Hello all

I have a question on raw food.

I have two BSH's, Lola (female) and Loftus (male) and they are just over 7 months old.

We had quite a few problems with Loftus as he had Giardia and horrific poop. This went on for ages and the only thing that has sorted out his poop is the Natural Instinct food that I'm feeding them both. NI recommend that the kittens are fed 5-6% of their body weight, so Lola gets ca. 150g a day (she weighs 2.5kg) and Loftus gets 180g (he weighs 3kg).

They both love it but it gets eaten SO quickly - Loftus sicked all of his up yesterday, and purely cos he had eaten it so fast (I watched him eat it). But Loftus is ALWAYS scavenging for food. He follows me in the kitchen whenever I go in, tries jumping in the fridge, will not leave us alone at dinner (we shut him out of the room now), whereas Lola couldn't care less.

Because I work (and commute), he tends to go approx 13 hours between meals - I'm scared to leave down dry as I used to, because of his poo issues.

Is he just a greedy cat, or am I not feeding him enough?? Should I try him on some dry that I can leave down in the day - can any one recommend one for sensitive tummies?

Kirsty

Put it this way, I'm feeding NI mince and a variety of high quality wet. The wet can stay down for an hour or so and they do eventually eat it all.

The NI is gone within SECONDS and the bowls are licked clean!

I personally give each of my boys half a pack of the mince each and probably an additional 200g of wet as well. They are still kittens though so I feed what they want and theyre maintaining a good weight. They have stopped eating so much recently, possibly due to the heat.

Personally when they are kittens (up to 1 yr) personally I would say let them have what they want... I have never fed more than one NI pack a day though so I dont know how they would react, I imagine theyd happily eat about 3packs a day if I let them...

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Not sure where NI got their kitten guidelines from but I would say they are wrong. Kittens can eat as much raw food as they want.

When Lila was about 6 months old she could put away 300g of raw food easily - sometimes as much as 400. A friend of mine who has some Russian Blues reported that her kittens could easily put away 400g a day at one point.

Could you get an automatic feeder or just some cooling elements that you can plonk a plate on to keep the food cold for longer to give him a mid-day feed of raw?

Thanks for your answers guys.

I'm a bit nervous of giving them any other wet food because of the problems Loftus had, and the NI mince seems to have solved the problem *touches wood* I only asked about a sensitive dry from a practical point of view, but the automatic feeder is a great idea, don't know why I didn't think of that?!

He actually doesn't seem as bad today - I think the problem was we've been off work for the last fortnight so we've been there to scavenge from. I'll see how he goes this week and then may get an automatic feeder. I'll try and give him food as soon as I get up and just before I leave until then.

Thanks

Kirsty