NV Ultimate Protein

Hi all,

My gang only gets kibble as a night-time snack right before bed (they eat canned food & freeze-dried Primal for their actual meals).   I feel bad doing away with their kibble snack because they enjoy it so much - and they remind me every night when it's time for their snack, so they would definitely be upset if it stopped coming 

I've been using Orijen for their kibble snack, but the last time I was at Petco, they had little $5 trial size bags of NV Ultimate Protein, so I picked one up and they all LOVED it!

How do you guys feel the NV Ultimate Protein stacks up against the Orijen?  I have read the ingredient list and the only thing that concerns me about the Ultimate Protein is tapioca being the second ingredient after Chicken........

I have no idea how to calculate carbs - which one is lower in carbs?  I have one piggy cat who is ever so slightly overweight, and Id' prefer him to be eating a kibble snack that is relatively lower in carbs.   The kibble is definitely a small part of their diet, but still........   Thanks!

jolie0216 said:

 
Hi all,

My gang only gets kibble as a night-time snack right before bed (they eat canned food & freeze-dried Primal for their actual meals).   I feel bad doing away with their kibble snack because they enjoy it so much - and they remind me every night when it's time for their snack, so they would definitely be upset if it stopped coming 

I've been using Orijen for their kibble snack, but the last time I was at Petco, they had little $5 trial size bags of NV Ultimate Protein, so I picked one up and they all LOVED it!

How do you guys feel the NV Ultimate Protein stacks up against the Orijen?  I have read the ingredient list and the only thing that concerns me about the Ultimate Protein is tapioca being the second ingredient after Chicken........

I have no idea how to calculate carbs - which one is lower in carbs?  I have one piggy cat who is ever so slightly overweight, and Id' prefer him to be eating a kibble snack that is relatively lower in carbs.   The kibble is definitely a small part of their diet, but still........   Thanks!

Click to expand...

The Orijen is 20% carbs and I know the Natures Variety Instinct Chicken Meal is 13.9% carbs so  the Ultimate Protein Chicken is probably close to that . 

Have you thought about Pure Bites as a snack instead of kibble?

Oh yes, I am a huge advocate for PureBites      I have a treat puzzle box and a treat "wheel" - where they have to uncover the holes to find the treats - and I put their PureBites in there.    They LOVE them!    But I think they are very aware that the PureBites and their kibble are two separate entities, and my piggy cat will howl in the kitchen until I dispense the kibble at bed time - they only get ~10 pieces of kibble apiece but they really cling to that routine!

I have Orijen at 17% and NVI UP at 15% (using 8% ash for both), practically they're about the same on carbs.

I've fed both and I think they're both in the tier of "best dry food you can give a cat." We moved away from Orijen to NVI because one of our kittens has had some allergy issues that we think might be related to fish.

I wouldn't worry about Tapioca being the 2nd ingredient in the traditional sense of how we look at pet foods, the product claims 95% of protein from chicken, which to me means that chicken is a huge percentage of the composition and everything else is minimal. Likely, much of the carbs in the product are from Tapioca though, if your furballs have an aversion to it.

I will say that Orijen looks more like meat and UP looks more like cereal. Kitties don't seem to care though, they love both!

Thanks for your reply!   What little kibble I feed my guys, I have been using both Ultimate Protein and NV's Raw Boost mixed up together - they seem to really like it!   Even though it's a very small part of their diet (they eat canned & raw food, but I do give them a night time kibble snack - and occasionally  when I feel to lazy make their mixed raw/canned meals haha) believe me they LOVE their nightly kibble snack and will be pissed off if they don't get it     I feel good about giving them the NV kibbles - plus, they had been eating Orijen for awhile, and I personally think it's good to mix up the brands once in a while - they get a wide variety of canned brands too - I'm actually kinda scared to just feed one brand exclusively what with all the recalls  & stuff that happens - I figure even if they happen to eat one "tainted" can, they'd hopefully pull through since they eat so many other brands too.    

Plus since they only eat a little kibble at night every day, one bag will last me a good long while  -  so that helps ease the blow of how expensive this stuff is 

So had a little e-mail chat with NV Customer service where they said the NV UP product is 95% chicken, which is quite high for a dry food.

NV CS: The Ultimate Protein kibble for cats has 95% of the protein from real chicken.  The remaining 5% is the vitamins/minerals/fruits/vegetables.

Me: Just to clarify, should I take that to mean that chicken is 95% of the total product, and 5% is other ingredients? As compared to the 83/17 split of regular instinct chicken cat kibble?

NV CS: Yes, that is correct.

I'm not sure how much I care about chicken vs chicken meal since it's all being cooked anyway, but the larger percentage of animal protein/product and limited ingredients (no fish) are great. We're planning to stick with it.

Based on Chewy prices, it's about a 20-25% price premium over Orijen Cat/Kitten (considering $ per calorie), and 60-75% price premium over instincts regular kibble.