wellness dry kitten and merrick kitten food

jaclyn4238

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woulld they be considered high quality.? or of a higher quality than Nutro kitten or eukanuba kitten wet aand dry/
 

ping

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I personally consider both(wellness and merrick) high quality food.
 

renovia

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I give Stoli wellness dry and wellness wet - he LOVES it
 

jlphilli

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They are both great foods. I tried to feed Wellness to my kitten but he wouldn't eat it
 

sharky

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Both are truely premium foods ... I use Merrick on occation
 

apric0t

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Yes, they are both high quality foods. Especially Merrick canned. It looks like real food and has great ingredients. My fosters get Merrick and love it. I have never tried Wellness before, but they ingredients are good! I definately think they are of WAY better quality than Eukanuba and Nutro.
 

zissou'smom

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Garlic causes cats' red blood cells to shrivel, causing hypolytic anemia, which can cause death. Wellness contains garlic. I don't understand what a "safe" level of garlic would be, if someone could explain this to me, and why it isn't bad to have something poisonous to cats in a cat food.
 

sharky

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Originally Posted by Zissou'sMom

Garlic causes cats' red blood cells to shrivel, causing hypolytic anemia, which can cause death. Wellness contains garlic. I don't understand what a "safe" level of garlic would be, if someone could explain this to me, and why it isn't bad to have something poisonous to cats in a cat food.
I would love someone to explain that to me....
 

zissou'smom

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I've found a really good article on onions/shallots/garlic in animals that also mentions cats: http://www.nssvet.org/student/refere...ettech_424.pdf
Note that it is a PDF before clicking the link.

Basically, .5% of the body weight in onions needs to be ingested for toxicity in apparently both cats and dogs, cats with diabetes, hyperthyroidism, or lymphoma can easily die from that much. So, a 10-lb cat would need to eat .05 lbs of onion, or 23 ounces. That is, I guess, a lot, but I'm not feeding my cat anything with onion or garlic in it, since that's a one-shot number and not a daily feeding number. It would be like feeding a cat food with a little bit of theobromine (poison in chocolate) in it. The article is specifically about onions, I guess, but says garlic is related and has a similar chemical make-up, and everything else I can find says that garlic has the same effects.

Please, anyone explain how this is safe in cat food?
 

renovia

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I thought someone already posted that it is a typo on the wellness cans.
 

apric0t

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I've read that garlic is supposed to healthful in small amounts. To help fight of fleas and such. It's only harmful in large amounts. I, personally, see nothing wrong with a bit of garlic in cat food. It wouldn't stop me from feeding it or recommending it. Infact, MANY cat foods contain garlic. Wellness isn't the only one. Natural Balance, Solid Gold, Evolve, Wysong, to name a few, also contain garlic. But I haven't seen any complaints or problems with these foods. I think there would be alot of dead cats if such a small amount of garlic was harmful. That's my two cents.
 

zissou'smom

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If it is a typo, it's on their website too. I think that was for the wet food anyway, this is the dry. http://www.oldmotherhubbard.com/cats...yCatSup5Kitten
is what I was looking at. It's also listed on the website ingredients for dry. If it was just old labels that got sent out from years ago, why wouldn't they change their website too? (it's copyrighted 05)
 

renovia

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Originally Posted by Zissou'sMom

If it is a typo, it's on their website too. I think that was for the wet food anyway, this is the dry. http://www.oldmotherhubbard.com/cats...yCatSup5Kitten
is what I was looking at. It's also listed on the website ingredients for dry. If it was just old labels that got sent out from years ago, why wouldn't they change their website too? (it's copyrighted 05)
i'll see if i can find the thread that it's posted in - It was just recently.
 

welcat

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Hi,
My name is Nicole and I work for Wellness and Old Mother Hubbard in Consumer Affairs. I would like to address your concerns with garlic in the cat foods.

Garlic has been long used for its healthful benefits as well as a flavorful ingredient in recipes around the world. Cats won't eat what they can't smell. At Wellness we add only a trace amount of garlic to our cat food to increase palatability and aroma. While it is a member of the onion family, garlic contains an extremely low concentration of the compound found in onions that is harmful to cats. As with most things, the old saying "moderation in all things" applies to garlic. It would require a massive amount of garlic to cause a cat to become ill. Some studies even show that small amounts of garlic can actually be beneficial to the health of pets.


I do hope this helps. If you have any questions about Wellness Cat food please feel free to email me!

Nicole
Consumer Affairs
Wellness & Old Mother Hubbard
 

denice

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Both of my cats are very picky about wet food and Wellness Chicken or Turkey and Meow Mix wet are the only ones my cats will consistently eat. I don't want to give them the Meow Mix wet daily because of the high fish content so they get mostly Wellness. At one time we thought one of my cats might have IBD and I was following a forum about IBD cats. As far as commercial food goes Wellness chicken was by far the best tolerated by these cats. For some cats, it was the only commercial food they could eat.
 

moggiegirl

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Natural Balance does not contain garlic.

I occasionally feed my cats the Wellness Chicken and Lobster and they love it. It's true that there are a number of premium foods on the market that contain a bit of garlic, Foster and Smith canned food for example has ingredients very similar to Wellness, chicken, chicken liver, sweet potatoes, cranberries.... including a bit of garlic. This company could not stay in business if the small amount of garlic in their food was hurting cats and they are a pretty big company with a 24 hour customer service hotline, I get catalogs from them all the time and Foster and Smith are pretty well respected veterinarians. I really think these products such as Wellness, Foster and Smith, Solid Gold, Prairie which all contain a bit of garlic could not be put on the market if they weren't secure about the safety of these foods. If any animals were getting sick from this, it would be in the news, companies could be sued, and there would be a major uproar, it would be like the issue of what happened with Diamond Pet Foods and micotoxins. I think this issue is very controversial. In Dr Pitcairn's Guide to Natural Health for dogs and cats he approves of a small amount of garlic for intestinal health. Holistic vets use garlic for certain reasons, other vets are against it. I personally would not add it extra to my cat's food but I'm not going to worry if a can of something I occasionally feed my cats has a small amount of garlic in it. I never heard, read or seen any reports of cats getting sick from it.

Onion powder or onions, I would never trust and I was surprised to find out that some generic cat foods at my local grocery store, I think it's called Safeway Select, I could be wrong about name, I have to check on that, but this food has onion powder in it. I wouldn't feed that to my cats if you paid me.
 

sharky

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Solid Gold and Natural Balence both removed garlic due to consumer demand ( that is what the reps told me)... Natural balence also removed the onion powder from it dog food
 

moggiegirl

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Natura also removed garlic from its food due to consumer demand. I think if Wellness did the same it would make a lot of consumers feel a whole lot more comfortable. Wellness would just have to find another way to make its food palatable to pets. I'm sure it can be done if other companies have done it.

To the Wellness rep: This is a suggestion.
 

gizmocat

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Gizmo's worst reaction (rejection) was to Paul Newman's Own and Wellness and Felidae. The first two contain garlic.

California Natural and Nature's Logic (her current brand, rabbit meat and so on) do not contain garlic. The cat switched brands with ease.

I agree that garlic does not belong in cat food--at least not THIS cat's food.
 

jbfromwp

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Originally Posted by Ping

I personally consider both(wellness and merrick) high quality food.
Have you ever tried Trader Joe's canned cat food? From what I could tell it seems like a pretty good quality food and the cost is only 49 cents for a 5.5 oz. can.
 
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