Which is better in a pinch, canned chicken or canned tuna?

Let's say disaster strikes and you've completely run out of food for the cats and have to feed them SOMETHING. You have a can of chicken and a can of tuna in your pantry. Which would you feed your cats in a pinch until you can replenish your cat food supply? I'm talking no more than 1-2 meals on one day.

How about mixing the two? The other question would be what is in the chicken? i dont buy canned chicken. 

For me, it would depend on sodium content. Both are going to be too high, so I would pick the lower sodium one. However, before I fed canned chicken or tuna, I would feed plain meat either raw or cooked if I had any in my fridge or freezer.

The canned chicken I'm talking about I get at Costco in an 8 can bulk pack. I make chicken salad out of it. :-)

I don't see why mixing them together would create a problem, other than a picky kitty not liking it. I just meant if I had nothing else to feed them, hadn't had a chance to go to the store, what would be the best option.

As far as pulling meat out of the freezer, most of what I have is already seasoned or made in a meal. I don't happen to freeze a lot of plain meat at a time (if I don't make something with it when I get it home from the store, I forget about it and 8 months later pull it out of the freezer thinking, "what is THIS?")

This may change as I am seriously considering/researching switching to a raw food diet. :-)

vball91 said:

For me, it would depend on sodium content. Both are going to be too high, so I would pick the lower sodium one. However, before I fed canned chicken or tuna, I would feed plain meat either raw or cooked if I had any in my fridge or freezer.

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This is worth repeating if you're going to look at making your own raw @8whiskers.  Unfortunately some companies inject sodium into meats (Butterball, etc.) to increase water content which increases weight.  You have to learn to read labels of the meat you buy before venturing into raw since quite a few companies do this.

How come no one ever talks about canned Alaskan red or pink salmon? I've seen it on sale and it's not that expensive. 

GoHolistic said:

How come no one ever talks about canned Alaskan red or pink salmon? I've seen it on sale and it's not that expensive.  :dk:

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I used to feed that, canned crab meat or lobster to Jamie as an occasional treat (his birthday or Christmas), without the brine/water. He liked all of them, but not as much as water-packed tuna.

GoHolistic said:

 
How come no one ever talks about canned Alaskan red or pink salmon? I've seen it on sale and it's not that expensive. 

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I never mentioned it because I'm not a fish eater and I didn't even know this existed!! Maybe I'll grab a couple of cans to keep on hand in case of a zombie apocalypse or some other type of emergency.... ;-)

I'd say the tuna if it's only a couple of meals.

I always keep a couple of cans of salt-free tuna and salmon on hand for those humans in the house  who can't cook (not naming names) and for the one cat that loves it. It can be a little bit more expensive but reducing salt is necessary in our house. Have never bought canned chicken. Even though the fish is salt-free, I still rinse, rinse, rinse.

GoHolistic said:

 
How come no one ever talks about canned Alaskan red or pink salmon? I've seen it on sale and it's not that expensive. 

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Most canned salmon these days comes from fish farming and is loaded with antibiotics (loads of tetracycline added to the fish feed) and all sorts of other crap dumped into the pens, because you can't separate to try to stop the spread of a disease in a huge salt water pond. I try to buy only wild salmon, even though the salmon stocks are being depleted.

We almost always have canned tuna. So they would eat that in a pinch probably but I make sure we are never not stocked on canned cat food so that would be like

a last resort if I ran out of canned food.

I may be silly but if your cats like cat canned food then why not just keep a few of those for an emergency, why would you need to use human food?

It's an interesting question, we buy tuna and chicken from Costco for salads as well, plus, we frequently get real close to running out of  'wet' food for the cats (probably 40+ cans every two weeks between all 3 and they are still pretty thin but muscled (Even dividing one can between 3 cats we do tend to throw a lot away as they won't eat anything that isn't fresh out of the can)

 The other 'issue' there isn't just one person feeding them, all 4 of us will feed a 'hungry kitty' at varying times of day, depends who is home at the time so running out of food can be an issue

For frequent feeding I'd try to avoid too much tuna, because of the mercury issue. But for just in a pinch, I'd say they're about equal. Whichever one had lower sodium.

cocheezie said:

 
Most canned salmon these days comes from fish farming and is loaded with antibiotics (loads of tetracycline added to the fish feed) and all sorts of other crap dumped into the pens, because you can't separate to try to stop the spread of a disease in a huge salt water pond. I try to buy only wild salmon, even though the salmon stocks are being depleted.

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Most of the cans of salmon in my grocery store say "Wild Alaskan" on them.  It is difficult to find canned salmon without added salt, however. 

It is very important to add certain supplements to the cooked meat, like a digestible calcium and, most importantly, taurine. Taurine is no longer present in cooked meat. You have to supplement it. If you don't, your cat will eventually go blind.

I just checked a can of pink salmon I had on hand.  It's by Natural Sea and is advertised as salmon from the Gulf of Alaska.  However, when I read down in the fine print it says it comes from a fishery that has been independently certified to the MSC's standard for a well managed and sustainable fishery but has not been evaluated by the FDA.

Question here is... is a fishery or a fish farm the same and what's the difference"

1/4 of a cup has 270 mg of sodium and it states it contains bones.

It is NON GMO.

Debbie

Apparently, a fishery could be either a fish farm, where they raise fish in large tanks, or a place where fishermen go out to sea to fish.

The fish in fish tanks are not the best to eat for anyone, because of the stuff they are fed. Just Google Fish Farms and feeding.

270 mg of sodium is a LOT! I would not feed that to me or my cat.  

The fish may be non-GMO, but if they are farmed, chances are that they are fed GMO grains. Mainly soy.

Stephanie