Using Orijen as wet food

I've done the math, and it looks like feeding my kitties with Orijen would be half the cost of feeding them the Wellness 12.5 ounce canned food.

They've been on a half wet half dry diet, eating mostly "natural" canned foods and Orijen, so I know they tolerate Orijen well. I would rather them be on an all wet diet but the cost of buying only canned foods can be prohibitive, and I refuse to buy something like Friskies.

A few times, I've mixed Orijen with water and they like it just as much. I haven't made a habit out of it yet but I'm considering using this as their main food source.

My plan is to grind the Orijen food up, separate their doses into food containers after measuring, and then add water right before feeding them to make it into a wet food. Of course it will all be measured so they're getting the appropriate amount of calories and I'd measure the amount of water for each dose too.

The only information I can find about this online, is that it doesn't work because of bacterial concerns and carbs. But, the concern of bacteria seems very minimal by adding the water right before feeding them (and they tend to eat each dose all at once - any leftovers go in the fridge), and while there's a little more carbs then ideal, it's not that much more than the Wellness canned food - probably not enough to justify spending twice as much (although there is more ash).

The main downside, is that it might not be as tasty as other canned foods, but I think it'd still be pretty alright. And I'll rotate with canned foods occasionally to make it less monotonous.

The other upside for me, is that Orijen does place some emphasis on where they source their ingredients, especially the meat. I'm always skeptical of companies who say their meat is "free range" and I haven't looked into Orijens practices with much depth, but if it's any better then how other canned food companies source their meat, that is a big bonus to me. Because I feel really bad using meat that comes from factory farms (and as much as I'd love to feed them truly humanely sourced raw meats, I am just trying to afford that for myself).

Anyway, this would all be pretty easy since I measure out their dry food in advance anyway.

If you can think of any significant downsides to this compared to canned foods like Wellness, please feel free to share - just looking for second opinions before I get started.

I still feel your cats would not get proper hydration, and even mid quality canned is healthier than a dry diet(watered down or not)!

catimakittycat said:

 
A few times, I've mixed Orijen with water and they like it just as much. I haven't made a habit out of it yet but I'm considering using this as their main food source.

My plan is to grind the Orijen food up, separate their doses into food containers after measuring, and then add water right before feeding them to make it into a wet food. Of course it will all be measured so they're getting the appropriate amount of calories and I'd measure the amount of water for each dose too.

The only information I can find about this online, is that it doesn't work because of bacterial concerns and carbs. But, the concern of bacteria seems very minimal by adding the water right before feeding them (and they tend to eat each dose all at once - any leftovers go in the fridge),

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I wouldn't mix any dry food with water unless the cat gets it up right away and any leftovers are immediately thrown away, not placed in the fridge for a later meal.

Have you tried freeze dried or dehydrated raw? Those are meant to be rehydrated in water before serving, unlke dry foods which are to be fed as is. Anything left in the bowl needs to be thrown out as well since it's raw food.

Have you shopped around for prices on Wellness? Buying a case saves money. Chain pet stores don't usually order cases for customers but independent pet stores do and often have customer loyalty programs. Buying in bulk on sale helps too. Wellness used to give out coupons by request but I don't know if they do any more.

Maybe a happy compromise is feeding canned with some dry to keep costs down.

I really wish Orijen would make wet food.  They basically have the perfect ingredients delivered daily.  But it would be really expensive, probably the most expensive wet food if it did happen.  Making dry only keeps the costs down and makes it affordable.

Anyways, I would just straight up buy wet food.  The cat's still won't get proper hydration if you mix water into the dry food anyway.  Wet foods I would recommend are Nutro Natural Choice, Wellness, and Nature's Variety.  Like LTS3 was saying, there's also dehydrated raw that you can add water to.  I feed Honest Kitchen, it's a really great food that is human grade: http://www.thehonestkitchen.com/   You can get sample packets of their Grace (Turkey) and Prowl (Chicken) for your cat to try out first.  I also wouldn't recommended feeding just Honest Kitchen because some cat's can get sick of it.  I feed it in a daily rotation with canned food.