Blue Buffalo

It's been a while since I've fed Blue. I gave some this weekend and my kitty, who isn't particularly fussy, refused, even when mixed in with other food she likes. I've did a little internet searching and found there are scattered reports of kitties who used to like it now refusing. Anyone here have similar experiences? My kitty ate Blue Buffalo no problem one year ago, and now that I think of it, she ate an older can no problem a couple of weeks ago. I heard rumors they reformulated.

Just for anecdotal purposes, I guess, I used to feed Casper Blue Buffalo for the longest time and he seemed to tire of it sometime last year, right before we got our 2nd cat.

He just refused to eat it anymore.  Which is unlike him to completely not eat something.  Since the timing was right as we adopted Cocoa and she was used to eating other foods and we didn't want to mess with her routine, being new and all, we switched him to what she was eating, with little trouble.

Maybe it was the food or maybe it was him.  Not sure but we never tried it again.  I don't remember which one it was, one of the wet varieties.

I do, however, still use one of the kibble grain free mixed in with another brand and no problem with that.  I feed both wet and dry.

Someone on TCS had their kitty develop kidney problems from Blue, just this year. Her vet said that of the 13 cases of renal failure she'd seen recently, they were all from people feeding Blue Buffalo. It appears it may be a sourcing problem. I found this when searching: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/blue_buffalo.html

The first one is a Maine Coon that died of renal failure. Autopsy found melamine build-up in the kidneys. This is the same thing that caused the 2007-2008 recalls and thousands of dead cats and dogs. Apparently there was a recall (for this reason) of BB wilderness chicken for dogs in 2010.

There's been no recalls currently that I'm aware of. But there are many incidents of animals refusing the food or apparently getting sick from the food.

Thank you. I did pack up most of the Blue that I've purchased recently, the one that she refused, for return. I do have some Blue Wilderness purchased recently that I wasn't thinking of returning, but now I think I will. Not taking chances with my kitty, and I am glad she refused. (She did eat some, though, and I hope she's okay.)

I've fed my kitten bb for a little over 2 months and at first she loooved it but now seems to be getting bored of it. She still eats it and everything but she doesn't go crazy like she used to.

Well, I got home and Poppy seems OK. I put extra water in her dinner. Fortunately I've been working on rotating food, so I have plenty of different brands on hand. I also happen to have on hand some aloe vera for constipation. Doesn't aloe vera juice also have cleansing properties? Would it be beneficial for me to give her a dose? Or would that make things worse? (Could it interact with anything?)

Is Poppy eating other foods without problem? If she doesn't act sick in any way, I don't know if the George's would do anything or not. :dk: I know it's soothing to the GI system, so certainly can't hurt. But I don't think it has any healing properties as re: the kidneys or liver. For toxicity issues, that would be milk thistle. But Dr. Hofve cautions against using it "just in case:" http://www.littlebigcat.com/health/milk-thistle-a-wonder-herb/

Poppy is eating without a problem. She rejected a mix of wet food that included half Blue this morning. I have been feeding her some Blue over the past week and have been having problems with it. At first I thought it was the flavor--sometimes she doesn't like turkey, but by this morning I had recognized it as specific to Blue. So when she didn't eat half her breakfast, I made her a half portion of another brand, which she immediately wolfed down. Dinner without Blue today was again no problem.

The only weird thing I've noticed is that she urinated towards the front of her litter box twice, some of it spilling outside. I have had this problem checked out before and the vet says it is not connected to UTI. She has always urinated outside the box because she stands up before the urine stream ends, but she normally only does it towards the back of the box. Her litter box  is in a Rubbermaid because of that. Well anyway, a couple months ago she started occasionally missing at the front of the box. Her urine tested perfect, and there have been no other signs of UTI. But I did notice that when she did it the first time, a GI infection surfaced a week later. The second time she did it, she was constipated. She did it again about 2 weeks ago, but I found nothing wrong. Now she's doing it again. So maybe she does it when there's gastric upset? Not enough evidence to tell yet.

