Hi all,

What seems to be general consensus about using grocery store-bought frozen ground chicken (the one sold in tubs) as a base for homemade raw food? It's significantly cheaper than any frozen ground chicken I saw at pet stores, and I am not even talking balanced food here.
I don't want to mess with the grinder and I will add all the necessary add-on supplements (calcium included) anyway.
I know that store-ground chicken is not recommended because of high bacteria level, but that shouldn't be an issue here as everything is frozen from day 1.
This is going to be only a part of the diet, I'm feeding 100% canned food right now and raw on weekends as a treat, want to do something closer to 50/50.

Any thoughts?
Thanks!

Bumping this because I've ran across this same question researching raw diets and would like to know anyones thoughts as well. I'm trying to steer clear of buying a grinder myself as well..

Here's the thing... There are all these different nutrients that a cat in the wild gets from eating a whole animal. Some of it comes from the meat itself, but a lot of it comes from the bones, organs, and everything else. So if you are going to buy human-grade meat, and base the meal around that, then you are going to have to track down all those other nutrients and not only add them back in, but do so in the correct proportions.

If it's only part of the diet, like the original poster said, you still have the problem of proportions. All that stuff is in the canned food, but then if you mix that 50-50 with just ground meat, then the cat is only getting 50% of those nutrients that he should.

There is a pet food store around here, that sells a lot of interesting products in their freezer, including just ground meat, meat + bone, organs etc, and then a whole bunch of different powdered supplements in bottles. And when you go there, they can guide you through what you need to go with what you are buying. They give you the exact amounts of the various nutrients to measure out, and all that. Of course there is definitely an issue of trust/faith with that stuff that I have trouble with. Do THEY know what they are talking about (as helpful as they are)?

If you are going to go the raw food route, I'd recommend doing a ton of research. This isn't something you want to do "half way". There are books on it, websites, facebook groups and all sorts of stuff. Personally I really don't want to devote that kind of time to this, so I wimp out and buy the frozen, complete, raw recipes that I can just pull out of the freezer and feed to my cats. The tradeoff of course is that they are more expensive that way...

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The little monsters 3

I've ended up biting the bullet and getting a grinder. I'm doing 80% homemade food (according to one of the well-known recipes) and 20% canned just to prevent the cats from getting bored. $150 I paid for a medium-duty grinder is not a lot of money, considering you have to pay only once.
Making cat food is messy, but it's not nearly as time-consuming as I thought it would be.