Requesting guidance to ensure balanced diet and regularity with appropriate supplementation

[JoanneDM]

I would like to receive guidance to make sure I’m giving my 10-week old kitten a balanced diet and supporting regular bowel movements. Here is my current practice:

• 100% commercial raw food, with right proportions of muscle meat, organ meat(s) and bones
• Rotating meat sources, alternating between poultry and red meat:
  • Turkey, Rabbit, Chicken, Rabbit, Turkey, etc.
  • Will be adding Lamb in the fall: Turkey, Rabbit, Chicken, Lamb, Turkey, Rabbit, etc.
• Adding 25% of water to his food to help prevent hard stools for smooth bowel movements
• Supplementing with Taurine, since I’ve read that “grinding meat decreases the taurine content by increasing the surface area of the meat that is exposed to air. This results in the oxidation of taurine which will decrease the overall available taurine. A taurine supplement is typically required when feeding a ground raw diet to cats.”
  • I am adding 1/64 tsp each morning for a daily dosage of 63 mg
• Supplementing with fish oil for omega-3: wild caught salmon and pollock oil
• Supplementing with Adored Beast “Love Bugs” probiotics

My questions are:

Q1. Will the meat sources I have selected be sufficient to ensure a balanced diet from week to week? Is there something I should be doing better?

Q2. Am I adding too much water (25%) to his meals?

Q3. Is there anything else I can do, besides adding water and probiotics to his meals, to help maintain digestive health, especially prevent hard stools (with ideal being firm but pliable, and segmented) and promote regular bowel movements? I read that slippery elm, when given long-term, can reduce the absorption of certain minerals, so what else can I do on a daily basis for the long run?

Q4. Am I adding enough taurine for my kitten and should the amount increase as he ages?

Q5. Am I missing other essential supplements, like vitamin E and others?


I am also wondering about bovine colostrum, which may help boost the immune system.

Could I give 1/32 tsp of bovine colostrum daily to my 10-week old kitten, or wait a little while longer until he is 16 weeks old, as in the study cited below?

Here is an interesting article:

Gore AM, Satyaraj E, Labuda J, et al. Supplementation of Diets with Bovine Colostrum Influences Immune and Gut Function in Kittens. Front Vet Sci. 2021;8:675712. Published 2021 Aug 10. doi:10.3389/fvets.2021.675712

The veterinarian clinics on the Quebec side (I live in Ottawa, Ontario) do not force any vaccines on their clients; even the rabies vaccine is a choice (so I’m crossing the interprovincial bridge to access veterinarian care for that reason--in Ontario, the rabies vaccine is required by law ... but I can get around this by selecting a veterinarian clinic in Quebec). However, they do recommend the core vaccines for neutering/spaying because of possible exposures to sick animals in the clinic.

Q6. Would it be a good idea to boost my kitten’s immune system with this bovine colostrum supplement (human grade, but at a dose of 1/32 tsp per day, about 100 mg, equal to 0.1% of 100 g of raw meat per day) as an alternative to the core vaccines for protection while undergoing the surgery? If so, at what age could I start?

@Dr. Christina, @Dr. jeff, @Dr. Sara, @Dr. Jean Hofve

 

[Dr. Jean Hofve]

A balanced commercial raw food will be sufficient, including taurine, calcium, vitamins and other minerals, and taurine, without any supplementation

No need to add water to a complete diet--you're trying to prevent something that isn't happening and probably won't. Extra water will dilute nutrients, and take up room in his little tummy that he needs for food.

Colostrum is great, but it is no substitute for vaccines. Cows don't get feline diseases, so produce no antibodies against them. Anyway, the window for kittens to absorb mom's antibodies closes 12-24 hours after birth.

Personally, I recommend kitten vaccines, since they're very effective, as safe as vaccines ever can be, and it's pretty awful to watch kittens die of an easily preventable disease. If you can wait to vaccinate until 16 weeks (being very careful about bringing pathogens in--a friend lost several naturally-reared, unvaccinated litters and a queen to panleukopenia that a kennel worker brought in on her shoes)--then a single vaccine at that age is essentially good for life.

BTW taurine does not oxidize, nor is it affected by heat. What does happen is that the gut bacteria are also fond of taurine and will "steal" it, so if there isn't enough in the food, deficiency can occur. This is well known by manufacturers and covered by their formulations. If you are buying ground meat to make the food, or grinding it yourself and not retaining all the juice, then taurine should be added--about 80 mg per day for an adult cat.

Foods intended for kittens (but not adults) are also required to supplement EPA and DHA, so while a few extra drops of fish oil won't hurt, it's unnecessary.

If you want to make the diet entirely yourself, here are the instructions: Making Cat Food

 

[JoanneDM]

Oh dear, now that I stopped adding slippery elm at meal time, my kitty's stools are dry and crumbly ... Dr. Christina says it's an indication of too much bone in the diet.

However, I'm giving my kitty commercial raw food and so I can't adjust the bone content. At my recent visit to the vet for first check-up, I was told to add 15 ml of water to each meal for softer stools--however, I only mentioned that I was feeding wet food, did not specify raw food.

