What brands of canned food do you feed?

Hey all I am in the process of swithcing my cat from an all dry diet to an all wet diet. I would like to know what brands you favor or your kitties I should say. I will make a list and take it with me to the pet stores on Wednesday and see what I can get.

Thank you

Nightmare ate mostly Before Grain Quail & Chicken and Merrick Surf & Turf.  He also got Wellness chicken, beef & chicken, or turkey occasionally.  He is very picky and those are the only canned foods that he and I could both agree on

I try to give our cats as much variety as possible.  These are the brands/flavors that both cats will eat and I'm comfortable feeding:

Nature's Variety Instinct (chicken, duck)

Nature's Variety Prairie (lamb & liver, duck & chicken, turkey & chicken)

EVO Cat & Kitten

Nature's Logic (chicken, rabbit, and duck & salmon)

Tiki Cat (chicken varieties, and the ahi tuna flavor was great for mixing in with other brands while I was transitioning both cats over to wet)

I feed Phaedra Wellness kitten formula but will be buying some cans of Nature's Variety Instinct

I feed Soulistic, which is petco's house brand. It's affordable, comes in every flavor under the sun, and has good ingredients. My cats love every flavor, and it comes in gravy with pieces of meat or pieces of meat in gelee if you end up finding out your cat prefers one of those types over the pate type.

Cats are funny, and your cat might not like what everyone else's cats like. I recommend getting a small can of everything (or at least everything with ingredients and pricing you're comfortable with) and keep a list of which ones he likes best so you can buy those again.

Well, my Phoebe has a sensitive stomach, she often cannot handle the gravies added to wet foods.  So I will feed mine canned tuna (on occassion- before anyone jumps down my back... They need the taurine in it.  And it's not everyday, so they aren't getting a mercury overload.)  I also feed them canned natual chicken with no preservatives added.  I mix those with the dry Blue Buffalo Wilderness or Pro Plan Selects.  That is every other day.  On the other days of the week,  I feed them medium cooked ground turkey (again, the natural stuff) or cooked chicken breast or livers and cut it up for them.  I tried them on the raw diet and they all turn their noses up at it.  It has to be cooked for them to eat it.  Go figure. 

I have a sensitive tummy in my crew but we use Blue spa select and they love it. We've fed Wilderness canned before and it's popular, but it's a bit outside my price range so they get the Wilderness dry in addition.

Trader Joe's canned cat food is really good and my cats like them, if you have a TraderJoe's near you.. its about 50 cents a can. I also feed them Soulistic as someone mentioned above

So pretty much as long as its canned and better quality, it would be good to feed? Example Evo 95% or Evo cat and kitten. Will it really be a big difference or are they both suitable? I want to feed him the best quality of canned without going raw at this time. Another example Wellness or Wellness CORE.

Where do you all by Natures variety don't know that I have noticed it in any pet stores. 

Thank you all

Pretty much, any food that does NOT contain by products or grains is best, IMO. The first ingredient should be Chicken or Turkey.. something whole.

Just a little tip...once you find some brands you like, we have found we can get better prices ordering online.  We can also get bigger cans that way, leading to even bigger savings.  We have ordered from petfooddirect.com, but we always wait for a 15 or 20% off offer or free shipping.  I get out the calculator and even with shipping added in, we are paying less per serving than at the store.  (There is one brand I can get cheaper locally, so I always do the math and check.)  I've learned my cats aren't picky, so I've even gotten brave and ordered a couple of brands that I couldn't find locally to try first.  We've liked Wellness, ByNature, Natural Balance, Before Grain and we just received some EVO but haven't tried it yet.

Draco said:

Pretty much, any food that does NOT contain by products or grains is best, IMO. The first ingredient should be Chicken or Turkey.. something whole.

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Great that is what I thought! Thanks There is a TJ's by my mom and dad's place but that is over 3 hours away.

It's a good idea to rotate brands as a rule.  So you don't have to choose between two high quality brands - you can and should feed both! 

People can suggest brands for you and I think that generally there are some quality brands that are dependable for almost everyone.  But - it really does take getting into the label, though, to decide if you want to feed a certain brand or flavor of a brand.  And that will depend entirely on your own thoughts, research, kitties' temperaments, etc. 

As an example here are some of my criteria:

• I avoid any & all soy, corn, wheat, and brewer's rice - will absolutely not buy a food with that in it, period.  I will buy some foods that have rice (brown not brewer's) or oatmeal, though, if the other ingredients look good. 
• I don't buy canned food that has menadione sodium bisulfite complex as the vitamin K source.
• I don't buy flavors where fish is one of the first ingredients (and prefer not to see fish as an ingredient at all but will buy an otherwise quality food if fish is lower on the ingredient list).
• I don't buy foods with animal digest.
• Carbs should be as close to 0 as possible but not greater than 10% - that one is hard to tell by looking at the can so if there's a brand I'm not sure about I'll look online for the carb content (like this chart for example) and buy it next time if it passes muster.  But the rest of this list I can make my decision in the store about whether I'll buy.

