Food advice please!!

Even though i try to stay within a certian price range for foods i go with the premuim brands such as Nature's Variety and Wellness CORE. I also will feed Natural Balance and kirkland dry food. It is actually cheaper in the long run because they eat way less of those brands and i get the reasurrence of what actually is in that food. I will not feed foods with corn, wheat, soy, by-products (wet food i have to but avoid it in dry), BHA/BHT, beef tallow, generic terms like fish meal or animal fat. I prefer to feed mine grain free foods.

Wet food to keep within budget i feed sophistacat. it is cheap yet i feel better than friskies. It doesn't use wheat gluten to make the chunks instead it uses food starch. I avoid varieties with meat by-products within the first three ingrediants.

I do feed quite a bit of raw food, it is the bulk of my cats diet. I do not cook the meat for them, it is plain raw meat. the meat's that i currently have and am using are chicken, beef, turkey, and pork. I would not feed cooked chicken breast in fear that they might eat a bone from it. However a raw chicken breast with bones is safe. Cooked bones are a definate thing to avoid.

I spend $8.50 a day to feed all my cats. However i am feeding 20 cats on average per day, sometimes more sometimes less depending on who all shows up at the farm to eat. If i were to go all raw i estimate i would spend $7 a day. If i were to go completly commercial i guess that i would be spending $10-12 a day. However i do not ever want to go back to all commercial foods. if possible i would switch to all raw.

Looking at the ingredients on Purina's website (they are not in a copy-and-pasteable format, so if someone wants to post them here, that would be great), and the Purina Cat Chow indoor formula's first ingredient is corn, and then chicken by-products, and then corn gluton. In my opinion, none of these ingredients would be in a "good" food, especially not the first 3 ingredients. Cats are carnivores and thrive on a food that consists mainly of meat. By-products are meat, but could be any part of the chicken, likely not the healthy muscle meat that we would eat.

Ingredients for Purina One (I couldn't find the indoor formula on the website) are a bit better, with chicken as the first ingredient.

Chicken, brewers rice, corn gluten meal, poultry by-product meal, wheat flour, animal fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols (form of Vitamin E), whole grain corn, fish meal, soy protein isolate, animal liver flavor, phosphoric acid, potassium chloride, calcium carbonate, caramel color, salt, choline chloride, taurine, L-Lysine monohydrochloride, Vitamin E supplement, zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, niacin, Vitamin A supplement, calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate, copper sulfate, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, calcium iodate, biotin, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), sodium selenite.

There is still a lot of grain in there - rice, corn, and wheat, as well as some by-products and artificial flavour. I wouldn't feed it to my cats, I don't think.

Now, the fact that these foods are within your price range and your cats seem to like them is great. However, if you want to try a better food, there are some economical options:

- Kirkland (Costco Brand - this is a very decent food and VERY affordable - I imagine quite a bit cheaper than what you pay now)
- Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul
- Taste of the Wild (this one is pricier here in Canada, but I think it's quite reasonable in the US)

Edited to add: As for feeding your cats cooked chicken, it's great as a treat or occasional meal, but not on a regular basis as their food source. It doesn't contain a balance of nutrients that your cats need. However, if they love it, by all means, give it to them on occasion. Just be sure not to season the chicken, as salt/pepper/garlic, etc. isn't great for your kitties.

There are also these, available at PetSmart:

http://www.bluebuff.com/products/cats/index.shtml

They all contain meat as the first ingredient, and I don't believe any of them contain corn or wheat.

i don't like foods that have chicken as the first ingrediant if it is not followed by chicken meal. you don't know if they made the ingrediant list before or after processing. after processing chicken to a moisture of 8% it moves a long ways down the ingrediant list to the 5th or 6th ingrediant instead of the first. the regular purina is better than the purina one than IMO but i would still not feed it.

Thanks everyone for your advice. I use boneless chicken breast to feed them cuz thats what BF and I eat for dinner and I cook it on the grill with no seasoning whatsoever! I started using Purina because for my doxie it was recommended by a vet to help keep his weight down and I was told it was a good food....I cant wait till I work on Sunday because Im going to be hitting up Petsmart hunting up a new food for my kitties....I have to stay away from any food that has what looks like red pieces in it because it makes their poopy red and that just freaks me out when Im scooping litter boxes.
New question BF thought of. Is hamburger good for kitties? I use the 80/20 hamburger even though it is quite expensive? BF likes to feed them pieces of meat while cooking it before it gets added to spaghetti sauce or before adding taco seasoning? Now Ive got him all worried we are hurting our babies!!! LOL Am Im being an over worrier?!?!

Hamburger should be fine as a treat as well.

If you're shopping at PetSmart, Authority is a decent food (their brand). Other than that, I'm not sure what else there is decent and affordable - Nutro, I think.

The ones I mentioned - Kirkland is from Costco, and I think Chicken Soup and Taste of the Wild are usually available at more independent pet stores or feed stores.

Look at the ingredients, look for a meat (or meal) first ingredient, even better if there is more than one meat ingredient listed. Try to avoid by-products. Limited grains is better, although it's not a necessity that you avoid them entirely. I am personally OK with some rice, but prefer no corn (although a little can be helpful for male cats and UTIs) and definitly no wheat.

Basically, any of the commercial brands are overpriced junk (ie. Purina, Iams, Eukenuba, Science Diet).

Someone will need to confirm this for me, but I think that Indoor or Light formulas are generally high in carbs and no good for cats actually needing to lose weight. The best way for cats to lose weight is to be fed wet, or a high-quality, meat-based dry.

Originally Posted by zoeysmom

Someone will need to confirm this for me, but I think that Indoor or Light formulas are generally high in carbs and no good for cats actually needing to lose weight. The best way for cats to lose weight is to be fed wet, or a high-quality, meat-based dry.

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yes that is correct i believe. you want low carb food anyways, but also it helps cats lose wieght better. low carb dry foods are EVO, Nature's Variety Instinct, and Wellness CORE.