At what age should we be putting Lily onto Adult cat food? She is on Royal Canin Kitten 36, it says til 12 months on the packet - what benefits is there to her staying on it? she is 9 months now.
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At what age should we be putting Lily onto Adult cat food? She is on Royal Canin Kitten 36, it says til 12 months on the packet - what benefits is there to her staying on it? she is 9 months now.
"Kitten food" is a marketing ploy - it isn't natural for an animal to be fed different food based on age aside from before they are weaned. She could eat adult food at any age. Mine was eating Applaws, Encore or Bozita adult food due to it's fantastic meat content from 4 months & has flourished. Kitten food is expensive - smaller contents for higher price because it is "specialist". I don't buy into any of the Royal Canin marketing.
Our breeder strictly told us not to feed kitten food as it caused squits. Initially I was concerned that the foods I wanted to feed had no kitten varieties so I actually looked into the ingredients & found them to be pretty much the same if not exactly. One of Freya's littermates isn't as big as her (both are shown) & regularly her mum asks me how my girl got to be so big. I think it was the fact I fed her appropriately good quality pet food & expect she would have done even better on raw.
yeah the cats protection feed them over here on some sort of weird food when i first wen to look for a kitten i asked do they feed them fertaliser lol (sp) all the cats and kittens were huge, what are you feeding them on now the same as the above post ya wrote??
Yep. I look for any wet food that is at least 50% meat. So one tin/pouch of an evening each plus leave dry food out all the time. For that I feed hypo-allergenic, additive free foods such as James Wellbeloved, Jill & Jacks, Burns or Applaws & at a shove Pro Plan. I would feed the grain-free Orijen but I sadly can't afford it.
oh.. dont be silly about cant afford i cant afford a maine coon cat but im buying one and that will be treated the sme as meeka unless you can advise better????? meeka eats iams and has raw meat sometimes i all so makes sure she has taurine and an equal amount of protein, carbs and fat i never give cows milk and i cant leave food down because my dog will eat it all he is very very greedy x
My breeder is already introducing adult food. I'm not very read up about cat food but I have brought a bag of Royal Canin as suggested by my breeder - small bag of kitten and small bag of adult Maine Coon. I was surprised at the price though! I'm not sure what it is I'm paying for yet - if it's just a name thing so I'm going to look at alternatives. My dogs are fed on Skinners, a good food for gun dogs which is vat free suggested by their breeder - a 15kg bag cost as much as a 5kg bag of the Royal Canin cat food! I don't mind paying good money if its for a good reason but personally think Royal Canin might be taking the p**** If I can't find a good complete cat food at a sensible price I may go down the raw food route.
I'd avoid Iams for the fact that they test on animals alone, to be honest.
Though I think the raw & extra minerals are more than is needed. :) I would love to feed raw but worry about deliveries.
woahhhhhhhhhh my dogs food is dr jaynes complete sometimes he likes gravey on it but it jkeeps him healthy and not over weight as we cant walk him due to his aggression to other dogs, its 9.96 a bag and lasts 4 months and he is fed 3 times a day am i missing somethin lol,,,, he still eats the cat food and leftovers
wow i did not know that you educate yourself well 'or im ignornt to packaging' ive bigger fish to fry than reading things even my kids get convenience on a regluar basis when baby has kept us up allnite :shy: not good!!
what i say to people is yes ive spent alot on a cat but it does not mean i am going to spoil it rotten more than my kids at the end of the day to me its still has feelings and all the rest and my pets are spoilt but i wont do what i 'cant' for them, ill do all i 'can' the best they deserve and iams is all i can afford really, x
Royal Canin, in my opinion, is a scam. How can they genuinely say they have a cat for indoor cats or Persians or cats that need to look shiny? It is extremely expensive AND if you look at the ingredients... well, picking one at random, the "fit":
RICE AND MAIZE? That's filler. Poultry meat is very vague. Maize gluten, wheat, wheat flour, vegetable fibres - more filler. A lot of it is not FOOD ingredients but chemical compounds. Doesn't even tell you the % of meat. Compare that to the ingredients for Applaws dry food:Quote:
Dehydrated poultry meat, rice, maize, dehydrated pork protein, animal fats, maize gluten, hydrolysed animal proteins, wheat, wheat flour, vegetable fibres, beet pulp, yeasts, minerals, soya oil, sodium phosphate, fish oil, egg powder, DL-methionine, hydrolysed yeast (source of manno-oligo-saccharides), taurine, marigold extract (source of lutein), L-lysine.
