Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The Royal Canin, that "looks like corn pellets" is 40% protein. I think it is the highest dry food protein content. I am not sure. If anyone knows of a better dry food, let me know.
Well, the high protein content alone does not indicate enough, perhaps. In the case of the Royal Canin you're talking about, it would appear that a fair amount of the protein in it comes from corn and wheat. This is not necessarily a good thing. Remember that the recall a few years ago came from wheat gluten that was spike with melamine. Why melamine? It makes the protein count look higher!
Royal Canin, BTW, is a division of pet food (and chocolate) giant Mars. Was just checking on their brands, interesting that they own Banfield Pet Hospitals! Expect them to recommend Mars brands like Royal Canin, Nutro, etc if you take your cat there.
Better dry foods I would suggest include (but not limited to) Orijen, Blue Buffalo Wilderness and maybe Wysong Epigen (I say maybe because I'm not sure what is happening right now with Amber and some vomiting that I am possibly tracing to her eating it, though it was fine in the past). Wysong Epigen is 60% protein and 11-12% fat. Epigen 90 (super expensive) is 90% meat and most of the protein in that seems to come from meat. Regular Epigen is 60% meat and you'll find vegetable protein in the ingredients. You won't find any starch at all in those though. Blue Buffalo Wilderness is 40% protein and much higher 18% in fat. You'll find potato starch pretty high up on that ingredient list, still not great, but I'm using this right now because I had run low on Epigen and couldn't get more (not in the store). Then when I got more Epigen, I noticed some vomiting, which seems to have subsided when the dry mix had little or no Epigen in it. Hm. I don't have a bag of Orijen here like the others, but the analysis is 42% protein, 20% fat, and they say it's 80% poultry/eggs/fish. The rest includes potato and sweet potato. Wilderness Chicken which I've been buying also has fish meal, so technically both that and Orijen would not be free of fish.
Dry food is always a compromise, but potatoes and sweet potatoes and similar are somewhat more reasonable than having it full of wheat and corn, in my opinion. Generally some kind of vegetable is necessary to hold the kibble together. Wysong has gotten Epigen to the level where they can use only vegetable protein and not starches. Epigen 90 appears to lower even that, although at what would be an insane price really if you fed only that. Even given that your cat would eat less, it's 10 bucks for a 2-pound bag. They don't even sell it in a larger one. (You can get regular Epigen in 8-pound bag for about $20.) You can buy 16 pounds of Epigen 90 for a small discount of $72. Not gonna happen. But I have bought a couple bags of it to mix in with other stuff.
I might have to go back to Orijen. I am still trying out things, slowly. If I slowly add in the Wysong and find Amber vomiting again, I will contact them and find out what's up. She was eating purely that before with no problem, so not sure what might have happened.
Another grain-free dry food I've never tried is Taste of the Wild. Evo is another one, really high in protein, but since conglomerate Procter & Gamble took over its maker Natura, I have moved on. That sort of reasoning isn't for everyone, I know, just sharing my own thinking on why I stopped. Amber ate Innova/Evo products for about 3-4 years probably after the years of Science Diet and such.
Even given that your cat would eat less, it's 10 bucks for a 2-pound bag. They don't even sell it in a larger one. (You can get regular Epigen in 8-pound bag for about $20.) You can buy 16 pounds of Epigen 90 for a small discount of $72. Not gonna happen. But I have bought a couple bags of it to mix in with other stuff.
When you get to the $4/pound price point, you could afford to just start feeding your cat real meat and fish from the grocery store. Heck, you can often find boneless skinless chicken breast for $2/pound (and sometimes even less than that).
When you get to the $4/pound price point, you could afford to just start feeding your cat real meat and fish from the grocery store. Heck, you can often find boneless skinless chicken breast for $2/pound (and sometimes even less than that).
But then you have to start adding supplements because muscle meat alone is deficient in many things the cat would get when eating whole prey.
Fresh meat where we live is cheaper than most cat foods, both canned and dry.
Feeding processed cat food (canned as well as dry) is really more about convenience. At the low end you might gain on price, but there's also a lot less real meat in it. Making your own food at home starting with fresh meat would in fact be a really good idea, but that's not a length too many people are willing to go to.
Making your own food at home starting with fresh meat would in fact be a really good idea, but that's not a length too many people are willing to go to.
