Picking a new food

bab-ush-niik · Dec 14, 2007

We need to switch to a new wet food, and there's so many options!

Currently, we feed Eagle Pack Holistic, wet and dry. They get 1/3 cup of dry each (though they eat from each others bowls), and the bigger, slower cat (Puppy) gets 1/3 can wet while the smaller, hyper cat (Bunny) gets 1/4 of a can. Dry food in the morning and wet at night, since Bunny throws up if she gets more than a 1/4 can. Both are on a diet, though only Puppy is loosing weight right now. Bunny appears to be gaining. (I suspect she eats his dry food.)

Puppy has decided that he only likes the salmon/shrimp flavor of Eagle Pack now. He ate the other two perfectly fine for two years, but whatever. We gave him a can of chicken from another brand just to test it out, and he gobbled it up. He's still fine with the dry.

So...

I buy from www.petfooddirect.com and have picked out the following foods:

Wellness
Natural Balance
By Nature Organics
Nutro

Opinions and experiences with these? Other bands I should consider for the picky eater and the chubby girl?

artgecko · Dec 15, 2007

I have just gotten a big order of wet food in from national pet pharmacy to change my cats' diet... Before I ordered the cases of food though, I ordered from a site that sells by-the-can, so that they could test the different cans out before I paid for an entire case. It was, of course, pretty expensive to buy by-the-can, but I avoided wasting money on food that they wouldn't eat.

IMO (the cats tried out wellness, merrick, cal. natural, EVO, and some others...
They didn't care much for wellness (most of which had garlic in them)
They didn't care much for merrick (odd texture I guess)
They LOVED the cal. natural chicken/rice and venison
They LOVED the EVO 95% beef and chicken/turkey, but didn't care much for the other flavors.

Also, I have been feeding "authority" canned food, a food sold at petsmart, and the cats seem to do well on it (and it has good ingredients and many flavors)... It is similar in ingredients and a little cheaper than nutro cans. If you have a petsmart near you, you might want to check it out.

HTH,
Art

sharky · Dec 15, 2007

I have used all four you mention fairly reg ...

wellness and nutro won here for taste... read the labels on wellness I havent seen a garlic one in nearly a yr it seems

bab-ush-niik · Dec 15, 2007

What was wrong with the texture of Merrick?

sharky · Dec 15, 2007

merrick is chopped or gravy in nature... lot like stew ??... there formulas kept changing and Kandie would go hot and cold

bab-ush-niik · Dec 15, 2007

Bunny was weaned onto wet with Sheba, which is chopped, so maybe they'll like it. It was the only thing she would eat for a while. It's also easier to pill Puppy if I can sneak it into a chunk of food. Thanks!

artgecko · Dec 15, 2007

The EVO 95% meat cans are very "wet", but are a pate' style...so might be a good "in between" between the shredded texture (i.e. merrick) and the firmer "pate" style cans like wellness/cal. natural./nutro.

Art

sham · Dec 16, 2007

I have an extremely picky cat and so far she will eat innova canned (not a huge hit though), loves any flavor of california natural wet or dry, and kind of likes the natural balance canned pate but none of their chunky/shredded formulas. Merrick was completely dissed without question. She sniffed it, licked it, and then acted like she was burying it and walked off. She refused to even lick the gravy off it again. Also the rest had no problems with the canned but out of 5 cats none would eat natural balance dry. The kitten will eat dog food first and she generally eats anything. Aside from the extremely picky cat they will all eat any of natura's dry foods, http://naturapet.com/ but the evo upset everyone's stomach until I switched off of it. Another dry food I used temporarily when I couldn't get to the only store that has CN was Spa Select by blue buffalo. The cats liked it fine and had no stomach troubles or health issues in the 2months I was feeding it but I preferred going back to the CN since I have one with unknown allergies. I've debated trying wellness but haven't picked up a bag yet. I avoid any nutro foods for a variety of reasons and many stores here have quit selling it altogether after the number of recalls. I know several people that have switched to natural balance or blue buffalo because they can no longer find nutro in nearby stores.

sharky · Dec 16, 2007

Originally Posted by Sham

I have an extremely picky cat and so far she will eat innova canned (not a huge hit though), loves any flavor of california natural wet or dry, and kind of likes the natural balance canned pate but none of their chunky/shredded formulas. Merrick was completely dissed without question. She sniffed it, licked it, and then acted like she was burying it and walked off. She refused to even lick the gravy off it again. Also the rest had no problems with the canned but out of 5 cats none would eat natural balance dry. The kitten will eat dog food first and she generally eats anything. Aside from the extremely picky cat they will all eat any of natura's dry foods, http://naturapet.com/ but the evo upset everyone's stomach until I switched off of it. Another dry food I used temporarily when I couldn't get to the only store that has CN was Spa Select by blue buffalo. The cats liked it fine and had no stomach troubles or health issues in the 2months I was feeding it but I preferred going back to the CN since I have one with unknown allergies. I've debated trying wellness but haven't picked up a bag yet. I avoid any nutro foods for a variety of reasons and many stores here have quit selling it altogether after the number of recalls. I know several people that have switched to natural balance or blue buffalo because they can no longer find nutro in nearby stores.

Nutro is a good food and YOU must be in a strange area since MOST were wondering when it would come back in...