That's about it.  Other people have other criteria... no by-products, no fish at all, gravy-style food only, etc. But usually these are decisions that can be made just by reading the label.

parsleysage said:

It's a good idea to rotate brands as a rule.  So you don't have to choose between two high quality brands - you can and should feed both! 

People can suggest brands for you and I think that generally there are some quality brands that are dependable for almost everyone.  But - it really does take getting into the label, though, to decide if you want to feed a certain brand or flavor of a brand.  And that will depend entirely on your own thoughts, research, kitties' temperaments, etc. 

As an example here are some of my criteria:

• I avoid any & all soy, corn, wheat, and brewer's rice - will absolutely not buy a food with that in it, period.  I will buy some foods that have rice (brown not brewer's) or oatmeal, though, if the other ingredients look good. 
• I don't buy canned food that has menadione sodium bisulfite complex as the vitamin K source.
• I don't buy flavors where fish is one of the first ingredients (and prefer not to see fish as an ingredient at all but will buy an otherwise quality food if fish is lower on the ingredient list).
• I don't buy foods with animal digest.
• Carbs should be as close to 0 as possible but not greater than 10% - that one is hard to tell by looking at the can so if there's a brand I'm not sure about I'll look online for the carb content (like this chart for example) and buy it next time if it passes muster.  But the rest of this list I can make my decision in the store about whether I'll buy.

That's about it.  Other people have other criteria... no by-products, no fish at all, gravy-style food only, etc. But usually these are decisions that can be made just by reading the label.

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Saw this ^ in the Soulstic brand so I will not be buying that. I have done allot of reasearch for my dogs' food. so I figured I would follow pretty much the same guidelines. Except for the cat needing certain things of course.

Is the reason you won't feed fish because of the ethoxyquin? Or is there a worse reason for our little kittes? Thanks!

I bought a case of 12 of the Evo Chicken and Turkey cat kitten food. They are the 13.2 oz cans. It says to feed half a can for every 6-8 lbs. He is around 14 lbs last time I weighed him. I am going to weigh him today if he lets me. Anyway his ideal weight should be around 12 the vet said, but I think 10 would be better. So anyways that means I need to feed him a full can once a day correct?

Hobo08 said:

Is the reason you won't feed fish because of the ethoxyquin? Or is there a worse reason for our little kittes? Thanks!

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I don't think fish is the end of the world and some cats will only eat fishy foods, so it's better to feed a quality fishy food that he'll eat than a non-fishy one he won't.  But I don't have the fish addiction problem since mine are kittens, so I'm avoiding fish as a precaution against the high mercury levels, correlation with UTI in males, and the addiction factor.  Here's an article with 8 reasons not to feed fish (if you can help it).

Hobo08 said:

I bought a case of 12 of the Evo Chicken and Turkey cat kitten food. They are the 13.2 oz cans. It says to feed half a can for every 6-8 lbs. He is around 14 lbs last time I weighed him. I am going to weigh him today if he lets me. Anyway his ideal weight should be around 12 the vet said, but I think 10 would be better. So anyways that means I need to feed him a full can once a day correct?

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Wow - 13.2oz per day sounds like a LOT of food!  At ten months old mine are 12 pounds and growing, and they eat a 5.5oz can per day.  How old is your kitten?  You can pretty much free feed kittens, but I'm not sure he'd eat 13 ounces over the course of a day.  I'd go by body condition instead of weight - look for a tucked-in waist (viewed from the top) and palpable ribs.

parsleysage said:

I don't think fish is the end of the world and some cats will only eat fishy foods, so it's better to feed a quality fishy food that he'll eat than a non-fishy one he won't.  But I don't have the fish addiction problem since mine are kittens, so I'm avoiding fish as a precaution against the high mercury levels, correlation with UTI in males, and the addiction factor.  Here's an article with 8 reasons not to feed fish (if you can help it).

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Thank you for the article, I had no idea! So maybe best not to feed a fish based food every day, but say a rotation diet with sometimes fish food wouldn't hurt much would it? I see the Evo I just bought has herring sixth and salmon meal ninth down the list of ingredients. Which should not be to big of a problem because as the list goes down the less of that substance in there correct?

parsleysage said:

Wow - 13.2oz per day sounds like a LOT of food!  At ten months old mine are 12 pounds and growing, and they eat a 5.5oz can per day.  How old is your kitten?  You can pretty much free feed kittens, but I'm not sure he'd eat 13 ounces over the course of a day.  I'd go by body condition instead of weight - look for a tucked-in waist (viewed from the top) and palpable ribs.

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He is three years old and trust me the poor guy is overweight. If I gave him half the can in the morning and half at night it won't look so bad. I hate to starve him, but I also hate to be feeding him to much if that is not what he needs. Maybe I need to do 1/4 can twice a day?