Orijen unsuccessful. Seeking the best for my feline daughter.

Hi! My 3 year old baby girl is obese after eating orijen kitten and cat for about 3 months. I feed her half a cup a day.
She is 12lbs and is supposed to be at 8lbs.
She used to eat nature's variety instinct chicken canned food and was at an appropriate weight, until one day she refused anything but kibble.
Orijen sounded like the best food, but apparently it's making her too fat.

Now that I'm looking into switching her diet, what is the best of the best food that can be purchased and most appropriate for a cat's biological makeup? Cost is not issue.
I was interested in human grade dehydrated raw food like honest brand, but not finding much information on this type of diet.
Now that orijen is a fail, I'm clueless.
However,human grade is a must. [emoji]128522[/emoji]

You're way overfeeding her. Orijen is 500/cal in a cup, so 250 in 1/2 a cup. Cats need roughly 20/cal per pound of weight, but lets say a little more because she's younger so maybe 22/cal per pound of weight, that's 176 calories a day, you're feeding her 250, so yeah, she's going to gain weight like crazy.

Good freeze dried foods to try.

Feline Naturals

Primal

Northwest Naturals

Stella and Chewy

Instinct Raw Market

Hey seems like for each cup theres 463 calories. So half a cup would be around 230. Thats around what my cats eat and theyre 12-14 pounds, solidly built boys. You might have to give your cat a little less than half a cup if 12 pounds is too big for her body.

You have to take away the kibble completely and put her on a feeding schedule. My boys eat in the morning and at night. Its hard to put cats on an appropriate diet if they have access to kibble all day.

If cost is not an issue you have ton of options!! How exciting. Throw out the dry food all together. Its actually terrible for cats. I recommend either 100% wet food, 100% raw food or 50/50 wet and raw. For wet good i like Pride by Instinct, Natures Variety, and I Love and You. They are free from grain, carageenan, and menadione sodium bisulfate. For raw food I use primal frozen and primal dehydrated. I stick to white meat (rabbit, chicken, turkey) for all my cat food because thats what wild cats would eat.

kittyluv387 said:

Hey seems like for each cup theres 463 calories. So half a cup would be around 230. Thats around what my cats eat and theyre 12-14 pounds, solidly built boys. You might have to give your cat a little less than half a cup if 12 pounds is too big for her body.

 

Click to expand...

Yep you're right it is 463. I was on the Canada website for the old food, for some reason. 

Oh darn! So I've been over feeding her?
I followed the feeding guidelines.
She's fairly petite and her Vet said she should be 8lbs.
But either way I see that I should chunk the dry food
Thanks for the suggestions of raw food. I'm just hoping she'll eat it cause she's is picky unless it's soft food.

trisha422 said:

Oh darn! So I've been over feeding her?
I followed the feeding guidelines.
She's fairly petite and her Vet said she should be 8lbs.
But either way I see that I should chunk the dry food
Thanks for the suggestions of raw food. I'm just hoping she'll eat it cause she's is picky unless it's soft food.

Click to expand...

I "trained" my cat to eat freeze dried food by adding water slowly. The great thing about freeze dried is you can make it as moist as you want. So if you have a cat that doesn't like wet food you can drizzle the water over the top of the food so that the top is dry but the water is underneath so when they lick it up they get all the moisture. I don't recommend feeding freeze dried food dry, you should add water, but if you need to start with it barely wet to train your cat that's okay, just make sure not to do that for a long period of time. 

Correction. She's picky unless it is hard* food.

M missmimz that's a good idea. I give her freeze dried chicken treats occasionally and she loves them! Is it similar to that? If so, then this should be easy.

trisha422 said:

@missmimz that's a good idea. I give her freeze dried chicken treats occasionally and she loves them! Is it similar to that? If so, then this should be easy.

Click to expand...

They are kind of similar. I've tried literally all the freeze dried raw because my old guy is picky. He likes Stella and Chewy the most, and Instinct Raw Market the second most. You can also crumble up freeze dried chicken treats and put on top of the food as a "topper," I do this too because my cat would happily eat an entire bag of chicken treats for dinner 

kittyluv387
M missmimz
Where do you purchase your commercial raw food?