Oh, her poop was a little diarrhetic this afternoon, but I think that might be because I had to make up the half portion of food to replace the rejected Blue this morning. I went a little heavy since I didn't know how much she took in before she rejected. Unfortunately diarrhea seems to be a common symptom with this tainted Blue food, so I'm probably just going to have to wait it out.

Oh, I'm sorry for Poppy. :heart2:

I do give the kitties George's when their tummies seem upset. In this instance... I'm not sure if it would help, or not. Chum was taking it when he had diarrhea though, it was part of the probiotic mix, and it didn't make his diarrhea worse.

I'm so shocked and dismayed to read this thread! I followed the link to Consumer Affairs and my heart broke reading some of the stories. Because of my one cat's constipation problems, I was planning on buying her a bag of the Wilderness BB in a few days when we have to get cat food. Thank god this info was here and I am definitely not going to buy it. Like many others, I thought it was a great food because of the lack of by-products. We used to feed it to our dogs and cats, but honestly, it just got too expensive to keep it up. Maybe that was a blessing in disguise.
I hope Poppy feels better soon.

Thanks for the well wishes, everyone. Since Poppy doesn't seem ill, she'll probably be just fine, maybe have to work the diarrhea out of her system. I'm just concerned that maybe the Blue did damage that can't be seen, like excessive wear on the kidneys. Happybird, I am glad that you found this thread before feeding your kitty Blue. I just sort of posted on a whim, thinking that the problem had to do with cats not liking it. Petsmart has a sale on Blue Wilderness, and now I know why! Looks like consumers are paying attention to their furbabies who are saying "No! That stuff is awful!"

Happybird, how is your kitty doing with constipation? I vaguely remember seeing a post about your kitty's constipation a while back. I have learned much since then and if you'd care to explain more, I'll be glad to help if I can.

By the way, does this site have one area for recalls and other suspected problems with food? Would be easy to go to one place every once in a while. Or should we just go to something like truthaboutpetfood.com?

There is a section for product reviews- I found it today while looking around, but there are not a whole lot of reviews on it. Didn't see anything specifically about recalls, though. I've been Googling stuff about Blue Buffalo and their response is more or less 'it's our competitors spreading false claims to damage us.' Barf. It's stomach turning to see such apathy and, well, BS coming from them. I sent an email to the company demanding a recall, but I don't expect much in the way of a response.
Thanks for asking about my Bob. That Miralax is a miracle drug, lol! She is doing so much better with it, she is pooping a bit every day now. Yay! I've had to give it to her three times- when I can see her poop getting too firm and that weird misshapen quality, I slip a little into her wet food.
I'd love to do an all wet food diet, but she really likes crunchy food. The plan was to get her some grain free and let her have a small amount everyday. I've been feeing her tuna in oil, about half a can a day, along with canned cat food. I've seen some negative info about tuna on the site, so I've scaled the tuna back to treat status, about every three days. The oil really helps with her hairballs and she absolutely adores it. Now I need to chose a grain free dry food for her. I think Wellness has a good brand? It's going to be a long trip to the pet store, what with all the bag reading we'll be doing! I've also been reading about the egg yolk lecithin and am going to check the health food store for it. This site is great! I'm so glad I found it

happybird said:

There is a section for product reviews- I found it today while looking around, but there are not a whole lot of reviews on it. Didn't see anything specifically about recalls, though. I've been Googling stuff about Blue Buffalo and their response is more or less 'it's our competitors spreading false claims to damage us' It's stomach turning to see such apathy and, well, BS coming from them. I sent an email to the company demanding a recall, but I don't expect much in the way of a response.
Thanks for asking about my Bob. That Miralax is a miracle drug, lol! She is doing so much better with it, she is pooping a bit every day now. Yay! I've had to give it to her three times- when I can see her poop getting too firm and that weird misshapen quality, I slip a little into her wet food. I'd love to do an all wet food diet, but she really likes crunchy food. The plan was to get her some grain free and feed her a very small amount everyday. I feed her tuna in oil, about half a can a day, along with canned cat food. I've seen some negative info about tuna on the site, so I've scaled the tuna back to treat status, about every three days. The oil really helps with her hairballs and she absolutely adores it. Now I need to chose a grain free dry food for her. I think Wellness has a good brand? It's going to be a long trip to the pet store, what with all the bag reading we'll be doing! I've also been reading about the egg yolk lecithin and am going to check the health food store for it. This site is great! I'm so glad I found it

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happybird,

So good to Bob is doing better. I see a few things you could do that might improve things further. Maybe she can be off the Miralax!

