Raw food you say?? I must be insane right? Nope although there have been moments that I have wondered what on earth I am doing!! So what made me change to raw food your probably wondering?? Well we haven't been breeding long, not long at all and since I have started with a multi cat household we have literally tried every food going and each brand has come with its own set of problems. We've had girls with cystitis, girls that have miscarried, we've lost kittens, we've had diahorrea from one end of the house to the other, vomiting, and up until recently suspected kidney crystals and after all of this I thought "ENOUGH" so we decided to look into other options. Raw Diet is the longest standing diet there is, this is the first diet and when you think about it the diet that cats first ever started out on. They are designed to eat raw meat we can see this from their short digestive tract and their teeth. After googling extensively and reading up on this over and over again right from November 2008 in April 2009 we decided to take the plunge. Theoretically the younger the cat the easier the switch but it varied in our house. Miranda our youngest cat converted then decided she didn't fancy it... so its taken us a while to get back on track with her. At the moment we have all cats onto raw food and our Chihuahua. Unfortunately our cats do not seem thrilled about "bone" which is a vital part of the diet. Prinny (chihuahua) is absolutely thrilled with raw meaty bones and has even resorted to turning her nose up at mince! The cats however are sticking to mince. The cats at the moment are having raw chicken mince, raw turkey mince and raw pheasant and we are looking to try venison and rabbit They also have pilchards, mackeral , sardines once a week and also liver and kidney. I hope within the next few weeks to have them eating chunks of meat + bones. I am introducing chicken wings to their diet in the hope that they will start grinding those bones down. So far the benefits I have seen are marvellous litter trays, and glossier coats and the dog has the sparkliest pearly whites I just hope the cats are too far behind on the bone front of things. Despite this, and perhaps hypocritically, we do not wean kittens that will not be staying at Semni onto raw. We use Hills Science Kitten our preferred comercial brand of cat food as we do appreciate that new kitten owners may not have the time to prepare a raw diet and to not confuse the kittens we wean them onto commercial food unless we can convince new owners to continue raw diet which is in the best interest of the cat!