As would be expected, I think it's interfering with digestion. The next bowel movement was 24 hours later and the one after that was 19 hours later...so it appears that all that extra water is making the food go down the GI tract much faster--and less nutrients likely to be absorbed... so need another approach.

The only other approaches would be slippery elm and pumpkin puree.

1) Slippery elm
However, as indicated on Dr. Jean's website:

NOTE: Slippery Elm may interfere with absorption of medications. Long-term use may reduce nutrient absorption. It may be best to give Slippery Elm at a different time, separate from medications. Please discuss use of all supplements and herbs with your veterinarian.

So adding 1/64 tsp 3 times a day (the equivalent of 1/4 tsp per 10 lbs of body weight) cannot be done long-term --

Question 1: What does long term mean in number of [xdaysx] weeks? For how much longer can I continue to add slippery elm?

2) Pumpkin purée

To what extent would adding 1/8 tsp of pumpkin purée to 100 g of food (my kitty has a big appetite, eating 10% of body weight) would be worse than slippery elm or would it be okay in the long run--it would be better than adding 15 ml of water to food bowl, given that this added water did nothing to soften the hard stools and may be reducing absorption of nutrients due to faster time with elimination

Question 2: what do you think of this amount for the pumpkin purée?

3) Goat kefir

This would be a third approach as recommended by Dr. Christina ... I've got a bottle thawing in the fridge right now,

Question 3: I am thinking of giving my kitty 1 or 2 tsp with each meal .. but what would be the appropriate daily amount to give divided into 3 servings per day?

Question 4: I'm not sure if the goat kefir will make a difference, so I would like to have a back-up plan: slippery elm or pumpkin purée ... for addressing hard, dry stools since cannot adjust calcium intake ... what would be the best back-up plan?

Your input would be so much appreciated

 

[NancyK]

Can you simply add more meat to the food if you suspect it has too much bone?

Nancy

 

[JoanneDM]

I'm concerned that it would not be that simple. I wouldn't know how much meat to add and it would unbalance the proportion of muscle meat to organ meat ... and I may inadvertently end up with calcium level too low

 

[NancyK]

I'm concerned that it would not be that simple. I wouldn't know how much meat to add and it would unbalance the proportion of muscle meat to organ meat ... and I may inadvertently end up with calcium level too low

I feed a homemade diet so I pay attention to poops to determine bone amount. My dogs are small so I only add a tiny bit of bit of meat at a time if I suspect too much bone. I wouldn't think this would affect the overall balance too much. I believe every animal is a bit different in what they can tolerate bone or organ wise. In fact, I have found a wide variance in bone content between the same body part from the same species. I also believe commercial foods are geared to the average animal and all animals are different.

Nancy

 

[JoanneDM]

Thanks for the input but I am not in a capacity to handle a homemade diet. So it would be great if one of the veterinarians on this forum could please let me know a way around softening my kitten's stools...that would be so very much appreciated

 

[JoanneDM]

Update: I now realize it would be best to discontinue the slippery elm. I started again adding this herb to food bowl as of Thursday evening, and the last two bowel movements were only 12 hours apart ... this time the stools were darker in color, still dry and crumbly but not as crumbly as previous stools ...

Maybe dry, crumbly stools (without slippery elm) is nothing to be concerned about?

 

[ivegrgas]

Hi Joanne - speaking from personal experience, I know I get concerned when something is out of the ordinary with my pet and I can hear that same concern in this post.

One thing that I consistently hear from all of the speakers is that we should strive to change up our pet's food and supplements. If you have a preferred brand, you can occasionally change the formula from that brand. Subsequently, change in the diet will result in different frequency and consistency of the stool. Another thing that I noticed is that level of activity has impact on the frequency of the bowel movement. And I am sure that there are other factors such as stress or weather that impact our pets.

Overall, I would focus on your kitten's BEAM over the period of few days before getting alarmed.

 

[JoanneDM]

Thank you for sharing. Come to think of it, I left out my kitten's food bowl with raw chicken longer than I should have. This past Thursday, at dinner time, only half was eaten after leaving it out for 5-10 minutes. As I was putting it away, I thought of leaving it out for another 5-10 minutes to see if more would get eaten but forgot about it. Then more than half an hour later I noticed the bowl on the floor now empty. I am not sure when my kitten finished eating up the food.

Could having left the food out more than 30 minutes, if that's when all got eaten up, affected the level of bad bacteria in the gut such that bowel movement was faster? ... just wondering...

 

[GinnyW]

Not likely, IMO. I think I would not use slippery elm or other clearly adjunctive items, but just provide FOOD. You can leave out bone, for the time being, without worrying about balance. The kefir would be a nice addition, and should help provide moisture as well as nutritional value. "Wet" food should help with stools, without any other "additives". Another helpful factor would be consistency: Pick a diet with adequate moisture and stay with it for a few days. Take leftovers up after a hour or so, and save til next feeding. Don't worry about bacteria; nothing should develop that quickly, IMO.

 

[JoanneDM]

Thank you so much Ginny ... I really need and appreciate all of this community support. About leftovers, this is very reassuring...that it was not a bad thing to leave the food out like I did. And yes, that's a great idea, I can pick out some of the pieces of bone and leave them out.