Sheesh.....I'd never get out of the kitchen! And then if I prepared my own dog food for my 13 dogs, too, I'd never sleep.
Last winter when I was snowed in and I ran out of dog food for the last day or two before I could get out of here, I did pull some meats out of the freezer, cooked up oatmeal and brown rice and carrots and other odds and ends in the way of vegetables, added a little goat milk, and they got that for a day or two. OK in an emergency but I wouldn't want to have to do that every day.
one of the reasons corn became so popular as a main ingredient in low cost pet food was not only is it a cheap filler...but its addictive...dogs will typically choose a "cheap" (bad) food over a good one if given the quick choice as a treat because the cheap food is laden with corn (SUGAR) and then sprayed with salt and animal fat...
higher quality food has a less pungent odor...and isnt "addictive" like cheap food is...
jut like humans, eat a heavy carb diet then ty and wean yourself off, youll go through withdrawl...pet food is much the same... its the equivalent of twinkies or chocolate or mcdonalds or fried chicken..."comfort food" its not good for ya, but you crave it anyway...that is the salt and sugar and the chemicals there loaded with to enahnce the "flavor" working, pet food works in much the same way.
I used to work in a feed store and we sold the "farm style" dog and cat food - first listed ingredient: ground yellow corn. Yuck. I hated even selling it and sometimes would gently try to steer the customer onto something else. I certainly couldn't insist - and would have been fired if I had tried - but I always told myself that if I ever owned a feed store, I wouldn't let that junk even into my store.
Snickers is eating Evo, and it seems to agree with him. He's down to 1/2 a bag, and I'm not sure if I'm going to get for him again since Proctor & Gamble took over. I had three coupons, and was for a free bag of Evo, so he's been eating it for while. He likes Blue Buffalo, but he spits out the Life Source Bits. I've tried him on samples of Natural Balance, Taste of the Wild, and some other premium dry foods, and he eats them, so I don't know what I'll get next. He's not picky.
When you get to the $4/pound price point, you could afford to just start feeding your cat real meat and fish from the grocery store. Heck, you can often find boneless skinless chicken breast for $2/pound (and sometimes even less than that).
As you can see, the issue of pet food ingredients, whats good, what's not, is very confusing to many. Here's some items for consideration and it will address your comment about the chicken breast from a store.
First, there are many articles written on the internet that will comment on what is good and what is bad in pet foods. Its important for you to read different ones so you can get byt he bias and see the common conclusions.
bad ingredients. Some of those that show up on many reports are just bad. there's nothing really god about them except they preent the food from going bad or they are there to support another ingredient. Supoport ingredients are added because another ingredient may have little nutritional or isn;t digestable as it is in the food. So they add other stuff to make the nutritional value incease a bit or make it more diguestable for the animal.
Consumer ingredients are those that have nothing to do with the pet or food and all to do with making it smell good to you, look good to you, or appear a certain way to you.
A big confusion is fillers. Fillers may have nutritional value or may not. Some fillers are included in such a way as to make them appear more benficial then not. Often times some will include the entire lot as a single items but more often they are broken down. So you may see only rice listed. That could be a mixture of white and brown in various ways or you may see each variation listed seperately. This is important because ingredients are listed by the weight of each product. So by breaking down the rice, it may appear down on the list for each but adding them as one, they may move up.
Meat is the most abused ingredient of all. Meat means the meat of tthe source animal like chicken, beef, salmon, etc. But meat weight is the total weight including the water in it. Thats why 1 gram of chicken meal (procesed with water removed) is equal to 3 or 4 grams of chicken meat. A can that has chicken meal as the first ingredient with chicken as the second will actually contain more chiken than one with chicken first and chicken meal second. So to your comment, boneless chicken at $2 a pound equates to paying $8 or $9 compared to the equivilant weight if a meal. Nice con, huh?
Another industry secret is the use of whole meats. So if you see whole chicken listed, thats industry speak for manipulating the numbers because once processed, the actual weight is so much lower because of the bones and water which are removed. Kinda like comparing athe weight of a whole avocado (seed and skin included) or a avocado paste (just the fruit meat).
So, do some reseacrh, find out what is bad and avoid those. Find out what individual items really mean and judge for yourself. But know that the big scam of pet foods is the ingredients are by the highest weight but they never tell you what that weight is. And remember that its the weight before processing not the actual weight as it goes into the food.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
