Switching Kitten food.

Hello all, adopting my first cat (a 4 month old male) next week who is currently being fed Purina One dry kitten formula. I want to switch him over to a quality wet food like Wellness, but don't know how switching a kittens food works. I read articles about a seven day transition, but also ones about exposing kittens to different types of food. Do I just feed him the new food right off the bat or use the transition method?

At four months, he'll need plenty of food still.  Are you planning on feeding him several meals each day?  Many people will kittens this age feed both canned and still leave out some kibble overnight in case they get hungry, since they are still growing. 

As to your question, I would probably mix some of his old food with the canned for a little while.  Normally you don't need to do a transition with wet food, but for a kitten it's probably different (although I have no experience in this....I will admit I'm guessing here )  He may take to the canned food right away, or he may not know what to do with it . 

Maybe this thread will help you out a bit:  http://www.thecatsite.com/t/282970/6-month-old-kitten-transitioning-to-timed-wet

mrsgreenjeens said:

 
At four months, he'll need plenty of food still.  Are you planning on feeding him several meals each day?  Many people will kittens this age feed both canned and still leave out some kibble overnight in case they get hungry, since they are still growing. 

As to your question, I would probably mix some of his old food with the canned for a little while.  Normally you don't need to do a transition with wet food, but for a kitten it's probably different (although I have no experience in this....I will admit I'm guessing here

)  He may take to the canned food right away, or he may not know what to do with it

. 

Maybe this thread will help you out a bit:  http://www.thecatsite.com/t/282970/6-month-old-kitten-transitioning-to-timed-wet

Click to expand...

What mrsgreenjeens describes is pretty much what we did when we adopted our ten-month-old cats. We fed them a combination of canned and dry foods for about a month, gradually cutting down on the dry food until it was first just a snack for overnight, then just a garnish on their canned food. They had a pretty strong preference for dry foods and were very underfed when we brought them home so keeping them eating well was a priority. They'd been getting a combination of dry food and wet Friskies at the shelter but we took them off the Friskies fairly quickly... after they got over their (seemingly obligatory!) shelter respiratory infections. Our cats, by the way, still love the Wellness Core kitten food. (I still get it for them as a treat even though they're now about two and a half!)

I'd definitely recommend several meals a day! We still feed our cats about five meals a day, which works well for them and us because I work at home.

Enjoy your kitten! And welcome to the Cat Site!

I agree with everyone else about feeding both wet and dry. I have 4 6 month old kittens and they eat raw/wet in the AM kibble as a snack, wet in the PM and kibble for a snack overnight. You could start adding in Wellness wet food I feed the Wellness Core Kitten and/or mix in Wellness kibble with their current kibble. 

It is good to expose a kitten to different types of food That way the kitten knows what is food and will more readily accept a food later in life should there be a need, such as  canned food for diabetes or easy to carry and store dry food in emergency evacuation situations. An adult dry food addict can be really stubborn about not eating canned food. Neither of my cats will touch anything resembling hard kibble ( , lol) but they will eat freeze dried raw and treats and canned.

Any food transition should be done slowly over the course of a couple of days. Or longer if the cat is slow to accept the new food.