Cheap catfood dilemma

~Chameleon~

Kimberley wrote: »

Supplement with dry food. I use orijen which is very expensive and you can only get it online, but it's very good. I get mine from Zooplus.

Please could you give me the nutritional analysis on the side of the packet? Unfortunately that's about the only bit of data missing on the zooplus site that I would like to know.

Cheers :beer:



ETA: Not to worry, found the info I needed here http://www.orijenpetfoods.co.uk/

~Chameleon~

jaycat62 wrote: »

Hi,

I'm looking to change my cat from whiskas to an own brand wet food, he can't have dried as he's had a problem with crystals, and I was advised to take him off dried food.

My dilemma is which one to change to? Bot tesco and morrisons have 82% and 83% moisture, but then so does whiskas. Also protein is higher in morrisons at 9%. Vitamins all seem to be the same between brands..................

Have you had a look at the special clinical diets by Royal Canin? They produce a diet specifically for cats prone to FLUTD and it comes in both dry and wet forms so best of both worlds. Have a look at the following link for more info or speak to your vet about it ...

Royal Canin Urinary S/O Wet and Royal Canin Urinary S/O Dry

If you don't want to go down the veterinary diet route vut still want a good quality wet food, then both Hill's Science and Royal Canin sell high quality (50%+ meat content) wet food in cans. Not many people are aware of that and think all their food is of the dry variety

squidge60

LittleTinker wrote: »

Think of Branded cat and dog food as you would branded human food....some of it is just a total rip off, way too expensive and is generally priced higher to accommodate their huge advertising bills.

I have always always always used supermarket own brand cat/dog food that comes in cans.
Your average cat will only need half to one tin a day plus some complete food biscuits.

I believe it is important for cats to have some wet meat with their food....plus the fact, they are meat eaters....fancy eating dry biscuits all your life!!

I have found that the 'special' foods....like Science/Hills/Iams are a complete waste of money and contain far too much junk.

I often think its the M&S food shoppers of the world who buy that for their animals :-)) "Oh well, its the best isnt it?" Errrr no!!

well i have to say our cat used to have tinned food and we brought james beloved (after looking on here)and her coat is the best its ever been ! to me that says a lot and after the initial expense its definetly going to be cheaper!maybe you should give it a go before coming to a conclusion on it! :rolleyes:

UKTigerlily

Supermarket own brands are more than likely 4% meat, good quality will be much higher, the brands my cat has are 70% & 50%. I'm against Iams anyhow for obvious reasons & Hills idk as all I know is that Vets always recommend it! But own brands are more than likely junk. It's fine if it's what the cat loves & you want to feed but saying the premium brands contain far to much junk but then feeding an own brand is abit strange!
By own brand I mean like Asda/Smartprice/XS etc not Wagg which I actually recommended a friend grab last night, that's supposed to be not to bad at all & dogs do well on it!

~Chameleon~

What we feed our pets is always going to be a contentious issue with people adamant that the brand/method they choose is the right one and everyone should follow it. Some people prefer wet, some prefer dry. Some people feed premium brands, some feed supermarket basic brands.

At the end of the day, what you choose to feed you cat/dog is your own choice based on what suits your pet and most importantly, what suits your pocket!

I know I bang on a lot about premium foods such as Hill's and Royal Canin as in my opinion they are a very good quality food, and ones I choose to use myself as it's what I've done for many years, although they're by far not the only good quality food out there. The thing is there are also people out there, my parents for example, who have always used whiskas/felix and go-cat/brekkies so they continue to do so and won't hear of giving their precious puddy tats this new fangled scientific dry stuff :rotfl:

Now, their cat's have reached a nice prime age on this food, albeit one has no teeth left now but he's still happy and content and can manage just fine. Even my years of experience in veterinary practice can't convince them to feed anything else and I accept that. In the same way I'm not preaching to people here or insisting they need to change diet or choose a particular food. I'm just helping people make an informed choice.

Cost is uppermost in many people's mind and they only look at the price tag when choosing what to feed, in the same way they do when feeding themselves and their family. It's the "why pay twice as much for an organic chicken when you can get 2 for £5 at Tesco mentality"

Why pay £1 a can for Hill's when I can get X brand for 25p, or why pay £10 for a 2kg RC/Hill's when I can get 2kg X brand crunchies for £4

It's all to do with quality and the quantity of food the animal needs to eat to extract the same nutritional value from it, plus what initially appears to be expensive often works out much cheaper in reality ... i.e. (rough values off top of my head) ...

Hill's/RC dry food - average cat needs 75g per day - cost approx 35p per day

Whiskas/Felix wet food - 400g day (1 can or 4 pouches) - cost from 60p to £2 per day, depending whether you use cans or pouches.

I have no idea what the recommended daily amount of say Whiskas/Go-cat complete dry food is, they don't tell you on any website I can find but presumably there will be a guide on the side of the packet somewhere, so I can't do a comparison with that. Would be interested to know though if someone would post the info here

Anyway, I won't ramble on any longer, I just didn't want people to think I was preaching to them in earlier posts or making them feel guilty for feeding x brand over y brand. That's not what this is about. At the end of the day we are all facing hard times at the moment and some people are struggling to buy decent quality food for their families, let alone their pets, and animals have survived for centuries before all this 'new fangled scientific dry stuff came along' as my parents often like to remind me

UKTigerlily

lol what's weird is I buy decent for the animals, but never for myself! I've found out the dried premium works out cheaper too tho the cat is on decent stuff but it's wet & it's pretty expensive, shame she can't have dried!

squidge60

i cant believe the difference in my cat so i guess being converted i wanna convert and convince everyone else

coolshopper

havent read all the way through yet but thought i would share this great tip

tescos own brand cat biscuit is actually go cat biscuit my friend works at tescos and told us and its 4x cheaper for the same thing

rita-rabbit

UKTigerlily wrote: »

Supermarket own brands are more than likely 4% meat, good quality will be much higher, the brands my cat has are 70% & 50%. I'm against Iams anyhow for obvious reasons & Hills idk as all I know is that Vets always recommend it! But own brands are more than likely junk. It's fine if it's what the cat loves & you want to feed but saying the premium brands contain far to much junk but then feeding an own brand is abit strange!
By own brand I mean like Asda/Smartprice/XS etc not Wagg which I actually recommended a friend grab last night, that's supposed to be not to bad at all & dogs do well on it!

here we go again:rolleyes: . I don't feed my two wet junk anymore but when I did I used to read the backs of the tins & discovered that both Sainsburys & Tesco's own brand had a higher % of meat/fish than Felix.... Obviously they were cheaper too so it's a no brainer! Lastly I worked for a food manufacturer and most own brands are made in the same factories @ branded foods....:eek:

UKTigerlily

Well, Sainsburys own make has changed now, now it says: With Lamb & Chicken in gravy: Meat & Animal derivatives (Lamb min 4%, Chicken min 4%),

They do another at 14%, the organic is 40% but still isn't better than premium c!!!. Yes, I know some manufacturers make more than one cat food & do value & premium, so?? lol it's not like it's the same food.

People can & will feed what they like. The premium brands aren't full of junk tho, that'd be Whiskas etc & the Sainsbury ones don't look much better. The Organic one looks best but that's much more expensive than premium, premium works out cheaper!

I dun care what people give their cats as long as the cat likes it, they can afford it & the cats healthy, my concern is my cat.