The cost of feeding 4 cats on mix od dry/wet food

gettingready

Sitting here and trying to work out what is the cost of feeding my 4 cats.

It is simple with the dog as Zara is on Orijen ONLY, end off. With occasional raw bone/leftovers, easy to manage.

But I am completely lost with the cats as had a loooooooooooooooooooot of food when I hoarded it while I was working but now completely run out of moist food, still got a lot of dry... BUT

Fred will NOT eat any dry food or dry treats whatever. Not at all.

Other 3 eat dry food but because I have to feed Fred moist, they also get moist.

To be honest I have no idea how come Fred is the biggest as I only give them all 1 tin (400g) between the 4 of them per day (sometimes, ocassionally 2 tins) and the other 3 top up with dry food but Fred does not - still, he is the biggest of all of them.

What I am trying to figure out is.....

If I give them just 1 can of Animonda Carny per day between them, that means they get 100g of moist food per day and just for Animonda I will pay just over £30 per month (2 lots of 12 tins and 1 lot of 6 tins).

Dry I give them Taste of the Wild Rocky Mountain Feeline (also from zooplus) that costs £35 for a 6.8 kg bag.

I have no idea how to work out how much dry food do I need to buy per month/how much dry to feed them per day between the 4 (well, 3 as Fred will not touch it) of them so to calculate the monthly cost of that.

Anyone clued up on this?

Never paid any attention on how much dry they go through, just top it up when it goes low as they free fed on dry and with 4 there is no way to check which one eats how much so I need some kind of an estimate.....

I just realised that Animonda does dry food too so an option would be to move them to dry Animonda and feed only Animonda dry and wet to stick to one brand - still would have no idea how much dry do I need?

For financial reasons I ned to stick to just one tin per day between them, the rest has to be dry food....

Am I making any sense here?

Just trying to work out monthly cost of food... sigh.....

:eek:

So far I got
£30 on Animonda tinned food
???? on dry food
£22 on cat litter
£11.00 for Effipro
??? for Drontal

They are not insured now which breaks my heart but really can not afford it at all but still the monthly cost is heading towards £100 or more for the 4 of them..... Hmmmmm

ka7e

If they can cope with it, I'd chop and change their dried food to whatever is on special offer!

If you sign up for the newsletters on Pets At Home, Zooplus, Pet Planet, Viovet etc you get notification of special offers. Mine have been on James Wellbeloved, Royal Canin (Indoors, Exigent and Light!) and Applaws - all when BOGOF or 3 for 2.

RE free feeding dry - I've done this in the past when I had 5 cats and lost one to liver failure. I had not noticed that she had stopped eating and she was too ill to treat by the time I did. Now my 3 are on fixed feeding and 4 weeks ago I noticed one was off his food. I got him to the vet's just in time to save him as he had a blocked intestine :eek:.

Sequeena

Do you have a home bargains near you? They sell the small tins of hi life pate for around 35p each and they're really good quality should help cut down on costs xx

gettingready

Do not want to change their food too much as the 2 boys always have runny poos, ever since they were tiney babies so do not want to make it worse.

Also want to know exactly how much it is costing me per month so want a routine here - both for them and for me...

Sorry to hear about your kitties, I would not feed dry only and what you mention is just one of the reasons why I would not... at least with the moist they get it and I see them eating it, with dry they kind of graze on it through the day and I never know which one eats how much - just know for sure tat Fred does not touch dry ever....

gettingready

Oh, emailed Animonda for advice on how much their own dry would I need per cat per day if they already get 100g their wet food....
Website was in german, emailed in English - fingers crossed LOL

gettingready

35 per tin times 4 is £1.40 per day so works out more expensive I am afraid, I have 4 cats....

They are demolishing the flat now, noticed a moscito (spelling???) and trying to cacth it.... sigh...

spookylukey

I would just look at the packaging of the dry and see how much in grams the feeding recommendations are per cat per day. As a guesstimate lets say an adult cat of X weight needs 90g of the food you feed if fed solely dry.

