nutritional requirements!!

by Colin
(Yeovil, Somerset, UK)

Hi Donna,

I want to say first that i am very thankful for this website and for the time you spent in replying back to my questions. You have given me much needed help on cat based topics and made my transition to a raw cat food diet easier than doing it by myself. In saying that I have another question and hope you can answer it. How much iodine should a cat consume a day? I read on another web site that; I quote, "The daily requirement for an adult cat is 0.16 mg of iodine for every pound of cat food eaten (on a dry matter basis)."
As i am feeding my cats on a raw meat diet it is far from dry. Do you know what the requirements are for a cat per day?
Because i didn’t want to OD the cats with iodine and cause illness such as hyperthyroidism i crushed 4 kelp tablets with a total dose of 0.64 mg of iodine in a 4kg batch of raw cat food (well mixed). I thought this would give a small amount per serving to prevent total deficiency in iodine. Or have i done the opposite! I appreciate any feedback you can give me on this subject. Plus to prevent me asking similar questions about nutrition could you tell me, if you know, what the nutritional requirements for a typical cat based on weight and age per day is.

Again i appreciate your input.

Thankfully

Colin
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http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=1+2243+2246&aid=673

RESPONSE:

We really appreciate the compliments about our website and our responses to you but we HATE this question! It requires us to do a bunch of math and none of us like math! The iodine requirement in the article that you quoted is correct as far as we know. We also use kelp in our raw meat food. The recepie makes apx. 5 pounds of food (before adding the water) and the 1/4 tsp of kelp is apx. .80mg of iodine which works out to apx. .16mg per pound. It is really difficult to compare dry weights when calculating wet food because the meat inself has water so all of the measurements we follow are apx. Weigh your food before adding the water, change the kg. to pounds and calculate the iodine based on that. What you are giving is slightly under the .16 per pound. However, that being said, cats are prone to hyperthyroidism as they age so many people we know use less iodine than we do in their homemade food and some use only organic meats and add no iodine. Also, how much a cat eats every day varies depending on their "mood" so the amount of nutrients they get each day varies too. We tend to focus more on the overall health and energy of our cats so as long as your cats appear healthy with shiney coats, bright eyes, good stools, urinating well and have a good level of activity, just continue giving what you are giving. More is more dangerous than less when it comes to iodine and cats. As to nutritional requirements daily for an average cat, this is just too complicated and confusing for us to try to address here and varies greatly depending on activity levels, the size of the cat and so forth. I hope this, at least in part, answers your question.

Donna
House Full Cats Mom