Hi all,

Need your thoughts on this folks. Not having much luck with dried food over here,foods I have used sucessfully before are upsetting my boys over here and I am now debating a wet food/raw diet only and leave out dry altogether. We are restricted to certain foods here, Whiskers, almonature, animonda, no natures menu and no applaws. Raw meats I haven't ventured with yet so really could do with someone knowledgable to advise me the best way to approach this.

Much thanks in advance

Izzie

Where is 'here'?

Raw is good but if you are going for a raw only diet can you buy supplements to add to the raw via the internet? There are sites that advise on raw diets and if you join will advise.

If only raw need to include bone and dark meats for taurine. Chicken wings and legs and thighs will give the bone - no kidding, cats will chew the raw bone and eat it. DO NOT COOK CHICKEN BONES because they are hard and splinter causing injury.

I feed a combo of raw and high meat protein wet. One cat (female) eats raw and loves it - prefers it to the wet, but the male would rather eat wet.

Great that you are considering raw!

I'd recommend you start with chicken (95%) and chicken liver (5%) - cut it up in pieces and mix it into their wet food. Just a tiny bit at first and see how it goes. Some cats take to it right away - my cat fished the chicken pieces out and ate them before eating the wet food, so he was very easy to transition. Other cats can be more difficult and need to get used to the new taste and texture.

Increase the amount of raw meat in the wet food until they're eating only meat. Meanwhile, try to get them used to eating bone. This may take even longer, so have patience. Until they start eating bone, you can powder some eggshells and sprinkle on top of the meat. Chicken rib bones are good and small to start with.

What you want to end up with is feeding a mix of meat, liver and bone in the approximate amounts of 95%, 5% and 5%.

Ensure you use as much heart (counts as meat) as possible, and also dark meat as these contain more taurine. There's no need for any supplements when feeding raw like this, with the possible exception of adding a little fish body oil (not cod liver oil) if the meat they eat is mostly non-wild.

Personally I feed my cat rabbit (order it online) as this turns out the cheapest for me. I order whole wild rabbits and supplement with some extra boneless rabbit chunks as the rabbits contain too much bone.

Some good websites for advice on transitioning cats to raw (or just raw feeding in general) are:
Little Big Cat
http://rawfed.com/myths/cats.htmlact...switchingfoods
~ PRACTICAL GUIDE ~

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Fit for the sunshine, so it followed him. A happy tempered bringer of the best, out of the worst.

Hi,

Thanks for all your advice it is great. i will source a good butcher out here and see what I can get.

Wet foods are more the issue as I would like them to have some wet too. Initially I thought I could order from Zooplus as its a german firm and we live in Switzerland but it seems not to be the case which is really frustrating. We have Qualipet which has a good selection but not the foods they used to have which has caused me nothing but problems as they have had to get used to new foods which have caused tummy problems.

Does anyone use whiskas or is it one to avoid, i can get almo nature but its not brill. Im getting seriously frustrated with it all.

Izzie

Hi Izzie and welcome to you from Lancashire,England all the way to you in Beautiful switzerlandWhiska's for us is not a good choice as imo it's full of rubbish and will only make a dodgy tummy worse as it's also very rich,can you get and maybe try minced meats.ie chicken,beef,turkey,lamb etc as sometimes here it works out just cheap if not cheaper than any brand foods and again imo much better for themCan i ask what breed if any your cats are and do you have any pics to share with us plz

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Dogs have owners, Cats have slaves

Burnthwaites Siamese

We fed our kittens whiskas and it went right through them and gave one blood in his poo

We've started to feed them raw now, which I'm trying to suppliment with some wet to make sure they get enough taurine etc. So far our kittens have taken to it very well and have eaten everything we've given them. They seem to really love liver and we also gave them some heart over christmas which went down well. They can't eat bone yet though as they just seemed confused when I gave them a whole chicken wing the other day and decided to try and hunt it instead. I think they're still too small

Can you get Bozita over there? It would probably be quite a good choice.
My cats seem to be able to eat anything (if they like it, that is!) without it causing tummy problems. I do try to use the better quality commercial foods though, but it can be really difficult finding them locally.

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Vervain Cats

Bozita have a web site in the UK but they are Scandanavian so may well have a website in Switzerland.

I had success emailing sales department of a local UK food supplier (Butchers Classic) and got suppliers of their product in the UK, so it might be worth doing a google search for your preferred wet food and seeing if you could find a website in Switzerland or a bordering country. Then email their contact email with your queries explaining that you would really, really like to source their product in Switzerland.

Hi,

If I can get hubby to lend me a credit card then I can access my zooplus account, I don't mind paying import tax just to be able to get my boys on the right food.
I like Bozita, does anyone use the tinned varieties rather than the box variety lol? I found the box variety rather messy to deal with.Thanks for all the advice folk its very reassuring.

Izzie

Izzie

I use both types of Bozita - I don't actually mind the cartons, I think they're easier than the cans - I scrape the food out with a knife (as i do with the cans).

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Vervain Cats