For all primal products i buy it at pets supplies plus for both frozen nuggets and freeze dried. You can see where your nearest retailer is:
http://www.primalpetfoods.com/stores.html

Shop around because different retailers will offer it at different prices. At my retailer i have to make regular special orders because they dont keep cat ones in stock due to lack of demand. Im apparently the only one who buys them. But chewy.com and amazon.com also has the freeze dried ones. But I think pets supplies has better prices. And at the retail store you can ask them to give you the frequent primal buyer card so after 12 purchases or so you can get a free bag of food.

I get the Natures Variety freeze dried raw on amazon.com.

trisha422 said:

@kittyluv387
@missmimz
Where do you purchase your commercial raw food?

Click to expand...

Chewy.com or Amazon, mostly. 

kittyluv387 said:

Hey seems like for each cup theres 463 calories. So half a cup would be around 230. Thats around what my cats eat and theyre 12-14 pounds, solidly built boys. You might have to give your cat a little less than half a cup if 12 pounds is too big for her body.

You have to take away the kibble completely and put her on a feeding schedule. My boys eat in the morning and at night. Its hard to put cats on an appropriate diet if they have access to kibble all day.

If cost is not an issue you have ton of options!!

How exciting. Throw out the dry food all together. Its actually terrible for cats. I recommend either 100% wet food, 100% raw food or 50/50 wet and raw. For wet good i like Pride by Instinct, Natures Variety, and I Love and You. They are free from grain, carageenan, and menadione sodium bisulfate. For raw food I use primal frozen and primal dehydrated. I stick to white meat (rabbit, chicken, turkey) for all my cat food because thats what wild cats would eat.

Click to expand...

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I wanted to point out that not all dry foods are the same, just like not all canned foods are the same or all raw foods are the same or all freeze dried foods are the same.

The question I would like to start out with to give people something to think about is. Since so many of the canned foods available today are bad should, we not feed any canned food?

I will concede and agree that there are few carnivore kibbles out there and it is easy to make a broad statement about all dry foods, because almost all of them contain starch in excess of 15%. However Young Again has developed a dry kibble made with only animal protein and fat, with either less than 6% starch or our Zero diets which have less than 1% starch. These diets have been in the market for as long as 17 years. Cats eating our kibble, free choice, will maintain ideal body weight and will have the same or better hydration as those cats fed a good canned or raw diet. If you ask your vet to perform a definitive test on your cat to determine hydration status they will need to do three tests. They will draw blood and do a Total Protein and Albumin test. These two tests show blood volume/hydration of the blood. Next they will need to do a urine specific gravity.

Cats consuming Young Again food will consistently score in the low to mid-range of the normal range established by the veterinary community for both Total Protein and Albumin. On specific gravity (SG) our Zero diet will produce a SG of 1.020 and the 6% starch diets will produce a SG of 1.025. It is rare for a cat to produce an SG greater that 1.035 on any of our foods. The established SG normal reference range for cats is 1.015-1.060. For reference; the higher the specific gravity the more concentrated the urine is. Because our SG falls below 1.030 and urine pH is usually 6.5 we do not see crystals or stone formation. We have many cats who have had stone and crystal formation on other diets that never reoccur on our diets. Hard to get a stone or crystal to form if the urine is always dilute.

Some people think that because a cat can concentrate its urine, that they must. Cat’s blood will have a SG of a little less than 1.015, so as long as a cat’s urine concentration is greater than 1.015 you are good to go. Never once have I had a doctor tell me that my urine sample was perfectly normal and that he would like me to drink less water, because he would like to see it a little darker in color and little cloudier. Concentrating urine above 1.035 is a survival tool for desert living, not necessity for healthy living.

I have read the hydration studies that have been published. They confirm that if you take an extruded diet and feed it dry (6% moisture) and the same diet is fed wet (75% moisture) and compare them in a feeding trial: the cat eating the wet diet will consume more total water and be better hydrated than the cat that consumed the 6% moisture diet. Of course this is true, both diets contained lots of starch. If you insist on feed starch, then you had better be feeding a wet diet. Your cat is an obligate carnivore and was never meant to consume starch above 6%. How do we know this? Because the body composition of a mouse has a starch range of 4-6%.

Starch messes with your cat’s metabolism. If this is not the case then why do so many cats suffer from diabetes? Another study found that starch decreased urine output and increased struvite crystal formation. In our own diets we see a higher specific gravity in the 6% starch diets vs. our less than 1% starch diets. If you compare a high starch canned diet with a no starch canned diet, the specific gravity will be higher on the canned diet with the starch and lower on the no starch canned diet.

