Sunday, February 10, 2008

To Grind Henry's Or Not

I was googling info on taurine this morning, and came across this from here: (disregard the word 'cat', the rest still applies)

By feeding a cat a raw diet, the cat should receive the best, most bioavailable form of taurine via its food. There is one proviso: do not grind the food. Grinding increases the surface area of the meat and thus exposes more of the "good stuff" to the air. This results in oxidation of taurine and a resultant decrease in overall taurine available to the cat.
I really want Henry to get as much taurine as possible from this diet, due to how severe his seizures are. (not frequent, but severe) He has two canines that are broken almost to the gum, two missing back teeth on that same side, and one missing front tooth next to one of his broken canines. On the other side of his mouth, his teeth are all in good condition.

Riley's will still be getting grinded regardless as he will be 13 in 1 month and he has more gum than teeth. We just have to decide what we want to do as far as Henry's.

Anyways, I posted this as a question at a forum, explaining the condition of Henry's teeth, and this is a response I got:

Give Henry a chicken neck or turkey neck, and see how he does. If he does well with that, then try him on chicken wings, or leg quarters. If you find that he's not able to chew effectively, then you'll know that you need to grind...


I think this is what we will do.

p.s. If you have experience with this, please tell me what you think.

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