Sounds like real food. It specifies FRESH CHICKEN not just "poultry". Plus it is 80% meat. Royal Canin won't even tell you. Iams is 26% meat.Quote:
dried chicken, dried potato, fresh chicken, poultry oil, poultry sauce, beet mash, dried whole egg, dried yeast, salmon oil, cranberry extract, yucca extract, citrus extract, rosemary oil extract
One pouch of wet food an evening of a product that is at least 50% meat (Applaws, Encore, Tesco Finest, Hi Life or Simple) and leave dry food out all day (James Well Beloved, Burns or Applaws). :)
I would feed Orijen as a dry if I earnt more or raw if I could accept deliveries.
Shelly, a 15kg bag of Skinners field and trial cost £17.99. It lasts me three to four weeks for 2 dogs. I add to that a pound of cooked mince once a day, or fish. I do walk them twice a day but they do well on it. Don't know how you get away with not walking your dog - mine would drive me crazy!
Messyhearts - I will look into Applaws or something similar. I did have my doubts about Royal Canin but I will need to change him over slowly anyway so it's a good idea to have a bag of what he is already used to. As I already cook for my dogs I will also like to add to whatever I end up with anyway. I won't be able to leave food down either very easily because of the dogs at least not until he is older and able to eat where the dogs can't reach!
karena- he is a dobie cross didnt do wel in the police from a puppy i had him 8 wks to 6mths and as i was movin to a flat was not big enuff about 2 weeks after he turned 2 i got house they rang me and aksed if i wanted him back as when on patrole he attacked anoher dog that was abpout to injure an officer (he was being proective which is what they like but he was way to protective )...fate really so i said yes...my back is like a football pitch and i do walk him at about 6am morn and 11pm at night if i dont my partner does i just ment regular hours you would find dogs out lol xxxxxxxxxxx
so can some one spec what i can spend on min for a maine coonand a dsomestic longhaired do MC need fed more than a reg cat? i dnt particulary wanna spend a huge ammount and i feel some ppl do spoile cats so heres my routine if its even one lol
whishas wet pouch with kitten milk diluted and iams 4 times a day but depends as kitten will have what we have too
whiskas kittten pouch with iams and kitten milk diluted
@and again will eat scraps on reg basis toast, bacon, fry up, pasta, spag bol lol@
has raw meat or cooked once a week if time to cook if i have time wit iams and KM
and then maybe tuna for treat on friday as well as wat ive said am i doin wrong:sad2:
im onli goin by wat iv grown up with aint into al spoiling kids and pets i woudn show kids so not gonna show pets either or breed lol lol xx
soz reall dnt want ppl to feel im incapeable but need some guidance in aspects
Shelly if your cats are doing ok on what you are giving them stick with it. You don't need to buy expensive foods. Adding stuff like you are doing I think is great. Go into a large pet store and look at the different ingredients on the packets and chose one that lists meat as a number one ingredient and is not too pricey. My mother always fed her cat Whiskers and he was a huge cat and lived until he was 17 with no problems. I'm going to look into cat food and will let you know which I choose.
Dobermans - My mother bred them when I was young and they are the dogs I grew up with. We never had a problem with aggression with people or other dogs but they were brought up in a family environment and socialised well when they were young. I had little doubt they would have attacked an intruder though. If yours was with the police I expect they brought out the aggression in him. They are protective dogs but also wonderfully faithful to their family. If I ever get another dog I would like to go back to them one day. It's a shame you have this problem with yours - but it's not his fault or yours. It must be hard to walk him when others are not around. Have you tried just putting a muzzle on him and letting him go with other dogs. I know you will get a few people giving you a wide birth but at the end of the day he can't hurt anything if he has a muzzle and he may end up getting better with interaction with them. Some dog are a lot worse on the lead than being free - they can sense your tension which you must have when meeting other dogs.
