Good dry food?

I may have started a similar thread to this a while back, but I have some concerns again. I feed my cats a combination of dry and wet food, although they MUCH prefer dry and turn their noses up at most of the canned food I offer them. They both really like the Blue Basics dry duck food, and my IBD cat does well on it. It is the only food (besides the Halo canned) that she has ever consistently kept down. (The medication helps too). By consistently, I mean the vomiting is down to maybe once or twice a month or sometimes not at all. It also does not have any of the ingredients that I try to avoid. I have become concerned about the increasing number of complaints about Blue Buffalo though. I saw today that there are over 1,000 complaints about Blue Buffalo on the Consumer Affairs website. I know I have to take these complaints with a grain of salt because a lot of people probably attribute their pet's illness to the food, when the food may not be the cause at all. It still has me worried.

Should I keep my cats on the Blue Buffalo as long as they keep doing well, or switch foods before a problem occurs? I am conflicted about what to do.

If your advice is to switch, what dry food do you recommend? I need a food that is free of grains, corn, wheat, soy, fish, dairy, turkey, and menadione.

Chicken is okay as long as it is way down the ingredient list. One of my cats seem to dislike the taste of chicken, and will not eat a food that has chicken as the main ingredient, either in wet or dry form. I even offered him a little piece of chicken from my dinner plate one time. He took it and spit it out like I had just fed him a turd or something. They both seem to like duck and lamb. I have never tried venison or beef.

Please, no wet versus dry debate. I would just like your opinions on good dry foods. Thanks!

Please don't feed dry. I just had a cat put down due to blocking and kidneys shutting down. I might never forgive myself but please don't make the same mistake as I did.  Try different flavors and textures. I do have a dry food only kitty which I must transfer over to wet. I was feeding Purina One and canned food, 50/50 but it didn't work.

Believe me, I've tried many flavors and textures of canned--chicken, turkey, salmon, duck, lamb, etc. and flaked, minced, cubed, sliced, shredded, firm pâté, and soft pate. If you name a brand, trust me, I have tried it. The only two canned they have really shown much of an interest in, AND that my problem kitty will not vomit AND that don't have the problem ingredients are Halo Spot's Stew Lamb and Pride Lucky's Lamb, but like the very few other canned foods that they have sort of liked (a few bites) in the past, they have grown tired of them. They only want their dry.

@Tabbysia -- i'd start by doing some research. i'd see what dry cats food(s) you can find that meet your cats needs, make a list of those you find. look into those foods on the list -- find out about complaints, recalls, etc on those brands.

then i'd keep an eye out for (more) complaints, recalls, etc for the blue buffalo dry cat food.

you might want to 'rate' your list of possible dry cat foods you found by your first choice, 2nd, 3rd, etc.

once you've gotten that done, then you're left with making a decision on when and if you want to try gradually switching over to a different dry cat food.

how old are your two cats? i'm asking because my snick will be 15 years old in august, and she's a very picky eater who has IBD. being a senior cat with medical issues (snick also has CKD), i would really hesitate to try switching her over to (in my case, i'd prefer to feed) either a raw or home cooked diet. in fact, i decided over a year ago that i don't want to potentially stress snick further (than her medical issues and being given sub-q's on a regular basis already do) by trying to switch her over to a home cooked diet. so i feel that the cats age, medical issues, and whether s/he is a picky eater have a definite bearing on the decision to change their diet. for IBD cats, i feel it's a pretty big decision to make, whether to try changing their diet. there's a saying...'out of the frying pan and into the fire'. that's a real possibility with IBD cats when changing their diet.

after thoroughly looking into potential new brands of dry cat food, you may very well find that the blue buffalo doesn't have any more complaints/etc than the other brands on your 'possibilities' list.

no matter what you decide, you'll have thoroughly looked into other dry foods and will have based your decision on facts about the potential new dry foods as well as what you feel is best for your two cats.

Thanks for the advice. My cats aren't quite as old as yours. They are five and two.

Tabbysia said:

Thanks for the advice. My cats aren't quite as old as yours. They are five and two.

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I normally don't feed dry but do have some in the house that I bought when I had to go out of town for 2 days and didn't have anyone to give the cats their canned/raw foods. I bought the Nature's Variety Limited Ingredient Diet turkey and the cats all ate it. I have 3 cats and 2 are very finicky which is why I chose the LID. Good luck. I hope you find something that works for all of you. Since they are back on their normal diet, I use the LID dry as treats and I put it in this to make them work for it (when the dog doesn't dump it out and eat all of it behind my back. )

 

Nature's Variety LID turkey looks like a good food, but unfortunately, I don't feed turkey. I assume that my IBD cat has a problem with it because she has vomited all of the turkey based foods I have offered her in the past. The vet said not to feed it. If only Nature's Variety made a dry LID duck food. I know they have a canned version, but neither cat will touch it.

Have you heard of a product called Purina FortiFlora? It is made from animal digest, which is what dry kibbles are coated in to make kitties eat it. It is a little expensive but I plan on getting some and sprinkling it on my cats food, similar to seasoning, since I don't need the actual prebiotic purpose.

Unfortunately so much of this is trial and error, I know that doesn't help much.  I have a kitty that can't tolerate any of the high end grain free dry foods, she gets diarrhea with them no matter how slowly I try to switch.  Just a little bit of it mixed in and she has the runs the next day.  Those foods are the ones that are touted as the best choice but for one of my  kitties they don't work.

I think there are some LTD dry foods that come in novel proteins, you have one with the duck.  There are some with lamb and rabbit as well.  Honestly if what you are feeding works I would continue to use it.  I would try to get the wet foods in other proteins that your kitty tolerates.  I found out the hard way that feeding the same protein over a long period of time can lead to allergies or sensitivities.  My IBD kitty has never tolerated beef so I fed chicken almost exclusively and now she has a chicken allergy.  Luckily it showed up as a yeast infection in his ears rather than GI issues.