Homemade cat food

I'm experimenting with this. Some of you may want to try this.
I have a lot of cats (7) that have come to live here at the farm by either being dumped off or the migrated from homes that were starving them so naturally they live with me. The result is a vermin-free farm and plenty of company when I garden or just take a walk on my property!
I feed the Taste of the Wild dry food, but find that they look forward to (and I can get them in the house at night - important as we have a lot of nighttime predators here) the wet food.
Canned wet food is expensive, and I don't like having to throw out or recycle the food cans. So I was searching for an alternative.
So I found this 'raw food' recipe on the Web, did a little research and made my own up this morning. I have access to a lot of organ meat as I raise and butcher my own turkeys and chickens, and this year I also had a lamb butchered so I had the organ meats from that beastie to work with.
I made 3 formulas based on the following recipe: lamb and chicken, chicken and turkey, and turkey.
I'm processing it all now in the pressure canner - I used the jelly jars to help with the preservation - and storage. I plan on doing this recipe again with whatever raw meats I can find cheaply (other than beef which is not a natural cat food) and see how it goes.

1-1/2 lbs raw ground muscle meat
1 cup raw ground heart
1/2 raw pureed liver
1/2 cup water
2 raw egg yolks
2 T. Bone Meal
1/2 tsp Lite Salt (iodized)
2000 Mg fish oil
2000 Mg Taurine

I skipped using the Lite Salt this time in the mix, as there was a caution about canning the meat using salt by one of the raw food experts. I also did not include the Taurine this time around as I had more than the requested amount for raw heart. The mix is easy to make, requires a bowl and a spoon and a scale, and of course, access to the meat. I ground up all my meats using my Kitchenaid mixer with the meat grinder attachment. (works really well)

I'll let you know how my cats like that formula's. I figure since I don't feed this exclusively, I'm OK with making my own up since I have the raw materials on hand.

Although I don't have any cats, I appreciate you posting this. Got any recipes for dogfood?

My cats give this a big 'thumbs up"! I fed some of the lamb mix and some of the turkey mix this morning. They don't need much, and they all eat it without problem. The texture is like a meatloaf in the jar, you have to break it up with a fork to mix with the liquid.

I don't have a dog, but I can look around for a canned food recipe for dogs. Dogs are usually big eaters, much more so than cats so it might be more expensive unless you have access to the raw materials.

I'll search around and see what I can find on home made dogfood. About the only raw materials we have right now would be chicken, milk, eggs and any wild game we can get.

Sonshine, I just saw this thread and thought I'd jump in. I've been making my own dog food for almost a month now. I use about five pounds of chicken livers, two hard boiled eggs (shells and all), four cups of rice, a couple carrots and garlic. I run the meat, eggs and carrots through my meat grinder and mix it with the rice. The dogs love it and they are doing great with it. You can also pressure can it at 10 pounds of pressure for 70 minutes in pints.

Yesterday I made cat food. I used two packages of ground chicken (next time I'm going to grind up my own), two carrots and two cups of macaroni and some garlic. I put it all in my hand crank food processor and then stored it in the fridge. The cat loves it. I think I could can that too in jelly jars at 10 pounds of pressure for 70 minutes.

Donna, do you cook the meat and veggies? I'm actually wanting to try to make some dry dogfood. My dogs don't do well with wet food. We try to feed them some table scraps and they always end up getting sick. Not sure if it's because they over eat or eat too fast or something else, but the dry dogfood seems to work best for them. I've seen a couple of recipes for dried dogfood, but haven't made any yet.

Yes, I cook the meat and veggies first. Years ago, as a matter of fact when I lived here before, I made some dry dog food by just taking a recipe I had for bog bisquits and using a soda bottle top and cutting it into rounds. They loved it. Of course now that I have my little Sophie the Pug she needs little dog food if it is dry but I guess I could cut them in smaller little pieces and roll them into nuggets by hand. She has a lot of skin problems (typical to Pugs) and the older dog was leaking urine when she was on the dry food. I noticed that their consumption of water has decreased too since taking them off the dry food. She's an older dog and, just like older people, her bladder is probably getting weak.

I have a few dog treat recipes, so I may try that. I wonder if I could use your ingredients and add something like oatmeal or some type of flour to turn it into a dry dog food. I may have to play around with it a bit and see what I can come up with. I'll have to make it pretty small though, because we have shelties and a chiuaua. (sp)

You might be able to. My pug has problems with dry skin so that is why I went to the wet food. So far it seems to be working.