I deal with thousands of cats every year and in my experience there are only 2 reasons that a cat will gain weight when fed free choice. The first is the diet being fed is metabolically incorrect for your cat. A diet containing too much starch would be a classic example. The second is psychological issues. A cat found starving may never be able to overcome his fear and will always overeat or a dominate cat may cause another cat to overeat. The vast majority of already obese cats can eat our food free choice and within 3 months their body fat will be normal. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are rare. If free choice feeding is done correctly then most cats figure out the art of eating less and keeping happy in less than a week.

Back to the original question. Yes your cat is eating way too much food. If your cat was fed free choice on our Zero diet she would consume only ¼ a day. Unless there is no other option, I do not like restrict feeding because it makes our cats want food all the time. Cats are very independent creatures who detest limits. They are at their best when they believe they control the most important things in life and that would be food and a sunny spot.

On a final note I’m not opposed to feeding any carnivore a dry, wet or raw diet. We even sell supplements for raw diets and will be publishing formulas you can make at home. We have numerous breeders and homeowners that have our kibble out all the time and feed wet 2 times a day. They like it because the cats are always happy and they are not tied to such a tight feeding schedule.

My post is only meant to correct the record and be informative. I understand why statements like “all dry food is bad” are made and I hope open discussion will change that perception. I also realize the hydration issue is big and I will be happy to discuss this further, but it might be best done on a new thread. I have been making pet food since 1983 and I do not make definitive statements lightly, so let’s discuss.

Young Again said:

I wanted to point out that not all dry foods are the same, just like not all canned foods are the same or all raw foods are the same or all freeze dried foods are the same.

The question I would like to start out with to give people something to think about is. Since so many of the canned foods available today are bad should, we not feed any canned food?

I will concede and agree that there are few carnivore kibbles out there and it is easy to make a broad statement about all dry foods, because almost all of them contain starch in excess of 15%. However Young Again has developed a dry kibble made with only animal protein and fat, with either less than 6% starch or our Zero diets which have less than 1% starch. These diets have been in the market for as long as 17 years. Cats eating our kibble, free choice, will maintain ideal body weight and will have the same or better hydration as those cats fed a good canned or raw diet. If you ask your vet to perform a definitive test on your cat to determine hydration status they will need to do three tests. They will draw blood and do a Total Protein and Albumin test. These two tests show blood volume/hydration of the blood. Next they will need to do a urine specific gravity.

Cats consuming Young Again food will consistently score in the low to mid-range of the normal range established by the veterinary community for both Total Protein and Albumin. On specific gravity (SG) our Zero diet will produce a SG of 1.020 and the 6% starch diets will produce a SG of 1.025. It is rare for a cat to produce an SG greater that 1.035 on any of our foods. The established SG normal reference range for cats is 1.015-1.060. For reference; the higher the specific gravity the more concentrated the urine is. Because our SG falls below 1.030 and urine pH is usually 6.5 we do not see crystals or stone formation. We have many cats who have had stone and crystal formation on other diets that never reoccur on our diets. Hard to get a stone or crystal to form if the urine is always dilute.
Some people think that because a cat can concentrate its urine, that they must. Cat’s blood will have a SG of a little less than 1.015, so as long as a cat’s urine concentration is greater than 1.015 you are good to go. Never once have I had a doctor tell me that my urine sample was perfectly normal and that he would like me to drink less water, because he would like to see it a little darker in color and little cloudier. Concentrating urine above 1.035 is a survival tool for desert living, not necessity for healthy living.

I have read the hydration studies that have been published. They confirm that if you take an extruded diet and feed it dry (6% moisture) and the same diet is fed wet (75% moisture) and compare them in a feeding trial: the cat eating the wet diet will consume more total water and be better hydrated than the cat that consumed the 6% moisture diet. Of course this is true, both diets contained lots of starch. If you insist on feed starch, then you had better be feeding a wet diet. Your cat is an obligate carnivore and was never meant to consume starch above 6%. How do we know this? Because the body composition of a mouse has a starch range of 4-6%.

Starch messes with your cat’s metabolism. If this is not the case then why do so many cats suffer from diabetes? Another study found that starch decreased urine output and increased struvite crystal formation. In our own diets we see a higher specific gravity in the 6% starch diets vs. our less than 1% starch diets. If you compare a high starch canned diet with a no starch canned diet, the specific gravity will be higher on the canned diet with the starch and lower on the no starch canned diet.

