little financial commitment.

FTC Disclosure: We received this product for free in exchange for our honest opinion. The opinions in this review are my own and not influenced by any outsider. Sponsored posts always reflect our honest opinions and feature products we use ourselves and love.

Raw Cat Food: Not as Expensive as You Think

One of the questions I get asked when I mention making raw food for my cats is, “Wow, isn’t that expensive?” When I posted about how I make raw cat food for Newton and Ashton, APB asked this much more politely, “Have you figured out what your food costs, per pound?” in the post comments.

The short answers are: it’s actually not expensive at all, and the food cost per pound varies a little depending on your ingredient cost. I sat down with the actual receipts from the last batch of food that you saw photos of my making to calculate the exact cost. Surprisingly, it costs much more to feed Pierre, who is not interested in raw food thankyouverymuch, than it does to feed raw to both Newton and Ashton combined.

How Much Raw Cat Food Costs to Make

I’m about to start tossing numbers around again, so if you are as allergic to math as I am, don’t worry, I’ll include the bottom line and not just all these numbers.

The 30 lb batch of food I described in my previous post had a total ingredient cost of $68.67.

That total includes buying the chicken, chicken liver, and eggs at Whole Foods, so I’m sure I could have sourced them less expensively. I wanted to be sure the chicken wasn’t injected with extra saline or dunked in a chlorinated water bath, so I chose to buy the chicken at Whole Foods where I knew I could get air chilled chicken. I am still looking into other sources, so I might be able to get that cost down a little bit.

The 30 lb of food in a batch are separated out into 202 meals. (Ashton eats 2 oz meals and Newton eats 2.75 oz meals, for an average of 2.38 oz.)

Taking the total cost of a batch and dividing it by the number of meals, that last batch of raw food I made for the cats cost $.34 per meal. Yes, you read that right, my cats are eating whole meat meals from Whole Foods at $.34 per serving.

Pierre, who still turns his nose up at raw, currently eats the canned food that Ashton and Newton used to also eat, which costs $1.70 per can. (Yes, we’re looking for a new food, but this is what he’s eating now.) A meal is half a can of food, making it cost $.85.

So the canned food is $.85 per serving and the raw food, at $.34 per serving, is less than half the cost. I’m saving $2 a day for two cats to eat fresh instead of canned canned food. Not bad savings!

What About that Grinder?

I can almost hear someone asking about my grinder. It’s true, I bought my grinder specifically for making cat food, so it’s fair to ask how it factors into the equation.

Image credit: depositphotos/ptasha

Well, if I’m saving $2 a day, let’s apply that toward the cost of a grinder. If I bought a Tasin TS-108 ($150), which is what many people use for grinding meat for cat food, it would take 74 days to pay for itself from the savings over canned food.

I went all out and bought a Weston #12 grinder, which was more costly ($457). It will be 225 days until the savings over the cost of canned food pays for the grinder. If it hadn’t been for being able to project it paying for itself in well under a year, it would have been a lot harder for me to justify the higher-horsepower grinder!

It’s Not All About Saving Money

So that’s the long answer about how much it costs to to make your own raw cat food. The numbers assume you’re going to feed the same food day after day, week after week. Some cats do better with that than others! Ashton is starting to show signs of boredom with that, so I’m going to start rotating some other foods into their raw diet, which will no doubt nudge these numbers one direction or another. Happy cats at mealtime make happy humans.

I also wanted to note that I didn’t start down the road to feeding raw because it was less expensive. If it was all about the cost, I could have just fed my cats grocery store kibble. I actually started because Pierre was having so much trouble keeping his commercial canned food down for a while that I wanted him to benefit from something more digestible.

Of course, cats being cats, Ashton and Newton took to raw, and Pierre is the only one who won’t touch it. His stomach is much better on a different canned food he is eating now, and who knows, maybe someday he will be curious enough about Ashton’s bowl that he’ll give it a try, too. Until then, I’m paying more to feed him canned food than I am to feed the other two cats raw food, and that’s OK, too. It’s really about keeping your cat healthy and happy, and even among my cats, that isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing!

DIY: Making Raw, Ground Cat Food at Home

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

ingredients for raw cat food

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.

raw chicken ready to grind

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.

raw chicken being ground

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.

ground raw chicken in a bowl

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.

supplements for making raw cat food

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.

eggs separated for making raw cat food

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.

stirring raw cat food

(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.

bulk packed raw chicken in freezer

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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Recall: Primal Pet Foods Voluntarily Recalls a Single Lot of Raw Frozen Cat Food

Primal Pet Foods is voluntarily recalling a single batch production code of Feline Turkey Raw Frozen Formula 3-pound bag. FDA tested product in response to a single consumer complaint. Primal Pet Foods was alerted by FDA that the testing of two bags of this lot resulted in a low thiamine level. Neither FDA nor Primal have received any other reports concerning Thiamine in Primal products. No other product manufactured by Primal Pet Foods is involved in this voluntary recall.

Only the product with the following Best By date and production code is included in the voluntary recall. It is best to check the production code on the back of the bag to determine if the product has been recalled or not.

The lot involved in this voluntary recall is Primal Pet Foods Feline Turkey Raw Frozen Formula 3-pound bag (UPC# 8 50334-00414 0) with Best By date 060815 B22

For additional information on this recall, see the press release on the FDA web site.

For more ways to keep up with pet food recalls, including having them sent to your phone by SMS, see How to Keep Track of Pet Food Recalls.