This is a really great thread!
My breeder actually recommended "Applaws" as well as "Royal Canine".
Havn't been able to find "applaws" here in the petshop.
They seem to all stock royal canine :huh:
we have tried a muzzle and mouth restraint and have also tried social dog classes one on one with different dogs he is fine and fine off the lead (went on holiday and left him with dog minder) i think when he feels restricted (on lead) he feels he cant protec his master, hes an amazing dog a big big baby and protects us really well in a way i think its fate he was over 50 miles away frm me i broke my heart and i got him back and he has nevr bitten my childrenand no matter who or what landlord i would live on the streets for him these dayss hes my tru other half lol and was he only ever curious to smell the new baby, hes a big pussy cat(dont tell him that) but my guardian angel xxx
Deshell it's nice to have a dog like that. I've had a couple of dogs but my best friend was a kelpie shepherd cross and she was a beautiful dog. I did obedience training with her and she was lovely, especially with the kids. I don't have a dog any more, we just don't have time. DH likes rottweilers and they are gorgeous dogs.
This is an interesting read. I've been considering what to feed Gryfn when I get him. Currently we feed either Whiskas or Friskies biscuits to our moggies and we've been feeding them tin food, but I don't like it so I'm going back to raw.
Our biggest problem with raw is one of our moggies would guts it all down and then make himself sick but he's getting very old so I think we're going to have to get him put down shortly. :(
Our other moggie loves whiskas kitten biscuits and biscuits really is all he eats. But we give him adult biscuits and he gets a treat of kitten biscuits.
We put Loki and Storvenn on adult wet food the day they arrived. Natures menu which I understand is a good brand.
Id read that it didnt matter so much, and with our two being on four different meals a day I dont believe it makes any difference to them at all.
Natures Menu is an extremely good brand. Sadly mine won't touch it for some reason. Picky missy. :D
I leave dry food out all day for the cat(s) to pick at & eat what they want. I do the same for my dog. None are obese & all eat what they need based on what they feel rather than based on what a manufacturer thinks that they might need based on their weight. I feed wet too as I don't like giving cats a solely dry diet.
I notice a lot on here are feeding Whiskas & Felix etc. - if your cat is doing well on them, then that is fine & we all do have budge limits. So you are aware, however, they are roughly 4% meat (most wet cat foods are) compared with say Hi Life which is about 60% meat. Obviously raw is best at 100% meat. ;)
I believe that in the past the kitten dry foods were higher protein and a bit higher fat than the adult foods. These days, if you read the labels, you see few differences between the kitten and adult in the better brands. We switched off of kitten dry (breeder was using Royal Canin Babycat) at about 4mos (Babycat seemed to give some of the older cats diarrhea when they got into it). Have given him some kitten wet but mainly adult.
In the US there are specific terms that are used in pet food for the meat that is used, and you can tell quality from that to some extent. E.g., chicken vs. chicken meal vs. chicken by-product meal vs. meat by-product, etc. Here are a couple of useful sites for definitions:
Cat Food Glossary - AAFCO Definitions of Cat Food Ingredients
AAFCO DEFINITIONS OF DOG FOOD INGREDIENTS
We have tried a large number of premium/boutique/natural foods over the last few years, but have not found many that the cats actually will eat consistently. Being a scientist, I am also highly skeptical about a lot of the claims being made by these companies, since I know that they are small and do not do any studies of their own. Think what you might about, say, Purina, but they actually carry out feeding trials and research. I have yet to find a single "premium" brand that does such things. Yes, they may have fancy "white papers" and healthy-sounding terminology, but little of what they do seems to have any sound scientific basis. Most also rely on the same AAFCO nutrition guidelines that all pet food manufacturers use here. We have also found inferior ingredients (e.g., meal vs. chicken) in some of the more expensive brands. Finally, the big Chinese melamine contamination scandal from a few years ago revealed that many of the premium brands do not actually do their own manufacturing (we came very close to feeding possibly contaminated Nutro pouches to our cats--actually manufactured by somebody else).
