Best brand of egg yolk lecithin?

I'm going to order some egg yolk lecithin for hairball control. What brand do you like? How much do you give? Do you give it with the meal?

Should I use Vet's Best hairball supplement in addition to EYL? It has slippery elm bark and psyllium husk.
Thanks for any advice .

There are only two available, both are 600mg.

Nature's Plus seems less refined. It's sticky, and hard to get out of the capsule. It also has less choline in it.

Swanson has more choline - but it also has rice flour, which is why it's dry and easy to sprinkle on the food.

I use the Swanson now - I figure the little bit of rice flour isn't a big issue, and it costs less.

Probably a dumb question, but how do these supps compare with the lecithin and choline in raw egg yolk? Is there any difference in bioavailability or anything? I'm interested in the EYL since my cats aren't fond of egg yolks, hairball season is here, and Gadget is getting fatter despite my severely dropping the fat in their food!

LDG said:

There are only two available, both are 600mg.

Nature's Plus seems less refined. It's sticky, and hard to get out of the capsule. It also has less choline in it.

Swanson has more choline - but it also has rice flour, which is why it's dry and easy to sprinkle on the food.

I use the Swanson now - I figure the little bit of rice flour isn't a big issue, and it costs less.

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Thank you! How much do you give them? Do they get it with their meals?

peaches08 said:

Probably a dumb question, but how do these supps compare with the lecithin and choline in raw egg yolk? Is there any difference in bioavailability or anything? I'm interested in the EYL since my cats aren't fond of egg yolks, hairball season is here, and Gadget is getting fatter despite my severely dropping the fat in their food!

Click to expand...

I'm going to have to get back to you on this, the data is on my laptop, and I'm on my phone. The egg yolk has a LOT more choline, but the lecithin is.. concentrated lecithin. So the yolk would help more with motility (given the acetylcholine), but the lecithin is what emulsifies the fat that binds the hairball. Seems to me the lecithin is the better option for existing hairballs, and for kitties that don't like yolk.

The dose. I've found the amount to be really cat dependent. The info Carolina found when she discovered the recommendation was 1/2 a capsule 2x a week. I found my hairball tossers needed 1/2 a cap every day before they stopped bringing up hairballs. Because it really helped "even out" the consistency of their stools, I decided to give all of them a 1/2 cap once a day. I just sprinkle it on their food, and even my yolk haters eat it without a problem.

Mine all also get at least one yolk a week. But it's 1/4 yolk at a time, in the ground meals I feed. That's the max the yolk haters will eat before rejecting the food.

...but then we hit shedding season. I just bumped it as necessary cat by cat. I added 1/2 a cap to the PM meal as well as the am meal. That worked for one. So I bumped the three with a remaining issue to 2/3 of a cap am and 1/2 cap pm; finally settled on 2/3 am and pm.

I think Laz had a hairball he managed to pass; Tuxie was off his food the past two days and just threw up a rather large one this morning. I'm bumping him to a full capsule 2x a day now.

Flowerbelle threw up her meal after eating two days ago, and again this morning. She was 1/2 a cap twice a day. I'm temporarily bumping her to a full cap 2x a day, probably for a week, and then I'll take her down to 2/3 of a cap 2x.a day.

Flowerbelle is my smallest, at around 7 pounds. Tuxie, Laz, and Sheldon are all around 11 to 11.5 pounds.

Of course it's my non-hairball kitties that like egg yolk. I think I'd want to give 1/2 an egg yolk daily with the am meal and 1/2 cap egg yolk lecithin at night, or at least experiment with egg yolk vs lecithin combos. But the kitties with hairballs are kitties that really don't like yolk.