Help Me Choose A New Dry Food

Long story short, I am looking to switch dry foods because the Orijen has gone down in quality.

Cat eats mostly wet, two 3oz cans a day with kibble as snacks between. List of wet foods in rotation:

-Koha/Mauri (none of the fish flavors)

-Weruva (fish flavors he gets occasionally)

-Merrick (Purrfect Bistro pates, trying to see if he likes the new shredded variety)

-ZiwiPeak (rarely, since he is on the fence when whether he likes it or not and I don't feel like wasting)

-Wellness (TruFood Chicken, Turkey and Pumpkin. Regular Wellness pates and occasionally the turkey/duck CORE)

-Nature's Variety Instinct and Pride

-Fancy Feast Classics (when the budget is tight, non fish flavors only)

These are the dry foods I have found and are interested in, but unsure which is the best out of them. I personally would love to do ZiwiPeak but my cat will touch any of it. He hates that it's not crunchy :/

Merrick Purrfect Bistro Chicken or Turkey/Duck

Merrick Backcountry Game Bird Recipe

Nature's Variety Ultimate Protein Chicken

Performatrin Ultra Grain Free (Turkey, Duck, Salmon)

Open Farms Turkey and Chicken

Rawz Chicken and Turkey

Acana Grasslands or Meadowlands

All suggestions and input appreciated. Other food recommendations also appreciated.

Have you considered dropping kibble altogether and feeding a little raw food as a snack? I feed my cat a chicken gizzard every day. I cut it into chewable pieces with a scissors. This is much healthier than kibble and good for teeth. I spend less than $3 for a big package at Kroger and wrap each one individually before freezing. This lasts 2 to 3 weeks so I think this is very economical.

You know how I feel about the new USA Meadowland and Grasslands. My cat got violently sick with just eating a few pieces. Full of beans, low quality farmed catfishin both. There is goat in the Grasslands too. Seriously?!

I vote for Nature's Variety. Good for a dry food. Petcurean GO! Chicken, Turkey, and Duck has been a hit too around here. I would like to try others too...like Tiki Cat dry and Rawz dry. Will take a while till I try those...stocked up and have 20 lbs of Acana Wild Prairie and 5 lbs of Orijen Canadian to get through first.

If you're willing to try wet food again, take a sample of Natural Value Chicken formula.  Your cat may enjoy the chicken chunk texture.  For dry food, consider kibble from Nulo, Evolve or Purina Beyond Grain Free.

Tuffsmom said:

Have you considered dropping kibble altogether and feeding a little raw food as a snack? I feed my cat a chicken gizzard every day. I cut it into chewable pieces with a scissors. This is much healthier than kibble and good for teeth. I spend less than $3 for a big package at Kroger and wrap each one individually before freezing. This lasts 2 to 3 weeks so I think this is very economical.

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If it were up to me, I would put both my dogs and cat on raw. You're preaching to the converted. 

Unfortunately, it's not up to me. The cat doesn't belong to me, he's the "family cat". I had to fight tooth and nail to get him off the stupid RX dry urinary food and onto a 90% wet diet with better dry. I'm trying to get him to eat some raw here and there, he seems to like the Primal Pork, but there's no way I'd be allowed to keep him on a total raw diet. 

My parents, especially my dad, think the cat needs dry food. I've argued with them about it in the past and they won't budge. Better to feed him mostly wet and let my parents give him dry as a snack. Even then I have to fight with them because they tend to give him too much dry and then he's not hungry for the wet >:0 But i digress.

Dasust said:

You know how I feel about the new USA Meadowland and Grasslands. My cat got violently sick with just eating a few pieces. Full of beans, low quality farmed catfishin both. There is goat in the Grasslands too. Seriously?!

I vote for Nature's Variety. Good for a dry food. Petcurean GO! Chicken, Turkey, and Duck has been a hit too around here. I would like to try others too...like Tiki Cat dry and Rawz dry. Will take a while till I try those...stocked up and have 20 lbs of Acana Wild Prairie and 5 lbs of Orijen Canadian to get through first.

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I like the Tiki dry, have never seen it anywhere before.

