At what age do you start rotating wet foods?

I have a 5 month old kitten, Annie , who is currently eating Wellness kitten wet food. I've noticed that many TCS members seem to feed their cats a rotation of different high quality wet foods for reasons that make sense to me.

At what age do you think I could do this for Annie and not upset her tummy? I tried briefly giving her 1 meal a day of a different food to keep things exciting and she got diarrhea, but maybe that's not how it's done? Would you feed one food for one week, another for the next week, etc. or do you mix it up from meal to meal??

Thanks!!

Hmm, mine never minded changes in wet food from one meal to the next as kittens, but then again mine were already 5ish months old.

Hmm... well maybe I will give it another shot.

When I first tried it, she hadn't quite settled 100% in so possibly some residual stress was making her more prone to indigestion (she had a nasty bout of vomiting/diarrhea from stress when she first came home)?? Hopefully she doesn't have too sensitive a stomach because I like the idea of just being able to buy whatever good brand happens to be on sale once she's an adult.

I use Nutro Natual Choice wet food and Nutro Max cat food. All of my cats, when kittens, had no problems rotating different formulas. Of course they were different Nutro formulas but I don't think it would have made a difference if I had switched brands. I started doing this right about the same age as Annie is now. If you find Annie has a sensitive digestive tract when you switch foods; you can either stay with the food she knows or make a complete switch to another brand. Or you can gradually mix in some new with her current food. Don't make it difficult for yourself. If Annie is having negative effects from a different brand, don't use it next time and maybe try something else. Best of luck to you and Annie!

I start young kittens (from 8 weeks old) on just chicken or lamb. By the time they are a few months old (3-4 months) they get rotation foods in chicken, lamb or beef - NO fish based foods.

So your kitten should be able to handle different foods/brands now. I would just give a spoonful or two at first to see how they like it.

When you vary the canned food, you don't end up with picky cats! Dry you should stick to one basic flavor as its harder to change dry then it is canned.

Our cats get 2 meals of the same food; then they will get a new can in a different flavor/brand the next time.

I have used wellness canned for a long long time and my cats will only eat chicken for some reason. I've tried different flavors and they walk away from the bowl and refuse to eat until I put out chicken again! They also get wellness chicken in the dry and seem to do well so I guess I'll just keep getting the chicken flavor!

Nuts get various different brands and flavors of canned food from high quality right on down to 'kitty crack' Fancy Feast. If it comes in a 3- 3.5 oz can and Nuts will eat it I feed it, with a few exceptions. I don't buy Blue Buffalo, Meow Mix, Merrick, Nutro(of any kind), Iams(or any of the Iams offshoots), Royal Canin, and Science Diet. Either Nuts won't eat them or they are too expensive for all the crap they have in them or that I personally just don't like. The best quality food doesn't do any good if my cat refuses to eat it, so the higher quality ones I listed(BB and Merrick) are ones he refuses to eat. I also restrict him to 3.5 oz cans so that knocks out things like 9Lives and Frisky's and other crap foods. I have always fed various different brands/flavors of wet food to him and Attitude, when she was still alive(Maude hated canned food and refused to even consider tasting it) and I have never had any problem with digestive upset. As far as I know Nuts has never thrown up or had diarrhea in his life. Neither of them ever showed any digestive upset from changing up their wet food, there are flavors they'd refuse to eat but they never had any tummy issues related to food(and all of Attitude's seemed to be related to antibiotics.) The dog has also never had any issues with wet cat food either(Nuts sometimes 'shares' his wet food with Dexter by knocking his bowl on the floor.)

Nuts' main nutrition is his dry food I give him a can a day of wet for his enjoyment, if wet was his main nutrition then I would be pickier about what he received. I'd cut out the FF and Pro Plan(he has certain flavors of both that he really enjoys.)

I'd try switching it up, with wet food there isn't as much of an issue of tummy upset as there is with dry. Nuts is definitely not picky and I like it that way.

Taryn