Then look at the wet food recommendation. If it is, for example, three pouches ie 300g of wet per cat per day and you are feeding one third of that ie 100g wet food per cat then I would feed 2/3 of the recommended dry food intake so 60g in the example above. That would be 1.8kg per cat so 5.4kg a month for the three mixed feeders. The above is of course if the dry food recommendation is 90g per day, if more or less then adjust the figures accordingly.

You probably already know but just in case you don't you get 5% off all orders over £75 at Zooplus when you enter the code http://www.zooplus.co.uk/content/stockup

Also, have you tried James Wellbeloved? It's fairly good quality and hypoallergenic and much cheaper than what you're feeding now - a 10kg + 2kg free sack is £38 at Zooplus. You will need to make the change very gradually though. I was recommended it by my vet due to it being hypoallergenic, I initially switched it over too quickly and both my cats had runny bums so I thought it didn't agree with them. I tried again a few weeks later veeeeeeery slowly and they both adjusted fine to it the second time round. James Wellbeloved recommended feeding for an adult cat weighing 4-5kg is 60-70g per day. If they are getting 100g of wet I would guesstimate they would need around 50g of JWB each per day. That's 1.5kg per cat per month so 4.5kg a month in total. The £38 12kg bag would last 3 cats 80 days.

gettingready

Thanks a lot, unfortunately my order will not be anywhere near £75 mark so can not use the coupn

Abcynthia

I have 9 cats and here is my breakdown for the month

Wet food - Smilla (zooplus, high meat content and grain free) bulked out with butchers classic (which is grain free - tesco) - 60-70 pounds

Dry Food - Porta 21 Sensible grain free (available from zooplus with a medium meat content) - 33 pounds for a 10kg bag, which lasts me a month or 57 pounds for 2 10kg bags

Litter - 20 pounds for 30L of OKO plus or 26 pounds for 40L

All of my cats are in wonderful condition. I have to admit I have downgraded from Orijen to Porta 21 due to cash flow issues for the next couple of months, but will upgrade again when everything gets back on an even keel. Hope this have given you some ideas

gettingready

9 cats?

And I thought I was bad LOL

Thanks for posting, may try Smilla next time, just ordered Animonda for a month.....tins - still got lots of dry food at home so not ordering dry at the moment...

How much wet do you feed them per day?

Do your cats go out at all?

I find that as my lot do not go out, the cheapest I could go on cat litter was £20 per month as they only pee/poo indoors.....

Abcynthia

To answer your questions

I usually end up feeding them 3 tins a day. 1 tin and a half in the morning and 1 tin and a half in the evening between them all. I free feed dry, but do keep a close eye on who's eating what. One of my cats eats mainly dry and now and again picks at some wet. Some eat more wet than dry lol But with the amount I feed it is well balanced out

No, the only access they have to outdoors is a run in my garden, which they can only go out in, in nice weather! Which we have only been teased with so far this year. Oh I will add one of them does go out and she goes out A LOT. The rest are pedigrees so stay in.

As OKO is a clumping litter here is how I work it.
I have 4 trays (2 of which are the jumbo ones from zooplus so act as 2!) I clean all the trays out twice a day - once in the morning and once at night. This is spot cleaning i.e taking out the formed balls of pee and the poos. I top up the trays with a little bit of litter every day to stop the litter ending up getting over used and turning dusty.
Every four weeks I take the trays, spot clean the balls out and empty the unused litter into a tub. I then wipe the tray down and disinfect it. I then empty the unused litter back into the tray so I end up with no wastage. This has worked really well for me and the cats are perfectly happy with it. Like I say though I think an important part of this routine is the spot cleaning TWICE and topping all the trays up once a day with a little bit more litter as I did found if I didn't top them up the litter became useless. I also get no smells this way The only thing is I do have to hoover EVERY day and sometimes twice because the litter tracks terribly, but a small price to pay to save the money that I do using this litter.

Sorry that was so long lol and hope it gives you some idea

I actually will have 10 by the end of this week :eek: I had an email from a breeder that knows me well. I rescued one of her cats from someone that had kicked him out because he followed her around :mad: As she has seen what a good job I did with him, she has offered me a cat that had some issues when a baby so never got to go to a home. It is officially a mad house!