Poultry products are remarkably versatile when it comes to feeding cats. Meats can be ground with bone for homemade recipes; egg yolk is a nutritious staple; and chicken necks or small, dressed game birds like quail are probably the most effective natural “toothbrushes” for cats. Day-old chicks can be fed (dead) as whole prey, and are a staple at conservation centres and zoos for supplementing the diet of captive small wild cat species. These are also available frozen for domestic cats. Cooked chicken, meanwhile, can be a great stepping stone to a homemade diet—and sometimes the only meat some cats will accept at first. Puréed cooked chicken with raw egg yolk is also an excellent choice for nursing sick cats or for tube feeding.

For those interested in self-reliance, chickens are relatively easy to raise. They grow quickly, require little infrastructure, and can be butchered at home. A dual-purpose flock can supply your cat with both meat and eggs. When feeding poultry by grinding the entire carcass—bone and skin included—food waste is kept to a minimum, making poultry an efficient choice.

Chicken appears to be the most popular meat among cat owners making or buying cat food. However, the reasons behind this choice are often more idealistic than evidence-based. Despite poultry’s usefulness and appeal, I don’t recommend relying on chicken as your first—or only—meat choice. Here’s why:

Salmonella

Healthy adult cats may be naturally resistant to many pathogens—but Salmonella is not one of them. In cats, Salmonella infection is often referred to as “songbird fever” because it’s commonly acquired through eating wild birds. That’s because cats haven’t evolved a strong resistance to this bacterium, and birds (including chickens) are one of its main carriers.

When I submitted wild-caught mice for microbiological testing, no Salmonella was found. But according to the CDC, 1 in 25 packages of raw chicken sold in supermarkets is contaminated with Salmonella. The American Meat Association estimates that 19% of Salmonella infections in people originate from poultry products.

Veterinary studies have confirmed Salmonella infections in cats fed commercially produced frozen raw chicken diets. The veterinary community estimates that up to 20% of commercial frozen raw pet foods may be contaminated. While a healthy adult cat may show no symptoms, kittens, elderly cats, pregnant or nursing queens, and those with compromised immunity (e.g., FIV or FeLV positive) are all at high risk of becoming seriously ill.

There’s another twist: cats fed raw poultry can shed Salmonella in their faeces—creating a secondary risk for humans. The commercial poultry industry tries to limit contamination by using antibiotics in feed, but this has contributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella strains, now recognised as a public health concern.

This isn’t the fault of pet owners feeding fresh food—it’s a failure of the industrial meat system. Those of us choosing to feed fresh, raw diets can help combat this problem by avoiding poultry and opting for meats raised without antibiotics.

Bones and Nutritional Balance

Grinding chicken (or other poultry or rabbit) with bone to make raw food doesn’t guarantee a nutritionally balanced meal—especially when it comes to the calcium-to-phosphorus ratio. Meat is naturally high in phosphorus; bone contains both calcium and phosphorus. To achieve balance, a whole carcass must be used, and even then, the result can vary.

Mixing different chicken parts from the shop and hoping for nutritional balance is a risky gamble. Imbalanced calcium and phosphorus can lead to serious health issues. In kittens, it may cause developmental problems such as rickets. In adult cats, calcium may be leached from their bones to meet bodily needs, eventually leading to hypocalcaemia (low blood calcium). A deficiency in vitamins A and D can produce similar outcomes.

Even when bone is included in the right amounts, studies have shown that cats can’t always digest large bone fragments well—especially kittens. Unless the bone is ground extremely finely, splinters can cause issues. These may get stuck between teeth or in the throat, cause stomach upsets or vomiting, and in rare cases, even perforate the intestines.

Nutritionally Immature Meat

Most chicken in supermarkets comes from birds bred for rapid growth. These “meat birds” are slaughtered at just 5–8 weeks old, often before they can even support their own body weight. At that age, they are still nutritionally immature: low bone density, underdeveloped muscles and organs, and no exposure to sun or exercise.

Traditionally, chickens weren’t butchered before six months old. A fast-grown chick that never saw daylight or scratched in soil does not offer the same nutritional profile as prey your cat would naturally hunt.

Not a Natural Prey

Chicken isn’t a natural food for cats. The African Wildcat—the ancestor of our domestic cats—is opportunistic and will catch a bird if the chance presents itself, but birds are not its primary prey. Most prey hunted by both African Wildcats and domestic cats are small mammals, particularly rodents—and mammal meat is red.

Nutritionally speaking, and considering the risk of pathogens cats aren’t naturally resistant to, red meat from grass-eating mammals is a more biologically appropriate choice.

So, Is There Still a Place for Chicken?

Poultry products, and chicken in particular, are often an indispensable part of a cat’s diet—largely because many cats adore them. A chicken neck or a day-old chick a day may well “keep the dentist away”—but you need to weigh that benefit against the risks.

It’s useful to know how to process a whole chicken for cat food, whether for emergencies or self-sufficiency. But there are precautions to take:

• Do not feed raw chicken to kittens, elderly, sick, pregnant, or nursing cats.
• Practise excellent hygiene when handling raw chicken and cleaning litter trays.
• If grinding whole raw chicken with bone, grind it 2–3 times, graduating through smaller grinder plates to ensure a very fine texture.
• Don’t rely on chicken with bone as a calcium source for growing kittens.
• If chicken is your cat’s favourite food, consider making cat food with cooked chicken instead.
• Chicken ground with bone can be cooked—but only if the bones have been ground extremely fine, with no visible fragments.