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Post by LindaM on Oct 9, 2017 16:44:52 GMT -5
Well, that's awesome to hear. I was gonna say, if you had any real problems with them eating their organs, it would be okay to mix it in with the grinds, but if you do that, you still need to make sure that it all balances in the end to the right amount of meals you need of each. But since they give you no hassles, we can feed the heart single, organ single and muscle single meals as is. I would like your menu to follow up on each of those meals with a bone-in meal for their next meal, as heart meals and organ meals tend to make wee fuzzies poop' all soupy and tarry. The bone should stabilize them.
Another thought I had, and I'm just waiting to double check with one of the admins on it first, is perhaps offering them some muscle meat with some added bonemeal powder temporarily this month until you can place another MPC order.
Pffff... catties... snobby, difficult animals. Hmmm, I'll try and do some extra research, perhaps we can find a method we can try to see if we can incredibly, slowly wean him onto wet food. I really would like to get him onto wet myself, I've seen what a lovely difference it has made in my own cat, especially when it seemed like he has always had some real bleh stomach problems that no vet could ever answer us on.
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pegleg
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Post by pegleg on Oct 9, 2017 17:39:25 GMT -5
Sounds good to me. And I have a lot of the grinds still, which are balanced. They have offal, bone, and heart. Heather mentioned doing bone in three days a week, so perhaps something like:
Sunday: Grinds Monday: Bone in Tuesday: Grinds Wednesday: Bone in / Whole prey if Binx will eat it Thursday: Grinds Saturday: Offal and heart, followed by a bone in meal.
Grinds will either be the whole animal grinds, which you earlier said were balanced, or the Instinct Raw cat food.
I can try. I've tried mixing it in with his dry food but then he just won't touch the dry food (snobbish brat cat).
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Post by LindaM on Oct 9, 2017 18:03:40 GMT -5
We can try doing an exactly split menu, 7 meals Frankenprey and 7 meals of Alternative (Grinds/Whole Prey). I used to do an exact split like this before, right now my furkids are actually getting a bit more on the FP side, since it's winter and the wee craps are trying to eat us out of house and home and the FDR/Commercial Grinds are very pricey for that many mouths. But doing the menu like this is pretty easy, and shouldn't be hard to follow or remember at all.
So doing the menu exactly split like that will give you 7 Grinds/Whole Prey (doesn't matter which you wish to offer in the end, so long as there is variety) and 7 Frankenprey (4 Bone-In, 1 Heart, 1 Organ, 1 Muscle). And if you DO end up offering WP later on, it will contain actual crunch-able bones, which will be even better for their teeth as it actually works just like a bone-in meal!
Monday AM: Grind Monday PM: Grind Tuesday AM: Heart Tuesday PM: Bone-In Wednesday AM: Grind Wednesday PM: Grind/Whole Prey Thursday AM: Organ (Half Liver + Other Secreting Organ) Thursday PM: Bone-In Friday AM: Grind Friday PM: Muscle Saturday AM: Bone-In Saturday PM: Bone-In Sunday AM: Grind Sunday PM: Grind/Whole Prey
What do you think? Do you think that will do alright for you, menu-wise? And yes, if the grinds are one of the "whole ground animal" ones, they should be just fine.
Will kitty eat anything from your hands? Or perhaps from a dish you'd been using? Does he strictly eat kibble only, no stolen human snacks/leftovers or anything?
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pegleg
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Post by pegleg on Oct 9, 2017 18:23:47 GMT -5
I can do that plan! They already had grind today anyway so tomorrow I'll give heart and bone in I have game hen and chicken in the house right now for boney meals, so I'll alternate between those until I'm out of game hen then stick to chicken and then rabbit when I get it eventually. And kitty doesn't even watch me when I eat. He will eat from any dish, but the only human food he likes is french fries. Which, I can't give him for obvious reasons haha
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Post by LindaM on Oct 9, 2017 18:44:08 GMT -5
Sounds good to me!
Haha.. I wish ours was more like that. He's gotten a wee bit.. uhm, like a teenager throwing a permanent temper tantrum and testing the boundaries all over the place, ever since we moved. He even back-chats me and my husband when he's being scolded about something. I've even gotten the glare-y eyes too last night in bed.
Well.. yeah.. fries are definitely NOT ideal, haha. Though, perhaps you can offer a very small amount of canned food (just a spoonful) with the teeeeeeensiest crumbling of a fry on top and see if his love for that might make him give it a shot. The technique doesn't require it to be done all the time or even often, we just want to see if it might tip him over the edge into give the food a lick or two, and so doing, he will get the taste in his mouth. If he doesn't wanna budge for it, well we tried.
How about Salmon Oil, I can't recall if you mentioned he likes or despises it? Currently, I am working on getting ours to accept the taste of salmon oil, that way I can use that to bribe him versus using something not very healthy.
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pegleg
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Post by pegleg on Oct 9, 2017 18:58:17 GMT -5
At the moment he hates it but once a week I use a medicine dropper to make him take half a teaspoon of salmon oil and a dose of probiotic once a month because of his guts.
Haha I can try it next time I get Arbys... those are the ones he tries hardest to steal. Maybe mash up the smallest curly fry I got and sprinkle it over? I can definitely try it... Maybe for a curly fry he doesn't have to steal it'll be worth it.
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Post by LindaM on Oct 9, 2017 21:47:05 GMT -5
Pff, currently Hades is getting his squirt of salmon oil with a tiny bit of milk, which isn't good for him either, but it is something he will try drinking out of your hand if you even just appear to not be paying attention to it. So I'm trying to get him used to the taste that way for now. He's avoiding the blood with milk so far though, sigh, and I need to get him okay with it so he can start being okay with raw.
