Tripe can be both scary looking and smelling, so why bother with it? You certainly don’t have to feed it as it is not essential to your cat’s diet. However, it can be a nice addition for its health benefits.
So what exactly is tripe and why should you consider feeding it?
First thing to know is that there is an important difference between raw green tripe for feeding pets and tripe that is sold for human consumption in the grocery store. Usually it is great to feed human grade meats from the store to our cats, but in this case, it’s the opposite. The tripe sold for people in the store has been bleached and does not have the same nutritional value as the raw, unprocessed tripe for pets. This means that you can only purchase raw green tripe from pet food suppliers (I’ll include some links to suppliers below).
What is tripe?
Ok, so what is this stuff? Tripe is the stomach lining of ruminant animals. Ruminant animals include cows, sheep, goats, bison, to name a few. Beef tripe is the most common. Ruminant animals have a four chambered stomach. Tripe can come from the different chambers. I’ve read that the tripe from the first two chambers is considered higher quality, but I’ve also read that tripe is mainly from the 4th chamber of the stomach.
Raw tripe is sold in pieces/strips and ground. It is a grey-brownish color with a green tinge. Because it is the lining of the stomach, it smells like death itself. It’s bad, like really bad. For some pets, this makes tripe irresistible, but for the human prepping it, it’s not fun. Just considered yourself warned. Some people rub a strong smelling lotion under their nose to help with this.
The benefits of tripe
So if it looks pretty awful and smells even worse, why bother feeding it? Well, it has some pretty great health benefits.
~Tripe is full of healthy probiotics, including lactobactillis acidophilus. Lactobactillis acidophilus is an important probiotic that helps maintain the balance of good and bad bacteria in your cat’s gut. Gut health is critical to our cats’ overall health because 80% of the immune system is located in the gut.
~Tripe provides loads of digestive enzymes. The same enzymes used to break down the plant matter that ruminant animals eat are present in the raw, unprocessed tripe. Digestive enzymes help break down food into nutrients that our cats’ bodies can absorb more easily. Both healthy cats and cats with digestive issues can benefit from enzymes. If your cat has a health issue that impacts their ability to absorb nutrients from their food, raw green tripe can be a very helpful addition to the diet.
~Tripe is a good source of manganese, which is an essential micro mineral in the diet.
~Tripe has a balanced amount of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
How to feed
Tripe is classified as a muscular organ. This means that you would include it as part of the muscle meat portion in a raw diet. You can feed approximately 20% of the meat portion of the diet as muscular organs, which can include tripe. Start with a small amount to see how your cat responds as you would with any new food.
If you want to give it a try, here are a few US suppliers that offer green tripe:
Raw Feeding Miami (beef, bison, lamb, goat, elk)
My Pet Carnivore (beef, lamb, goat)
Hare Today (beef, goat)
Texas Tripe (beef)
So there you have it, that’s the lowdown on raw green tripe: the good and the stinky, but ultimately not so scary after all.
