Is /any/ dry food okay?

For those who are unfamiliar with my other threads, I have two ~10 week old kittens, a male and female. Right now they're currently eating a mix of commercial raw foods and canned foods. I'm interested in potentially adding a dry food into the mix for them to munch on while I'm at work, or while I'm gone all day. I know that dry food is dangerous, specifically for males, but is it safe if it's not their sole diet? The one I've been considering is Orijen cat & kitten. Is that a good dry food?

Not sure on brands.  I am looking at Natures Variety Instinct Chicken for the same purpose:  something for my hungry kitten to nibble on during the day.  My kitten eats at least 90% of her diet from can food now.
 

Kittens need a lot of food, so I can sympathize with your wanting to leave out the best dry food possible.  Here is a thread that addresses this issue somewhat.

I've read good reviews about Orijen.  Look of course for grain-free, but keep in mind, grain free doesn't mean carbohydrate free.  Avoid fish (read ingredients carefully).  I also kind of think "kitten" dry food is more a marketing ploy than having any real scientific basis:  all life stage food should be fine.

Young Again purports to be carb free.  You might look into that brand--may not be in a lot of stores.

Someone on another forum just told me that mixing raw and kibble can cause salmonella poisoning (?!?!) is this true?!

I don't know anything about mixing dry and raw but only give small amounts of dry not enough to satisfy their hunger.   When my two were kittens I fed a combination of wet and free feeding dry.  They gravitated to the kibble and that's pretty much all they will eat now.  There are a couple of tuna ones that they will pick at but that's about it.  I would even consider one of the plastic toys that you can put kibble or treats in and it will come out one or two at a time as they play with it.

I have always given my pure domestics, exotic cat hybrids (F1 Bengal and F3 Savannah) and pure exotic cat (Leptailurus serval) dry foods. The two best, in my humble opinion and worked well for the cats listed above where: Evo-Turkey and Chicken formula (http://www.evopet.com/products/1441) and Wysong's Epigen 90 (http://www.wysong.net/products/epigen.php). Another good dry food, IMHO, is: Wellness Core (http://www.wellnesspetfood.com/product-details.aspx?pet=cat&pid=23)

While I have never personally mixed raw and dry, I do not see anything wrong with it. As long as, they are mixed and then IMMEDIATELY fed to the cats. Then, once the cats/kittens are done, you remove any leftover food. My pure Leptailurus serval ate whole live prey and always access to Wysong's Epigen 90 dry. He would eat that before/after his twice daily raw feedings. My F3 Savannah always had access to Evo dry food, the Turkey and Chicken formula. Plus, was given whole live prey twice daily.

What I read is that because they digest them at different rates, it causes stomach upset because the raw is stuck in the gut with the kibble.

NullEntropy said:

What I read is that because they digest them at different rates, it causes stomach upset because the raw is stuck in the gut with the kibble.

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If you're still referring to this in relation to salmonella, I don't see how that is possible.  Salmonella is a type of bacteria.  The food either has it or does not.  Mixing foods inside ones body, be it feline or human will not cause Salmonella to generate itself.  To put it in a nutshell, it comes from unsafe/unhygienic food practices, bodily excretions and polluted waters.

Cats carry salmonella inside of their digestive track, and some raw foods do have salmonella in them. Because of the rate at which the cats process the food, it can apparently cause upset. As someone on the other forum said:

"Dry food digests slower than wet or raw food. So it would be possible to have wet and raw in their digestive tract at the same time. Their tracts are designed to get raw food in and out of themselves as fast as possible to lessen the chance of bacterial infection. Dry food slows that process down."

I'm not sure if the "dry food digests slower than wet/raw" thing is actually proven. Or, if there is proof of digestion rates, if anything has ever been proven about it causing problems. TBH, I've never actually heard anybody say that their cat/dog actually got sick from eating raw and kibble together, so there's not really any anecdotal evidence either, although the idea certainly gets around. There's a vet on my dog forum who thinks the idea is frankly ridiculous and feeds her dogs raw mixed with their kibble every day to prove it :tongue2:.

As to whether it causes stomach upset, that depends on the individual kitty. Some have especially tender tummies and anything makes them sick. Others have a tougher constitution.

Anyway, if you need to talk to someone here who fed her cat kibble and raw (not mixed together, but in the same day), Carolina had a hard time converting her cat Hope to raw, and she wouldn't eat canned food. So she was on kibble and raw for quite a long time. Now she's a pure carnivore . But clearly kibble and raw didn't hurt her.

Is price a concern? I'd probably use Ziwipeak as my "kibble" if I only had one or two cats.

Yeah, we had a "go round" on the raw digests faster than kibble in another thread... I don't remember enough to find it. I think the idea is that raw is highly digestible, and kibble not so much. We also know that cats only have one mechanism to digest carbs - pancreatic enzymes - vs. humans, that have amylase in their saliva, which breaks down the carbs as we chew, so they've already started digesting before they hit our stomach.

If I were going to feed kibble and raw, I'd want a kibble that's high protein, with the protein being animal-based, and as little carbs as possible. EVO fit that bill - but what's up with the recalls? Next to that would be Nature's Variety Instinct, I think, though even that is over 10% carbs. The only other options for low-carb kibble are, as Cat Person says, the Wysong Epigen 90 and as Willowy pointed out, the air-dried raw by Ziwipeak.

Of course, if you can afford it, you can leave out the freeze dried raw stuff and just not dehydrate it. Stella & Chewy's is kind of like large soft kibble if you don't rehydrate it.

Oh - as to the Orijen. All of it, as I recall, is very fishy food. High quality ingredients - but it's still about 21% carbs.

I did a cost comparison that included kibble. I didn't evaluate ingredients, but I did include the carb content of all the foods. Anything in green is grain free, and the names of the food are hyperlinks, so you can go look up ingredients: http://catcentric.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Dry-Kibble-Table-1.pdf