Severe food allergies :(

My 13 year old siamese has confirmed food allergies for several years now. I feed him science diet d/d formula duck and venison. It's literally the only thing that manages his horrible allergies. I've never tried making him homemade food mostly for cost and fear that I would get it wrong... So he seemed really bored of his d/d the other day and I tried a new food with him, Natural Balance limited ingredient diet. It had the same main ingredients as the d/d but was less than half the price. (a 24 pack of d/d wet food is $72!!) He had a pretty bad reaction to it. Ears got bright red and itching like crazy. These are the exact symptoms he had before being diagnosed. So off the vet we went because I was sure he had an infection. She did a cytology and it turned up negative. So they cleaned his ears, gave us a small dose of steroids and off we went. Well its been about 4 days and he's still itching every once in a while, still red and still seem to bother him... I can't really afford to go back and and just don't know what to do. I have a cone i've been thinking of putting on him but he doesn't do well with it at all poor baby. I'm wondering if he may be having some seasonal allergies as well. is anyone kind of in the same boat? Do you have anything you give your kitties to help? TIA

amandakittens said:

 
My 13 year old siamese has confirmed food allergies for several years now. I feed him science diet d/d formula duck and venison. It's literally the only thing that manages his horrible allergies. I've never tried making him homemade food mostly for cost and fear that I would get it wrong...

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Here's some info on home cooked diets: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/264153/home-cooked-cat-food-resources

The easiest way to make a complete balanced  home cooked diet is to use a pre-mix such as U Stew with the cooked meat of your choice. You basically cook the meat with some water until done, let cool, add in the pre-mix, stir to combine, and then portion the food into serving sizes. Keep a day or two worth of food in the fridge and freeze the rest.

Raw diets are also great for cats with food allergies but, yes, if you don't know what you are doing then your cat could develop nutritional deficiencies. You can also use a premix with raw meat for an easy low fuss way of making a raw diet. There are a few different premixes out there for raw meat.

Check the Nutrition forum here on TCS and the Raw and Home Cooked sub forum for more info about feeding cats with food allergies. Do you know exactly what your cat is allergic to? A specific protein? Eggs? Something else?