Thread: Orijen Cat Food

Originally Posted by Klach79

Has anyone here had any experience with the Orijen cat food?

I was looking to change Maurice on to something with a better meat content that the Royal Canin he is currently eating and was looking at this as we have a local stockist.

It is supposed to be one of the better dry foods. The breeder of three of our MCs uses it (as one component of her diets) and she is quite picky. We unfortunately do not have any way to obtain it locally so have not tried it.

I spent quite a bit of time in Petco the other day looking at all the "high end" dry cat foods they sell. The Royal Canin ingredients are not terribly high quality (e.g., "chicken meal" vs. "chicken"). The best two in terms of quality of ingredients and protein levels were Pro Plan Selects and Blue Wilderness. I was extremely surprised to see even supposed "high end" dry foods with corn as a major ingredient and only 30% protein levels (PP Selects is 40% and Blue W. is 45% protein).

We normally feed Pro Plan Selects, but got a bag of the Blue Wilderness to try. The kitten just loves it, the other male likes it a bit, but neither of the girls will go near it! Also got a few cans of the Blue Wilderness wet, but that was less successful.

Incidentally, I also looked at prices of cat foods. Dry cat foods have actually become significantly more expensive than dog foods. The cheapest large bags of cat food I could find (at Walmart) were more than $.60/lb, while dry dog food can be had for $.40/lb. By contrast, the PP Selects and Blue W. are in the $3.60-$3.80/lb range--around six times the price. For that, you get mainly chicken or salmon, etc. as ingredients rather than "meals" or "meat by-products," and little "grain." One of the disturbing things is that a number of the "high end" foods at Petco are not objectively any better than the cheapest cat foods at Walmart. Don't know what you are paying for with them.

I also noted that the only foods that stated that their nutritional sufficiency had been confirmed in actual feeding studies were the Purina foods like Pro Plan. All other foods rely solely on nutritional assays and then assume the necessary nutrients will be available if they meet the (semi) governmental nutritional standards.