I would definitely try it, it sounds crazy and it's not healthy, but once or twice shouldn't kill him and we may, just maybe, see a wee bit of light at the end of the tunnel with him. He will definitely do better on wet than on kibble, especially with stomach problems. Carnivores just aren't meant to be eating kibbles.
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pegleg
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Post by pegleg on Oct 9, 2017 23:24:59 GMT -5
I know. And I've been trying to get him to switch but he's just not willing. And you can't tough love a cat or I would have done that by now I might try a mouse tomorrow, just to see if Binx will eat it. Do the whole prey and the heart.
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Post by LindaM on Oct 10, 2017 0:37:33 GMT -5
Don't worry, you're not alone in this battle. Kitties can be switched, and we will try our best to do so. <3
Hm, let me know how that goes. If you have troubles, you can chop up the mouse into chunks and see if Binx will have at it. If still no go, try a tiny drop of salmon oil, or gently rub a chunk against his mouth a few times.
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pegleg
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Post by pegleg on Oct 10, 2017 2:06:50 GMT -5
I know they can be <3 But Monkey's gonna be a challenging one. He's a grumpy old fart and VERY set in his ways. He doesn't even like FISH. Like canned tuna. I even offered him one of Pixel's whole fish and he wouldn't even sniff it. Will do! I let them sniff it through the cage bars today to see if he showed interest. He sniffed it a bit... And Thack tried to pull it through the bars. But I didn't let them have it because they had just eaten a big scoop of grind and still had some in their bowls and it would have just been stashed haha Maybe he'll see Thackery eating and get the idea
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Post by LindaM on Oct 10, 2017 12:57:36 GMT -5
Hades was.. h*ll.. he IS still a challenging one. There's days I wanna rip my hair out and strangle him with it, LOL. Don't worry too much about not being too happy about fish, it's not even that great for them anyway, it's a misconception we as people have about cats. So, a good example here is, that my ferrets will eat FDR minnows... and my cat refuses to touch the things. He MAY sometimes want a tiny bit of tuna, but he never eats a lot. Canned tuna isn't good anyway, it's often got salt and stuff added to it which we should avoid with our animals.
So, as I was saying about how I had to buy all the brands under the sun to find some Hades' would eat, yeah, I wasn't the only one. One of the admins on here had to go through the same thing, buying easily 25 different ones, to find only one of them that her cat would eat. Not gonna lie, it can be pricey, but it's a battle worth fighting for sure.
With kitty's meals.. leave his kibble out for only 30 minutes, and then take it away. You can feed the usual 2 or 3 times per day, but keep it timed like that. I'm not sure if you already keep the times that short on your timed feedings. Also, you can put a wee bit of the wet food down next to his bowl of kibble, that way while he eats his kibble, he can smell the wet food, and begin to associate the smell of the wet with his food. It's kinda like a mind trick, but it has been known to work, so it's worth a shot. It may take a while though, so just keep up with it, and don't put TOO much out as it can be wasteful when kitty doesn't eat it, just put out enough for him to get the scent up in his nostrils as he munches the kibbles.
Hahaha! Sniffing is good, let me know if Binxy is willing to try more than that, and like I said, if you get stuck with it, chop the thing up and try it again. It'd be great to get them both to munching whole prey. And as for seeing each other eat, this CAN actually help some fuzzies get past their inhibitions to foods.
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pegleg
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Post by pegleg on Oct 10, 2017 16:52:19 GMT -5
I tried the french fry method, it didn't work. He wouldn't eat the fry either. And as for putting the bowl next to his, I tried that. His food is on a table to keep it away from the dog, and he just pushed the wet food off the table. I only leave it out for a short time but he usually finishes it within 10 minutes LOL
Well. I tried chopping one up and all I learned is that Thackery can eat 2 mice in thirty minutes LOL
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Post by LindaM on Oct 10, 2017 17:14:10 GMT -5
Haha! Well, good on Thack then, clearly gonna take a bit of work with Binxy. That's okay though, it happens. You can also mix a wee bit of chopped mice in with something Binx does enjoy eating. Which methods of introducing a new food to ferrets are you familiar with right now?
As for kitty, I wouldn't put a whole bowl of wet out, just a teaspoon full should be enough, glopped next to his bowl. If you can put a feeding mat under his bowl, that'd be great. Especially a rubber one which is hard to move, but easy to clean off. That way he won't be able to push away the food.
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pegleg
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Post by pegleg on Oct 10, 2017 17:28:49 GMT -5
I've used scruff and scrub so far.And he got ground rabbit since Thackery got the mice. I might try chopped in one if the grinds~ It was just a spoonful, just in a bowl. And I'll try that
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Post by LindaM on Oct 10, 2017 18:40:14 GMT -5
Okay, so another method, and while it kinda works easier with liquids, you can do the same with a piece of meat. The Grab'n'Dab. You can do this throughout the day, or in a session of say 20-30 minutes, dabbing every 5 minutes. Grab your ferret, dip finger in soup/liquid (in this case you'd just use the piece of meat instead), and dab onto their mouth/nose/gums. Give them a second to start licking it off before just letting them go, that way they'll get the taste in their mouth versus just rubbing off on the carpet or the like right away.
Try putting it next to the bowl like that for a few days and we'll see if anything happens. I gotta say, with Hades.. while I am struggling so hard with getting him onto raw.. he just, almost magically, one day scarfed down an FDR chicken heart from the ferrets' treat bags and that was it.. he LOVES FDR chicken hearts now.. though can't say he'll touch legit fresh raw hearts yet. Sometimes they will surprise you.
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