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What vegetables can I put in homemade cat food?
I've recently found it's easier and cheaper to cook food for my dogs -- I grind carrots, celery, and ground beef together in roughly equal proportions, cook it in the slow-cooker, and it's cheaper than canned food and my dogs seem to like it better. I feel better knowing that my animals are eating all healthy stuff.
Can I serve this same homemade animal food to my cats? I know cats need to have a diet rich in animal protiens, so for them I would increase the proportion of the ground beef. But are the carrots and celery going to give my cats an adverse reaction?
9 Answers
- Anonymous9 years agoFavorite Answer
Yes, it will have an adverse reaction cats don't need vegetables. Dogs can eat them. Cats can't. Most of what a cat eats should be meat. Lots of cat foods do have veggies in them but in only small quantities, the bulk being meat. And only some veggies are okay for cats to have. A cat can live without eating any veggies and be okay. Another nutrient cats need is taurine, which is not present in sufficient quantities in the meat you'd cook at home. Dogs don't need this nutrient, so their food is easier to make. Making homemade cat food is a much trickier task than making homemade dog food, since the cooking process actually strips the meat of most of the taurine. The cat foods at petstores usually have taurine added to them, so it will be much easier to just buy a high quality cat food.
Believe it or not, cat food is much more rich in protein than dog food, and without sufficient taurine in their diets, cats' eyes and heart can't function properly. It takes a lot of research and effort to make homemade cat food.
EDIT: Please don't listen to the first commenter's suggestion about corn. While cooked carrots and peas in small amounts are okay for cats, corn is a bad idea. The worst cat foods add corn as a filler ingredient which often causes cats to have an upset stomach. This is why high quality foods create grain free options which specify that there is no CORN and WHEAT in them, because those two items are what causes most stomach upsets in a cat.
- bloomorninggloryLv 79 years ago
Cats don't need veggies. If I were doing a home prepared diet, I'd skip them completely. BUT more important is that cats need taurine, which does not exist in cooked meat. It only exists in raw meat. So you will either need to serve the meat raw or add a taurine supplement. Also, when eating a raw meat diet, cats should have some bones, otherwise they will need a calcium supplement. As you can see, it is more complicated than throwing a few things together. Please do some research before jumping in, or your cat could be missing some vital nutrients. If you haven't done research in regards to the dogs' diet, please do that as well. I would be concerned they are missing calcium and possibly other nutrients. Good luck!
- SusanLv 45 years ago
Cat food you buy at the store is specially formulated and lab tested to have the correct proportions of the nutrients cats need to be healthy. You're not going to be able to reproduce that yourself. But at the same time, I think it's really good for cats to get "real stuff" every once in a while, so long as it's just meat. So I would say put whatever meat or fat products you want in it, but no veggies or starches (a cat's digestive tract is short and acidic, which means that they don't digest veggies or grains well), and use it as a supplement to, NOT a replacement for, their normal cat food.
- ?Lv 79 years ago
Cats don't have the enzymes to digest vegetable matter so you'd be wasting your money adding them to cat food. Cats also need to have taurine and a higher calcium amount then dogs, probably some other things too which is why most of us don't try to make our own cat food. Beef also is not highly recommended for cats--you need to give them meats that are more like the natural prey they'd catch themselves like bird flesh (poultry) and fish. Do a search for how to make cat food to get a better idea of how to make quality cat food. You might want to start with a small quantity too since cats don't always like foods they aren't already familiar with--I tried to switch our cats to a raw diet (which is supposed to be good for them) and they would not eat the stuff, they wanted their kibble and canned stuff.
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- Anonymous9 years ago
I'm concerned that you haven't mentioned some ingredients that are really important to include in your dogs diet. You need to supplement with a multivitamin and you may need to add fatty acids and antioxidants to make sure his food is properly balanced. Additionally that is a very soft diet and does not provide chewing action for their teeth and gums.
Cats and dogs have quite different nutritional requirements. You're correct that cats need a higher protein diet but they also need a diet high in taurine among other things. Conversely, cats have less need for starch than dogs and cannot digest it as well as dogs. I've attached a link to a page on the special nutritional needs of cats. I hope it helps.
Source(s): pet nutrition specialist and ambassador for Nutro http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+1659&a... http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=1+2244&a... - 9 years ago
You shouldnt be putting veggies on cats food!. they dont eat veggies. also no grains.
you could add chicken liver though, if i ever make home made cat food which im planning to do soon
I would include the liver, i have read that its healthy for them since it has all this organs, and its cheaper for us too.. also you could mix raw egg on it. so its meat,liver and raw egg mix.
you dont cook it though. you should just feed it to them raw.. and it will only last in your fridge for few days. I did alot of googling about this before !
and I saw this on a video.. probably youtube..
because I also want to make a home made food for my cat! since almost all the foods out there are very unhealthy to our pets its also like making our cats life short..
now I want to start making my cat home made food!! good luck to us!
- Anonymous9 years ago
Cats hate vegetables, just like me