Currently, our cats eat primarily Pro Plan Selects dry and Fancy Feast wet, with various "premium" brands as we find they will eat them. Natural Balance is one of the few that they seem to like several flavors of consistently. Most they may eat one can of but then will never touch again. We have thrown away a lot of expensive cat food this way!
What "claims" are you referring to? I'm intrigued as to what the American pet market is marketing.
I usually despise PETA but they did publish a cruelty free pet food manufacturer list:
US Version
UK Version
Note that Purina & Mars are absent on both lists. I'm also guilty for buying Mars products as they bought out James Well Beloved a couple of years ago.
Let me first say that I see no point in getting into a discussion about particular brands, as my experience is that people often have a lot invested emotionally in the particular brand they have chosen, because they want to feel they are doing the best for their pets. Probably everyone here is trying to do the best for their pets. My point is that there really isn't enough information to make well informed decisions most of the time. Furthermore, there are obvious trade-offs in most choices.
As for claims, I doubt they are much different than in Europe. The basic claim is simply that their food is healthier or more "natural" for the pet or more "biologically correct" or similar. Unfortunately, there is rarely any hard science they point to to back these claims. Now I would rather feed my cats food made from say chicken rather than chicken meal, but is the first actually going to make them healthier? Is a certain exact ratio/percentage of protein or meat really "optimal" for cats? Many of the premium companies make claims like this but provide no scientifically valid evidence for the claims. I find this very frustrating personally, as I would feed my cats something if it truly were healthier than what they are getting. The current situation is such that I have a very limited basis for making that judgment. I recently scanned the "white paper" that one of the premium companies pushes on their website. Frankly, none of the key claims in the document have any citations at all for support, and most of the citations that are provided are so incomplete as to be difficult to verify. Having a "white paper" with lots of scientific sounding claims and a few incomplete citations may impress some people, but reading it as a scientist, it is really little more than marketing BS. Maybe the claims are true, but since they cannot cite actual research to validate them there is no way to know. The food looks like it is made with high quality ingredients and all, but if my cats won't eat it, is it worth trying to train them to eat it because it will improve their health? No way to know that. Of course this is not surprising, since it hard to see who exactly would fund the expensive and long term research needed to answer many of the key questions.
Thanks for replies on this thread, we stuck with Royal Canin as she was on this already and it always seemed to be on special at the pet stores, so making it cheap enough to stick with.
After reading the replies and without listening to just one view- as there are many differing views on the thread, we took a trip to the pet shop and chose for ourselves what seemed to be best-
we came out with a bag of applaws, as it was 80% meat- apparently, and a few tins of applaws, which we feed them occasionally as well,
happy cats- they both love it!
This is really interesting reading.
As I live in a remote town, we don't really have a lot of choice and we know the one pet store here are very expensive.
I'm thinking I might stick with the whiskas biscuits, but feed raw meat so that the cats get the required real meat in their diet.
I think it's very much a personal choice, allowing for budgets and whats available.
I don't really remember any similar claims aside from a current campaign from Iams at the moment so it might just be an American thing or something the brands I tend to avoid anyway use.
I know I look at ingredients over the brand logo when cat food shopping. There's no proof that fresh chicken is better that poultry meal, you're quite right, but it does show a certain standard that they use to create the food. I'd rather a list of ingredients that didn't sound like chemical compounds & additives but a list of natural resources as I would do the same for myself. I also find that it is usually the words after the kind of meat they use that helps too. Some are FULL of grains which aren't required for a cats or dogs diet & are filler to make up that 75% of dry food that isn't chicken/lamb etc.. I would say that a ratio of meat to non-meat is optimal. They are carnivores not herbivores with a 75% grain diet.
There were a couple of brands of cat food my cats wouldn't even sniff but if I had a child with the same ethos about vegetables on the table in front of them I would do the same thing - call their bluff as they will eat what I think is good for them or nothing at all.
& of course we are all on budgets & limitations etc. such as I cannot feed raw as I cannot get deliveries of raw meats for my cats & dog as I work full time in an office I cannot accept deliveries.
I'm happy to hear that someone ventured out & is trying Applaws. A very popular food in my house. :rofl: Especially the fish one!