I deal with thousands of cats every year and in my experience there are only 2 reasons that a cat will gain weight when fed free choice. The first is the diet being fed is metabolically incorrect for your cat. A diet containing too much starch would be a classic example. The second is psychological issues. A cat found starving may never be able to overcome his fear and will always overeat or a dominate cat may cause another cat to overeat. The vast majority of already obese cats can eat our food free choice and within 3 months their body fat will be normal. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are rare. If free choice feeding is done correctly then most cats figure out the art of eating less and keeping happy in less than a week.

Back to the original question. Yes your cat is eating way too much food. If your cat was fed free choice on our Zero diet she would consume only ¼ a day. Unless there is no other option, I do not like restrict feeding because it makes our cats want food all the time. Cats are very independent creatures who detest limits. They are at their best when they believe they control the most important things in life and that would be food and a sunny spot.

On a final note I’m not opposed to feeding any carnivore a dry, wet or raw diet. We even sell supplements for raw diets and will be publishing formulas you can make at home. We have numerous breeders and homeowners that have our kibble out all the time and feed wet 2 times a day. They like it because the cats are always happy and they are not tied to such a tight feeding schedule.

My post is only meant to correct the record and be informative. I understand why statements like “all dry food is bad” are made and I hope open discussion will change that perception. I also realize the hydration issue is big and I will be happy to discuss this further, but it might be best done on a new thread. I have been making pet food since 1983 and I do not make definitive statements lightly, so let’s discuss.

Click to expand...

There's definitely a difference in quality for dry across brands, but i dont think it ever really overcomes the moisture factor. A cat doesn't have to have crystals or an infection for dry to be considered a problem. My ginger boy was on canned in the morning with extra water and dry at night. You would think this was good enough but it wasnt. One day he developed frequent urination issues without any sign of crystals and infection (took him to the vet). Since there was technically nothing wrong with him i took away his dry food and he has gone back to his long pees 2x a day. Dry foods are also highly processed no matter what. The quality is just not there. Its obvious because when cats go on raw food their poos are no longer stinky. They have little smell and the poo is much smaller in size. Canned food still creates smelly and large poos because it is a processed food, but not as processed as dry. Dry food will never compare and i dont think it's appropriate as a main diet. Its like comparing eating hot dogs and big macs all day to a person who eats well balanced home made meals.

Thats not to say dry food doesnt have a place. I understand a lot of people cant afford anything besides dry. I can sympathize with people who have budget restraints. But unfortunately most people simply do not care about good feline nutrition. Theres more people who care a little more about canine nutrition.

kittyluv387 said:

There's definitely a difference in quality for dry across brands, but i dont think it ever really overcomes the moisture factor. A cat doesn't have to have crystals or an infection for dry to be considered a problem. My ginger boy was on canned in the morning with extra water and dry at night. You would think this was good enough but it wasnt. One day he developed frequent urination issues without any sign of crystals and infection (took him to the vet). Since there was technically nothing wrong with him i took away his dry food and he has gone back to his long pees 2x a day. Dry foods are also highly processed no matter what. The quality is just not there. Its obvious because when cats go on raw food their poos are no longer stinky. They have little smell and the poo is much smaller in size. Canned food still creates smelly and large poos because it is a processed food, but not as processed as dry. Dry food will never compare and i dont think it's appropriate as a main diet. Its like comparing eating hot dogs and big macs all day to a person who eats well balanced home made meals.

Thats not to say dry food doesnt have a place. I understand a lot of people cant afford anything besides dry. I can sympathize with people who have budget restraints. But unfortunately most people simply do not care about good feline nutrition. Theres more people who care a little more about canine nutrition.

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I understand that you prefer raw and I do not have any issues with raw. I would like to clear up a few additional points that you brought up for those that may like a kibble option.

I would agree with you that almost all dry foods do not overcome the moisture factor because they contain more than 6% starch. As stated in my original post the Young Again kibble performs as well or better than canned or raw.

You state that your Ginger Boy was on canned in the morning and dry at night and you had problems, until you took away the dry. I agree with that assessment since the dry you were feeding contained a lot of starch. Maybe there was also starch in the canned food you were using as well. If you feed starch, it is likely you will have a problem of some kind sooner or latter. The point about my food is UTI's, crystals and stones are extremely rare.

