How long to let kitten get accustomed to new food?

calieth

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After a few awkward months, vet help, and trial and error, it seems both if my new kittens are intolerant to chicken. Hopefully that is all but still experimenting.

After figuring that out, I put them on a limited ingredient Salmon and Pea. They did better in the litter box. Good news. But first ingredient is peas and only 30% protein and low fat. Older cats disliked it and their coats got dull. But it was only for transition anyway.

So slowly moved to Orjen 6 Fish dry mainly and tried some diiferent wet foods and settled on Performatrin Beef wet food once a day. One kitten kept having soft stools. They have been on Orjen for 3-4 weeks now, and beef wet for 1 week. Still noticing soft stools from 1 kitten but not other.

So how long is a fair trial of a particular food? When should I notice improvement?
If they were ok on dry and I gave new wet food for a week, how long should I give them to get used to it? (Wet is maybe 20% of their diet). 1 week? 2?

And after 3-4 weeks on Orjen should I assume they've adjusted? And so if I'm not happy then consider switching?

Again, my boy's stool is not awful but ranges from toothpaste to well... Sloppy toothpaste. :)

Thanks for advice on how long a fair trial of food is and when to expect results. :)
 

tammyp

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Hi Calieth, I've just been through food trials with my kitten - we started in July, after eliminating every other possibility and doing a couple very expensive but very sensitive PCR tests.  She is not so good with chicken either, although it depends on what form, eg canned and raw not so good, but home cooked (roasted or boiled) is fine.  I also know that a cat can be intolerant to different parts - so meat no, but organs yes!  Anyway, it's a complicated thing, so I commiserate!

The vet advice we had for food trials was: 4-6 weeks for the first protein.  'Results' any time in that period; could be quick, could be longer if the system needs time to heal.  Then each new added protein/organ should have 2-3 weeks, results around 2 weeks, if not sooner.

For our first protein, we had to choose something that was novel, something that was NOT known to be an allergen (so we had to be completely fish free, as fish is a common allergen for cats), and something that she would actually eat (she was starting to get fussy i think because she was so sick).  We went with raw rabbit.  In addition, our vet wanted one meal of canned food so she was getting some of the other nutrients that meat alone would not provide (she'd been sick for a couple months, but normally it is safe to be unbalance for around 6-8weeks).  The canned had to be a single protein, not contain known allergens (like grains, or veges or carageenan or soy etc).  We went with Artemis turkey, as we suspected chicken and Ava had a distinct dislike for it.

We also chose to go with raw because this is the only way we could test each protein, without the interference of other ingredients.  We don't have as much choice in cat food here in Australia, and it is not enforced to list all ingredients.  Long story short, we switched to a completely different canned food, the best we could find ingredient wise (not cost wise or prestige wise or marketing wise), as our vet said a lot of commercial foods have disacharides in them to bind stuff together and this is again a bad thing for cat tummies.

But the good news is, we have enough proteins/organs/bones for a balanced Frankenprey diet, and Ava is doing really well.  

Good luck!
 
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calieth

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Thanks! And sorry this ended up in the raw food forum. I'm brand new here and the mobile site is tricky.
 
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