Fun fact though, GO!, Now! Fresh, and Performatrin Ultra are all made and owned by Petcurean.  Performatrin Ultra has a little more carb in it but it's better than the Now! Fresh and also much cheaper. I'd rate it GO!>Performatrin>Now! Fresh

I don't like how the GO! has DL-methionine though. It's not a bad ingredient but it's an indicator of low meat levels, as methionine is a naturally occurring amino acid in meat. If there isn't enough meat to supply the methionine, the food makers have to supplement with DL-methionine.

My cat is still on a 90% wet diet Just trying to find a new dry for him to snack on 

I recently tried Rawz, for the same reason you are looking for a new food. One of my seven cats is a kibble addict. Anyway, she seemed to like the Rawz better than Orijen...which wasn't really the idea, as I'm trying to switch her to wet. But at least I have my backup plan in place for when my Canadian Orijen runs out.

There are a couple of reasons I like the idea of Rawz. First, their website lists the countries of origin for their ingredients. Second, they recommend adding water before serving - acknowledging that lack of moisture causes health problems in cats. Although Ivy prefers it crunchy, of course, I like the fact that Rawz admits that dry food alone is not the perfect thing. (And it's kibble-like, not freeze-dried, in case anyone was wondering.)

I'll put a vote in for Nature's Variety. 95% of my personal and the rescues that get dry are all on NVI and all are doing well.

The other 5% that are on dry get Merrick's Limited Ingredient Turkey formula.

Acana is fairly similar to Orijen; however, I have found the kibble to be harder and my cats weren't a fan.

SuzanneF said:

I recently tried Rawz, for the same reason you are looking for a new food. One of my seven cats is a kibble addict. Anyway, she seemed to like the Rawz better than Orijen...which wasn't really the idea, as I'm trying to switch her to wet. But at least I have my backup plan in place for when my Canadian Orijen runs out.

There are a couple of reasons I like the idea of Rawz. First, their website lists the countries of origin for their ingredients. Second, they recommend adding water before serving - acknowledging that lack of moisture causes health problems in cats. Although Ivy prefers it crunchy, of course, I like the fact that Rawz admits that dry food alone is not the perfect thing. (And it's kibble-like, not freeze-dried, in case anyone was wondering.)

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I don't feed dry food but the ingredient lists for Rawz and Tiki look better than other dry foods I've seen discussed: the carby and other vegetable ingredients are pretty far down on the list for both, coming after, respectively, turkey hearts and chicken liver. Rawz is based in Maine, where I live, so I've seen it around quite a bit. FWIW, an employee of a local store who recently adopted a cat is glad he prefers Rawz to Orijen since he's been slow to adapt to wet foods.

Good luck, Manx, and good for you for getting the cat on better food.

I confused a couple of wet chicken recipes.  I meant to suggest that you try Weruva Chicken Frick A Zee.  That's the one with the actual chunks of chicken meat.

I only mix a small amount of Orijen with ZP so I'm just phasing out the Orijen part. However, I've been feeding more freeze dried foods and I've found that my kibble addict cats like it semi moist or dry because it's more kibble-ish. You can also adjust how much water you add to make it more or less wet, depending on how your cats like it. So maybe that's an option? I've been using Stella & chewy, the new Instinct Raw Market, and Feline Natural. 

Manx said:

I don't like how the GO! has DL-methionine though. It's not a bad ingredient but it's an indicator of low meat levels, as methionine is a naturally occurring amino acid in meat. If there isn't enough meat to supply the methionine, the food makers have to supplement with DL-methionine.

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ZP also has DL-methionine in their air dried foods, however it's really far down on the list. My understand is when it's higher on the list its an indication of low meat, but when it's farther down on the list it's more likely a flavor enhancer. I haven't actually contacted ZP to ask, but because its low on the list I'd be surprised if its because meat content is low. Perhaps the same thing with Go. 

"Dr. Aldrich also states some pet foods add DL-Methionine “to help promote the palatability of the diet, as cats have been reported to have an “appetite” for methionine.”   (or could it be that cats have an ‘appetite’ for meat?)"

http://truthaboutpetfood.com/what-is-dl-methionine/

weve been feeding the preformatrin grain free and our cat really likes it we were mostly using them as treats when we were feeding raw(when we used to be able to afford it) and he almost always steals our roomates cats food haha cause its also the grainfree stuff and hes not overweight at all, the texture is almost greasy compaired to some other kibbles weve tried. but weve never seen some of those other brands youve listed either at least not in our tiny little town