Well I've just sat here and tried to work out the price difference between feeding my 5 month old kittens a combination of Smilla, Animonda Carny and Bozita and just Whiskas kitten pouches in gravy and came up with the below. Looks like the price difference isn't massive (basing it on feeding them a can each a day) and they get much better food! Unless my maths is wrong? I'm a PR girl and numbers aren't my forte


BOZITA

Bozita canned food savings pack – 12x410g £12.49

Feeding recommendation: 400g per day

2 cans per day lasts for 6 days - £2.08 per day

SMILLA

Smilla poultry pot savings pack (assorted pack) – 24x400g £19.99

Feeding recommendation: 350g per day

2 cans per day lasts for 12 days - £1.67 per day


ANIMONDA CARNY

Animonda megapack – 12x400g £12.99

Feeding recommendation: 330g per day

2 cans per day lasts for 6 days - £2.17 per day


Monday £2.08
Tuesday £1.67
Wednesday £2.17
Thursday £2.08
Friday £1.67
Saturday £2.17
Sunday £1.67 (use more Smilla)

Total per week: £13.51

Total per month: £54.04

WHISKAS KITTEN COMPARISON

Whiskas kitten gravy pouch – 12x100g £3.49

Feeding recommendation: 3 pouches a day for each kitten

6 pouches a day lasts for 2 days - £1.75 per day

Per week - £12.25

Per month - £49

__________________
Basil & Sybil

Yep, the higher quality food you feed, the less you have to feed!

__________________

Photography

Actually looking at the numbers has been quite a revelation! OH was complaining about all the additional cost my 'fussing' would entail - if those numbers are right (plus the savings from vet bills later on due to potential UTIs etc), he can't really argue with that!

Can't quite believe I just did that on a Friday night while on holiday in Florida - but I have a cold and was bored, that's my story and I'm sticking to it

__________________
Basil & Sybil

With kittens depending on age I'd feed them whatever they could eat. When they are adults it depends on the quality of the food so I'd go on feeding recs rather than volume.

feeding rec for animonda is 330g a day per cat for a 5kg cat so 6 cans should last 7.2 days which makes it work out at about £1.80 a day for that

Smilla feeding rec is 250-350g for a 5kg cat if you got in the middle of that for feeding recs so 300g per cat then with 2 cats you'd get 16 days worth of cat food for 2 cats - so it's £1.25ish per day

Bozita - is correct or slightly more as the feeding rec for a 4-5kg cat is 4-500g and the cans are only 410g.

so that's 11.51 per week

If you fed whiskas adult because you might as well compare adult food to adult food kitten food is just a gimmic anyway. You can get 12 cans of supermeat for £10.99 - which would feed them for 7.8 days as the feeding rec is 300g so it's slightly more expensive to feed the better food. However I would wager feeding a better quality food = cheaper vets bills so you will get that money back anyway.

Thanks Cloudygirl I think I was just basing it on a can each a day as it would be easy to measure out (1/2 can in the morning and 1/2 at night) as I would be paranoid about under feeding them. Might have to invest in getting some scales - am rubbish at guessing amounts And am worried about leftovers at the end of the day if am rotating brands daily!

__________________
Basil & Sybil

I have no food waste however it might have something to do with being the slave to two greedy piggies.

And here was me thinking I'd bought home cats...

Ha - my two would eat every hour of the day if I left food down all the time They came from a shelter where they had to get through about 8 other cats to get to a bowl so always think it's the last time they'll eat!

So do you just give them a can each a day and not worry too much about getting exact feeding measurements?

__________________
Basil & Sybil

well I've had them since they were about 6 months old and had lots of initial problems with Boo's poorly tummy which led to me trying all sorts of different things. But in principle while they were kittens they got to eat what they wanted.

I feed little and often. So I feed first thing in the morning - they used to miaow me to wake me up about 6 am for food but have grown out of that. But I used to feed at 6am, then a bit more 7.30am just before I left for work, have a timed feeder for midday, feed at 6pm and feed again at 10ish. I set timed feeders if I'm out. I have a double feeder and a single each with a timer.

I think cats much prefer eating smaller portions and more often. Plus if you feed Boo big portions he bolts his food and then is sick

I don't do the 6am feed now but the rest are the same. Once they got to around a year their appetites started to dwindle a bit and I cut the food down a bit anyway because Bobs eats tons and is a large cat (he's not fat he's just huge) but Boo had gone from being skinny cos he was poorly to being barrel shaped. So now depending on the flavour they share 1 -1 1/2 tins of animonda (they love meat cocktail flavour and the shrimp one), or a tin of smilla (they just wouldn't eat more than that in a day) and about 40g of dried food (sometimes less if they don't eat all their wet). Even when they were kittens and really hungry they'd never manage 2 tins of animonda between them in a day.

Thanks Cloudygirl - that's really helpful!

__________________
Basil & Sybil

Yes, feeding a good quality diet doesn't need to be more and much more expensive than feeding supermarket food. There are various German sites that compare them, such as Crazy&Minka - Ist Premiumfutter wirklich teurer?, there are also various threads on here.

Just to throw something else into the mix, namely what happens if you feed some really good quality food. I personally would say for example, that the likes of Smilla, Animonda and Bozita are only medium quality foods; but it is all about perspective and availability.

But let's say you were to take the plunge and order food from Germany. You can get a very good food there called Macs - for make-up and ingredients see the A-Z, which you can get in 200g, 400g as well as 800g tins. To me, this is THE food that is best value for money.

The feeding rec is up to 200g for a 4kg cat and one 800g tin is 2.27 euro. So, effectively you can feed your cat some really good quality food for 57 cents a day (plus delivery costs, which are around 10 euro for a 30kg parcel).

Or if the 800g tins are too big (and I guess they would be if you only have 1 cat) you can get 12 400g tins for 15.89, which is 1.32 euro per 400g tin, so 66 cents per day. Even with delivery costs it is cheaper to feed this really good quality food that it is to get the food from zooplus delivered for free!

Mac's is the best value for money in terms of ingredients and price. There are several others that you could order from a German shop at the same time too to put into a rotation, such as TigerCat (37 euro for 24 400g tins at 200g feeding rec - so 1.54 per 400g tin, so 77 cents per cat per day), Petnatur, which is partly organic and more expensive (but one that I have firmly in my rotation of my commercial food). There are a phletora of other good quality foods and you really can spend a lot on some fancy foods.

As CG has pointed out, that kittens can eat as much as they like IF they are fed good quality food, so throwing out any calculations - but still nicely illustrating differences for adults.