The statement was made that kibbles are highly processed and the quality is just not there. I'm not sure by what standards you are using. Our protein has a digestibility of at least 96% and fat digestibility is almost 100%. Over half of our protein is hydrolyzed, which makes it even more digestible. It is very difficult to have a higher protein digestibility. Raw meat by every measure has a lower digestibility than cooked meat.

The statement that extruded food is highly processed and canned food is less processed is not true. Our food starts out at room temperature and once in the extruder will reach a maximum temperature of 275 degrees F in 60 seconds. Our drying process take 13 minuets and the food temp does not exceed 180. Canned food, if memory serves me correctly, is processed for at least 90 minuets at 380 degrees and takes hours to cool back down to room temperature.

On poo smell and size we are the same  as raw, once a cat is fully acclimated to the diet change.

You state that dry food is like hotdogs. As long as the hot dog was nutritionally balanced like my food is, what would be wrong with that?  I believe that some of the raw diets are in the form of a sausage that does not make them bad.

I think it is unfair to say that people who feed dry do not care about good feline nutrition. I will stack my medical and lab testing against any food.

Young Again said:

I understand that you prefer raw and I do not have any issues with raw. I would like to clear up a few additional points that you brought up for those that may like a kibble option.
I would agree with you that almost all dry foods do not overcome the moisture factor because they contain more than 6% starch. As stated in my original post the Young Again kibble performs as well or better than canned or raw.

You state that your Ginger Boy was on canned in the morning and dry at night and you had problems, until you took away the dry. I agree with that assessment since the dry you were feeding contained a lot of starch. Maybe there was also starch in the canned food you were using as well. If you feed starch, it is likely you will have a problem of some kind sooner or latter. The point about my food is UTI's, crystals and stones are extremely rare.

The statement was made that kibbles are highly processed and the quality is just not there. I'm not sure by what standards you are using. Our protein has a digestibility of at least 96% and fat digestibility is almost 100%. Over half of our protein is hydrolyzed, which makes it even more digestible. It is very difficult to have a higher protein digestibility. Raw meat by every measure has a lower digestibility than cooked meat.

The statement that extruded food is highly processed and canned food is less processed is not true. Our food starts out at room temperature and once in the extruder will reach a maximum temperature of 275 degrees F in 60 seconds. Our drying process take 13 minuets and the food temp does not exceed 180. Canned food, if memory serves me correctly, is processed for at least 90 minuets at 380 degrees and takes hours to cool back down to room temperature.

On poo smell and size we are the same  as raw, once a cat is fully acclimated to the diet change.

You state that dry food is like hotdogs. As long as the hot dog was nutritionally balanced like my food is, what would be wrong with that?  I believe that some of the raw diets are in the form of a sausage that does not make them bad.

I think it is unfair to say that people who feed dry do not care about good feline nutrition. I will stack my medical and lab testing against any food.

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I just dont believe dry kibble is a very natural thing to feed. It could be the best in the market but i prefer other food forms for my cats. My other cat also had chronic diarrhea when i adopted him at 5 months of age. He is very sensitive to any dry and wet foods. He had to visit the vet many times with antibiotic treatments but he was never tested positive for anything. I tried orijen and other wet and dry food brands. But he still had the diarrhea and it was driving me nuts. Finally as last resort i tried primal raw and the diarrhea was no more! My experiences with my 2 cats have led me to have no faith in dry foods and its why im so anti dry. I know other cats may not be as sensitive but i dont think it necessarily means dry is a species appropriate food for them.

Believe me I do not have any problem with the feeding any carnivore food as long as it works works for your cats. If all cats were the same then there would be just one food in the world. I just want all information to be accurate so that everybody can make an informed decision. I applaud you commitment to your kitties.

I wish you and your kitties all the best.

Young Again said:

Believe me I do not have any problem with the feeding any carnivore food as long as it works works for your cats. If all cats were the same then there would be just one food in the world. I just want all information to be accurate so that everybody can make an informed decision. I applaud you commitment to your kitties.

I wish you and your kitties all the best.

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Thank you. Taking care of them hasn't been easy. In the beginning i had thought i was going to end up getting low maintenance cats like everyone else seemingly had, which meant having them eat kibble. But life doesnt work that way i guess!