I do like cal natural as it is a simple ... I have had decent luck with NB ... BLUE for some reason IS NOT eaten by any of mine ... PS Natural balance actually had more recalls.. but almost all the premiums involved with any recalls have worked to ensure the items are WHAT they are supposed to be

SInce you are ordering online if you can try as many as possible ... Mine love the 95% meats and THEY are COMPLETE meat only s

sham · Dec 16, 2007

Seriously nutro's completely gone out of favor here. Where the shelves used to have endless bags of all the different nutro formulas petland and petsmart now have merrick and natural balance while petco has taken up the space with blue buffalo. A couple smaller stores that only sold nutro and then nonfood products actually went out of business. I made off with all sorts of cheap shelving and slightly used fish tanks from those places. Others have leaned toward natura products and wellness is more common now. Over the summer when I was trying to find brands for my new puppy all I saw were nutro signs and nutro products taking up majority of the space in stores. Now I really don't know where I'd send someone to get it. However my dislike of it started well before the recalls (more like 6years ago). Recent recalls haven't really had much impact on where I rank brands. I've never had or personally known anyone who's animal did better on nutro than some other foods. Better than the grocery store brands sure but I only place it slightly above that. I'd recommend it for someone that was feeding the cheapest thing they could get at walmart and didn't want to spend alot of money on food but definitely wouldn't put it at the top of any suggested lists.

sharky · Dec 16, 2007

Originally Posted by Sham

Seriously nutro's completely gone out of favor here. Where the shelves used to have endless bags of all the different nutro formulas petland and petsmart now have merrick and natural balance while petco has taken up the space with blue buffalo. A couple smaller stores that only sold nutro and then nonfood products actually went out of business. I made off with all sorts of cheap shelving and slightly used fish tanks from those places. Others have leaned toward natura products and wellness is more common now. Over the summer when I was trying to find brands for my new puppy all I saw were nutro signs and nutro products taking up majority of the space in stores. Now I really don't know where I'd send someone to get it. However my dislike of it started well before the recalls (more like 6years ago). Recent recalls haven't really had much impact on where I rank brands. I've never had or personally known anyone who's animal did better on nutro than some other foods. Better than the grocery store brands sure but I only place it slightly above that. I'd recommend it for someone that was feeding the cheapest thing they could get at walmart and didn't want to spend alot of money on food but definitely wouldn't put it at the top of any suggested lists.

Each animal is different ... I actually get lots going to nutro from many of the " higher " brands and getting better results... but everyone is different.... some think lamb and rice is what all dogs should eat and all cats salmon

... cat eats nutro ( old one too, till I got her raw

) dog eat s wellnessand homemade

i do beleive Wellness wt control has some l carnitine... I will verifiy ( imagine my memory is fallible

)

too bad i need more tanks

http://www.omhpet.com/wellness/cat_w...hy_weight.html

both the wt control and the indoor have some l carnitine... ie amounts proven in the lab and real life to help

sakura · Dec 17, 2007

Originally Posted by bab-ush-niik

We need to switch to a new wet food, and there's so many options!

Currently, we feed Eagle Pack Holistic, wet and dry. They get 1/3 cup of dry each (though they eat from each others bowls), and the bigger, slower cat (Puppy) gets 1/3 can wet while the smaller, hyper cat (Bunny) gets 1/4 of a can. Dry food in the morning and wet at night, since Bunny throws up if she gets more than a 1/4 can. Both are on a diet, though only Puppy is loosing weight right now. Bunny appears to be gaining. (I suspect she eats his dry food.)

Puppy has decided that he only likes the salmon/shrimp flavor of Eagle Pack now. He ate the other two perfectly fine for two years, but whatever. We gave him a can of chicken from another brand just to test it out, and he gobbled it up. He's still fine with the dry.

So...

I buy from www.petfooddirect.com and have picked out the following foods:

Wellness
Natural Balance
By Nature Organics
Nutro

Opinions and experiences with these? Other bands I should consider for the picky eater and the chubby girl?

By Nature - my cat will hardly touch these (the pouches, haven't tried the cans) and she loves mostly everything I give her (especially pouch food). She used to love them when I first gave them to her but I think that was because it was when I first brought her home and she was starving.

Nutro - this is a favorite of mine. My kitten definitely prefers the Nutro Max kitten pouch to the Nutro Natural kitten pouches. She likes the kitten cans ok. My older cat likes the natural cans ok, but prefers the natural pouches. Haven't tried any of the max stuff with my cat. Max is good for picky eaters.

Natural Balance - my cat likes these in most flavors (I think I've tried all). I think they are higher in calories per 3oz than other brands.

Wellness - my cat likes both the pouches and cans, and my kitten seems to like the canned stuff.

Do they have Solid Gold on that website? My cat LOVES Solid Gold.

bab-ush-niik · Dec 17, 2007

They didn't have Solid Gold.

Well, I bought some Merrick, fish flavor since that's a known "like". We'll see what happens.

We're also taking care of a friend's cat that is kibble only, and I'm trying to switch him to wet so we can control portions better. It took FF to get him to eat any wet at all, so we may have another picky eater. However, Bunny was the same way, and I weaned her onto Eagle Pack with FF as the starter.

I'll post results when the shipment comes in. If Merrick doesn't work, it sounds like Calfornia Natural or Wellness might be next.

What is carnitine? Do I want something with that?

sharky · Dec 17, 2007

l carnitine is a amino acid ... it happens to help regulate metabolism by increasing muscle mass and metabolising fat

Picking a new food

bab-ush-niik

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artgecko

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