Freeze-Dried Raw Food Is The Easiest Way to Feed Your Cats Raw

Mom says there has been some confusion about how to handle the freeze-dried raw food for cats and dogs when serving it as a meal. Since many of the popular treats today are freeze-dried (FD) "single ingredient protein", serving us cats a couple FD treats straight from the bag is fine. But serving FD as a whole meal requires that it be re-constituted with water to expand into "wet raw food" again.  

Freeze-dried versions of the frozen raw food diet are same, exact original ingredients as the frozen version – except it has had all the water extracted out of it. The process of dehydration takes anywhere from 14 – 18 hours, making it more costly. While FD raw food is easier, it is also 30% more expensive on average than the frozen version.

In the end freeze-dried (FD) raw food is the easiest way to serve your pet raw food. However convenience has a price! Meow!

The Importance of Adding Water to Freeze Dried Food

Mom says the biggest thing to remember is – if you take the water out of the food so that it has a shelf life, you must re-constitute it with water to serve it to your pet! If you think about it for a moment – it makes sense!

And, in fact, you cannot serve it without re-constituting it with water – as it will be very difficult to digest. Mom once in the beginning served Beau some FD food without water re-constituted into it and checked back 10 minutes later and he had thrown it up all over the floor! Apparently the food expanded in his stomach to the point that he had "eaten too much" and it forced him to vomit.

Also, rule #1 is to make sure your pet stays hydrated enough and freeze-dried food is a perfect way to get your pet to drink water with their delicious raw food! We are going to take the FD food and make a stew out of it! Yummy!

We have included some photos here so you can see how easy it is to serve raw food using the freeze-dried versions!

Select the number of nuggets to be served and chop into small pieces.

Pour warm water over the food – enough to soak all the pieces (make stew, not soup)…mix and let stand for 5-6 minutes…mix it a few more times and serve.

That’s it – so easy! Now even the busiest pet parent can serve their pet raw food!