You feel quite strongly about the food don't you messyhearts lol
Is it something you have researched for your cats or are you a professional?
We used to feed them wet applaws anyway- just cut it out as it was getting expensive
Never saw the dry applaws anywhere- seeing as they only do one variety it gets hidden on teh shelves
Anyway if anyone is interested, applaws is on special in Pets at Home til March £9.99 for 2kg instead of £14.99
Well I checked the whiskas I had in the cupboard tonight.
The kitten one has 32% protein and 11.5% fat and the adult one is 29% protein and 10.5% fat.
The friskies (which is made by purina) is only 26% protein....
My dog started me off on a frenzied ingredient checking mode for all pets three years ago. When we got her, we didn't know any better so simply fed her Bakers & Pedigree Chum. She didn't have a solid stool for weeks & was actually pooing blood. After a bit of research, I went for a food of a higher quality (Joe & Jacks) & it cured it straight away. Every since then I won't feed poor supermarket value given the chance as it upsets tummies.
A diet of just Applaws is very expensive, I agree. We found Simple (bought at Pets At Home) was a good quality food for £5 for 12 pouches compared to Applaws being £7.25 for 12 smaller tins.
Wet Cat Food | Pets at Home
Is this the one you mean messyhearts
I thinking of changing from royal canin to a mix of this and orijen with some raw meat as an occasional treat
I have always put my babies straight onto adult food but for the first six months just backed up with an extra vitamin powder {was SA37 but think it has now been
discontinued} just to help with all the extra growth they do in that first period.
I use Felix tins as it is a lot cheaper than pouches esp.when you have more than one cat + they have a small amount of biscuit.
I don't give a lot of biscuit because as I posted in another thread we never used to see obese & diabetic cats until dried food was brought onto the market{thats someone who has worked 39 years at a vets & seen a lot of change...! } also never used to get the bladder stones that you do now.
Could be that we are more aware of our animals & take them to the vet more readily plus like humans they can now diagnose more but still doesn't alter the size increase that we now see,maine coons aside that is.....
Hi,
I'm due to get two Maine Coon kittens at the end of June :nod: and I will probably try them
on Applaws. I don't think Pets At Home do the dry variety, though, and I've been
feeding dry food to my moggies (now 15 years old) since they were kittens.
At the moment I have Molly and Cassie (15 y/o moggies) on Royal Canin outdoor
senior because Molly suffers from joint stiffness and there are few foods which contain
omega3/6, glucosamine and chondroitin (and there's no way she'll take a pill or eat food
if I have sprinkled anything on it !).
Now that I've checked PETA UK list of manufacturers who will not test products on
animals, I will probably switch to one of those on their list. Of those, it seems there's only
Clinivet who include omega3, glucosamine and chondroitin in their adult/senior dry cat
food.
Bye for now
Trevor
Pets At Home do sell the dry variety of Applaws.
Hi, I'm pretty new to this forum business so apologies if I go about this the wrong way! I'm getting my first Maine Coon kitten in less than two weeks (10 days to be precise, not that I'm counting!) and I'm not sure what to do about food. The breeder has advised to use Royal Canin Kitten 36 to begin with but I'm not sure how long for. Having read through some of the posts on feeding, I'm not sure whether I should use RC at all - any thoughts? How much Royal Canin would you usually use in a month for a kitten? When she arrives she'll be three months old.
Thanks!!
Hi FreyjaRoMaine, and welcome to the forum. How exciting for you 10 days to go ! you must give us more info, we love it when a new baby arrives !
As for the food, don't get me wrong, I am relatively new to owning a pedigree cat, but Harry was fed solely on Royal Canin 36, after taking advise on the forum I decided to add a wet food as well. (pouches such as Felix) I keep the dry food down all day and he grazes on it and the wet sachets approx 3 times a day at specific meal times, ie. morning, noon and night. This seems to suit him.
The truth is everyone will have their own opinion on what's best, I think at the end of the day do what you feel your kitty is happy with. Certain cats (like some humans) have trouble eating certain types of food, so sometimes it's just trial and error.
Anyway looking forward to hearing all about your new addition. Alison & Harry