I was just looking for some advice as to whether my girls are getting the right kind of nutrition from what I'm feeding them?

We've been through a few different wet/pate's that I feed as complimentary, trying to find a brand that they liked and I was happy with, and a few different complete dry foods that I free-feed, so that they're getting the nutrients that they need.

We've settled upon a happy routine at the moment, where they are fed twice per day (morning and evening) with 40% boiled chicken, and 60% Applaws wet kitten food (link below), which I mix some of the Wainwright's kitten dry food (link below) into, just to make sure that they're getting that at meal times and not only eating it freely.

I then leave the Wainwright's dry down for them during the day/night. The bowl is regularly emptied, and they both enjoy that dry food.

Occasionally, when someone is with them during the day, which is most days, they might get a boiled chicken snack or some white fish as a snack. Once a week they may get white fish as a replacement for boiled chicken as part of meal time, just for variety and to make sure they're not only eating poultry protein, but they prefer chicken.

Does that all look OK, or is there anything we could be doing differently?

I will add that both girls are happy and very energetic, and seem perfectly healthy (apart from an issue I had with some treats a couple of days ago, mentioned in another thread :( )

Any advice much appreciated!

Links to foods:
http://www.petsathome.com/shop/en/pets/ ... od-tin-70g
http://www.petsathome.com/shop/en/pets/ ... itten-15kg

This from the Applaws website:

"Applaws wet cat food may be fed daily along with a complete and balanced cat food diet such Applaws Complete Dry Food made with..."

It's difficult to even know what that even means. But here is how I would look at it:

Applaws is not a complete food by their own admission, and meat is apparently *not* what is missing from it. So feeding applaws and then adding meat to it is, if anything, making it less complete.

Think about it this way: a "complete" cat food that has a certain amount of bone meal, and organs, and taurine, and all that jazz. Now dillute that with 40% more meat. Now they are suddenly getting 60% of those vitamins and minerals in their diet than they would if they were simply eating the complete food. How harmful will that be? Kinda depends on how much the "complete" food had in it, and it's a lot of guess work.

Personally I wouldn't want to mess with that. I would recommend buying a complete food, let that be their staple, and then if you want to feed them a little bit of chicken (like less than 10%) on top of that as treats and such, go for it. Either that or get on the internet and do a bunch of research on what it is exactly that applaws is missing, and add that to it. But then when you are talking about adding MORE meat to applaws, you would have to adjust for that too, and pretty soon you are just making your own cat food, and you might as well just do it all from scratch (study up on "raw diet".)

That's my $0.02.

_________________
The little monsters 3

Thanks for that advice brianj. I put a *lot* more thought into it after this initial question, and the incident of one of them being poorly after being fed some rubbishy treats.

I was relying on the dry food to provide to 'complete' part of their diet, and then the other foods + chicken just as extra protein, and because they enjoy that...but I never came at it from the angle that I could be just diluting the 'completeness' of the diet by adding more meat. It just seemed...more beneficial somehow, and they enjoy it.

I was always wanting to feed them a raw diet eventually, and was putting that off until they were a little older, while trying to keep their diet similar to what they have always been used to while they settle in for the first few weeks...but we've had them a while now, so I did more reading on raw and started that transition.

I found a well-recommended brand of pre-made raw, that is delivered frozen, and started them transitioning onto that, which for one took about 15 seconds but was a couple of days for the other. I was feeding that with a little bit of boiled chicken to entice them in, but that's now stopped (as one of them was leaving the chicken in favour of eating the raw anyway), so for mealtimes they're just eating raw now. And I leave some dry food down during the day for if they get peckish (can't really leave raw food down during the day when they're alone...bacteria etc...).

All seems to be well, and by all accounts they are still two happy, healthy cats :) And I feel a lot better now and more confident in what they're eating. Happy days :)

Link to Natural Instinct if it's of interest to anyone in the UK. http://www.naturalinstinct.com/categories/cat-food/

I bought all three flavours, but haven't moved on to the lamb yet. They're eating beef and venison though so I don't foresee that they'll have a problem with that one either. It seems so much more economical too. I'm not convinced it's easy to find 1kg of any other kind of high quality food for them at £4.50. Even complete dry food costs more for the weight.

Wow, very impressive. Good for you! That sounds like a great plan.

_________________
The little monsters 3