I fed my cats raw for quite a while until the meat was just taking up too much time and fridge space. My cats had no issue with eating raw bone in chicken as kittens. One of the more disturbing days was the day I saw my cute little fluffball growling at her siblings while crunching through a chicken femur. She was barely bigger than the chicken leg she was eating at that point.
I can't remember the numbers offhand right now, but when I picked up some Cornish X for $1/each when they were about 3 weeks old, I remember doing the math and working out that they would be costing me just less than store-bought, and was happy with that. So it's not a ton more than store chicken. Plus, account for the fact that store chicken is ~10% water/brine, so it's not a 1:1 comparison.
Store chicken has a lot of sodium too. We limit our salt intake in this house because there is such a thing as too much salt.
Same, my mother has kidney failure and I work very hard to eliminate sodium wherever possible. Chicken meat and broth are both big contributors.
Broth kills me when I look at the sodium. I get the sodium free kind and add herbs to make it seem salty.
Our stores are very unreliable with stocking of it. I can usually (but not always) find sodium free beef broth, but rarely ever chicken. I save the backs and necks when I butcher and vacuum seal them together in bags, and use those to make stock then freeze in portions. I don't have the energy to butcher birds and make stock in the same day/weekend usually.
I save my veggie scraps in the freezer and make veggie broth with it. I want to can it once I figure out the whole canning process.
canning is not hard, just time consuming