I would try to get her off dry food completely. Constipation requires adequate hydration, so that the bowel can draw water into the stool and make it nice and soft. Soft stool means it's easy to pass. Wet food would also lessen chances of a ton of other issues like IBD and UTI to name a few. Since she's already on partial wet, try to slowly lessen the amount until there's nothing. The MIralax is a bit dehydrating, so she'll do better with more water on that front, too.

Yes, oil helps with hairballs.  I don't know how much tuna you're feeding each time, but I've heard that you should limit fish flavored cat food meals to only once a week or less. An alternative would be feeding fish oil or krill oil. It should be cold pressed. Egg yolk lecithin has helped many on this site. I don't think you can find it at the health food store/vitamin store. I live in a big city and I wasn't able to find it. Most people on this site order off the internet, Amazon or Swanson. I didn't have as much luck with it, though, so I'm now giving digestive enzymes. Protease is the key enzyme for hairballs. If you go this route, get enzymes made for cats, as it will have more protease in it. Although hairball remedies can help, they also block nutrient absorption, so I'm not a big fan of them. I don't use them unless I know Poppy's working on a getting a big hairball out.

In general, yes, Wellness is a good brand of food, but as I said before, try to go 100% wet.

I've also heard that aloe vera juice can improve regularity, much like the drug cisapride (improve gut motility). But you should ask the vet before giving, and it doesn't sound like you need it anyway.

Make changes one by one so that you'll know for sure what changed and what effect it produced. Keep a journal of your cat's bowel movements, when they happened, about how much, how soft it was. Also write down meds (Miralax) given and what you fed. That way you can go back and analyze what happened when kitty doesn't poop.

Thank you for the help. I really appreciate it!

LDG said:

Someone on TCS had their kitty develop kidney problems from Blue, just this year. Her vet said that of the 13 cases of renal failure she'd seen recently, they were all from people feeding Blue Buffalo. It appears it may be a sourcing problem. I found this when searching: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/blue_buffalo.html

The first one is a Maine Coon that died of renal failure. Autopsy found melamine build-up in the kidneys.

This is the same thing that caused the 2007-2008 recalls and thousands of dead cats and dogs. Apparently there was a recall (for this reason) of BB wilderness chicken for dogs in 2010.

There's been no recalls currently that I'm aware of. But there are many incidents of animals refusing the food or apparently getting sick from the food.

Click to expand...

I just bought this food for the very first time this week in an attempt to find a good quality grain free dry to leave out as a snack. I haven't opened the bag at all, and after reading that link I kind of don't want to!! I don't want to take chances, she's my baby.. should I just return the food and get something else?? I was under the impression that Blue was a very high quality and reputable brand? I'm new to grain free feeding so this is all very confusing to me 

My Mattie has been eating BB Healthy Living Life Source Bits. I am going to switch foods. I have had Natures Variety Instincts recommended to me. But I would like to try and switch her to all wet. I am open to suggestions for a good quality wet food.

Blue Buffalo was a very good quality food. Lately they've been having problems with pets rejecting the food, though. My kitty used to eat it about a year ago and had no issues with it. She gained weight and I used only 1 brand food to help her lose it--using only 1 brand made calorie count consistent. She doesn't need to lose weight anymore, or at least not much, so I started rotating food again. But this time she rejected Blue.

My cat eats it okay. It is just hearing these things about the BB that has me concerned and wanting to switch Mattie to another food.