Vegetables and herbs in Terra Faelis cat food (experiences with IBD/CRF cats?)

samus

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I was planning on trying out Terra Faelis for my cat, but they seem to put a random selection of herbs and vegetables in their food. For example, turkey has celery, coconut meal, and calendula (kitten) or zucchini, catnip, bee pollen? and chamomile (adult). Chicken has squash, zucchini, water cress, rosehips, catnip, and whey.

But on the plus side, they're single animal protein (let's ignore the bee pollen and whey I guess) and have pretty low phosphorous content, so I thought they would be suitable for my cat with CRF and IBD. Most of the other single protein foods I can find (in Germany) have a pretty high phosphorous content, and most of the low phosphorous foods have animal byproduct from multiple animals.

Anyone have experience with feeding Terra Faelis to cats with allergies or IBD or CRF? Do the side ingredients irritate allergies/digestive issues? Is whey even a good source of protein for cats (is it just the lactose that needs to be avoided)?

As a side note, I tried making one batch of food but my cat hates it and it's really depressing to throw out a couple pounds of meat so I'm a little discouraged from trying again. Maybe when I can afford a food processor to make it a nice pate texture. But until then I have to deal with commercial food with weird random crap thrown in.
 
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Columbine

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I can't offer much help, but I can tell you it's the lactose in milk that cats can't digest - whey should be fine, as whey protein powder is sold as being suitable for lactose intolerance sufferers.

I agree the veg/herb selections are a bit random though. I don't know what that's all about. That aside, they are a pretty good food in general - I just don't have IBD/CRF cats so I can't help on that score. Hopefully someone else can help you there.
 

momto3cats

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Actually if it's just "whey" as an ingredient, and not "whey protein", I was told that means a very high lactose content - that lactose intolerant humans should avoid anything that lists whey anywhere except the bottom of the ingredient list.

The vegetables and herbs do seem very random. Personally, I am always wary of foods that include medicinal herbs like calendula or chamomile - I don't think anyone has studied the effect of giving them daily, in every meal, to a cat. 
 

Columbine

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Good point about whey vs whey protein. I just checked, and it is whey that is listed. I have fed Terra Faelis wet food though, and the whey is right at the bottom of the ingredients list - between eggshell powder at 0.4% and seaweed at 0.3%. The foods are all 86.5-88% meat, so the quantity of the veggies, herbs etc is very low. My non IBD/CKD cat has no problems digesting them, though I appreciate that isn't much help if choosing for a sick cat.

I think the point of bee pollen is that it's reputed to boost the immune system. That's the only reason I can think of for its inclusion anyway.
 
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samus

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Bee pollen is kind of a scam. It's really allergenic. Basically, it's like shaking a bouquet of flowers over your food, if you're allergic to any of them it'll cause problems. The way bee pollen is harvested is they put a screen the foragers have to squeeze past to get into the hive, knocking the pollen off their legs, so it's not processed by the bees at all. The form of bee pollen that helps allergies and etc is the pollen that makes its way into honey (or if you're lucky enough to know a beekeeper, that is in beebread) and has been processed by the bees' enzymes. So I'm really not sure what it's doing in cat food besides convincing the purchaser that it's worth the higher price because it has something healthy (to humans! supposedly!) in it.

Shopping for cat food is so frustrating!!! Which do you prefer, food with crap in it that was added because it's cheap and not fit to feed to humans, or food with crap in it that was added for warm fuzzy feeling marketing hype?
 

Columbine

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:sigh: Cat food ingredients drive me mad too sometimes. It shouldn't be so difficult to find a high quality food without random stuff added. For me, I'd go for a food that was grain free over one that wasn't, but I'd equally resent paying an inflated price for randomness. On the other hand, prescription diets are crazily expensive when you consider the rubbish that goes into them. It comes down to which diet you feel happiest feeding.

Just a thought - a stick blender isn't expensive, and should do a reasonable job of breaking down homemade cat food - it'll just take a bit longer. Might be worth trying.
 
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samus

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I actually used a stick blender when I made my cat food. She's been getting more used to the texture, but it took forever to grind everything without the blender overheating and then there were all the fibrous tendony things to pick out of the blade... I'm still not positive I got all of them out. (mmmmm meat smoothies) And it was still coarser than the canned stuff.
 

Columbine

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Yeah, I can imagine a whole batch could take a while to blend. Just thought it'd be cheaper than a full size blender. Meat smoothies sound disgusting :nausea:

Great that she's getting more accepting of the homemade food :clap:
 
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