Kitten Food.

TrickyNiki

I recently got 2 very cute and highly energetic kittens. They are coming up on 11 weeks soon.

Now I have been feeding the little eating machines with a combo of dry and wet food. They constantly have Pets at home brand kitten complete dry food out for them all the time. Twice a day as a treat they get a pouch of wet food (usually felix or whiskers).

Now I'm a little worried about the kitten food, I have always believed that most of the "flavors" are designed to appeal to humans and not the animal. Reading the back of the packet enlightened me... There seems to be a lot of ash and vegitables in the food along with "animal derivities" (doesnt sound nice). And the "flavor" is usually only 4% of the total pouch. The dry food seems a bit better but my kitties love their wet treat.

Now I'm wondering if I am doing the right thing feeding my kittens this food. I was thinking of making my own kitten food but realised they might not get all the vitamins they need. Is there a better food I could suppliment with? I would like suggestion on both wet and dry although not too expensive, (although if its the best I wont deny my kitties)

Sorry for the large post...Hope you can help!

spookylukey

The pets at home dry complete food (kitten, adult, senior & light) in the silver packaging is actually a very good quality food with similar ingredients to James wellbeloved.

As for the wet fiood despite Felix Whiskas etc being a branded food they actually have a very low meat content, some as little as 4% :eek: Pets at Home sell a wet food in both kitten and adult version called 'Natures menu', they're pouches and contain around 70% meat for not that much more than the cost of the 'Oh so' or 'as good as it looks' Felix/Whiskas ranges. The kitten food only comes in one flavour but the adult comes in 4 different flavours, it's cheaper to buy the adult ones in the 4 box multipack version.

http://www.petsathome.com/find/brand-is-natures_menu/product-is-14911

TrickyNiki

I actually use the Complete dry kitten food from pets at home!! Nice to know I@ve chosen well.

As for the wet food, I would prefer to buy the kitten food rather than adult as the chunks are smaller and they supposedly have more nutrients in. I am put off by the one flavor though, I dont want my kittens to become really fussy I want to keep their varied diet. (Such as it is with felix/whiskers). If I am wrong about kitten v's adult food please enlighten me.

EDIT: Why does wet cat food have ash in?

Bunny

we feed our 2 kittens on natures menu adult wet food, we have the purely kittified kitten dry food, both bought from pets at home. spent ages trying to figure out which to feed.

Kimberley

Orijen is a nice cat food, cats seem to like that.

TrickyNiki

Bunny, I take it your kittens manage to eat the adult food then.... Was I wrongly informed then that adult food is bad for kittens? I was told the chunks were to big and there wasnt enought viatims + minerals in it for a growing kitten.

I suppose though that they do get the dry food, and only 2 wet pouches a day (between 2 kittens) That should provide them with enough.

I am so confused.. I remember getting a kitten as a teenager at home and I dont remember there being any kitten food about then (about 10 years ago)

Bunny

it's not really chunky food and i mash it up anyway, i told the vet and he was happy enough, he said they were 2 very happy healthy kittens. they are very energetic and love their food!

Milford_Cubicle

I think it's probably to do mainly with chunk size, but I think a lot of kitten foods contain milk as well. I'm planning on swapping my 8 week old kitten over to adult food when she's between 16 and 20 weeks.

rita-rabbit

TrickyNiki wrote: »

I remember getting a kitten as a teenager at home and I dont remember there being any kitten food about then (about 10 years ago)

It's a fairly new invention - not entirely sure if it's the manufacturers just trying to milk more cash out of pet owners or if the quality of adult food is so poor that it isn't sufficiently nutritrious for kittens!

After Mad Cow disease it was shown that the vast majority of food manufacturers were trying to feed both animals & humans as much rubbish as they could....

Try Burns or James Wellbeloved - neither contain artificial colours or additives or meat or fish `derivatives'.

spookylukey

rita-rabbit wrote: »

Try Burns or James Wellbeloved - neither contain artificial colours or additives or meat or fish `derivatives'.

Neither does the Pets at Home complete dry that the OP is already feeding.

In the chicken version of the PAH the minimum content of the main flavour is 40% (26% fresh chicken, the rest poultry meat meal) with the second ingredient being rice. James Wellbeloved has the main ingredient listed as rice and then 26% Turkey meat meal. I'm not knocking JWB as it's a good dry food but just because something is not branded doesn't mean it isn't as good as a branded version.

rita-rabbit

spookylukey wrote: »

Neither does the Pets at Home complete dry that the OP is already feeding.

In the chicken version of the PAH the minimum content of the main flavour is 40% (26% fresh chicken, the rest poultry meat meal) with the second ingredient being rice. James Wellbeloved has the main ingredient listed as rice and then 26% Turkey meat meal. I'm not knocking JWB as it's a good dry food but just because something is not branded doesn't mean it isn't as good as a branded version.

ok point taken however it suits my pets better: with JWB & Burns the one prone to dry coat & skin doesn't get a reoccurance of `dandruff' which she did on Pets @ Home own brand. If it works for you that's all good.