Any danger of vitamin toxicity from over-supplementing?

[lonelocust]

I switched to about half raw a while ago, and now am on mostly raw. The cats are doing better in many ways, including self-regulating their own intake better and not seeming to get as hungry between meals, but the only thing I've noticed is that their coats are not as amazingly soft and lustrous as they used to be. My older cat was on supermarket quality food when I got him, and he was OK and his coat was fine, but I switched him to high-quality dry +wet food once a day, and his coat improved significantly. I got my younger cat as a baby, and as soon as he had adult fur he was also soft like silk. Their coats are now not *bad*, just not as great as they were before.

I've been feeding a commercial pre-mix which is complete including bone, organ, and supplements. It lists on the package what is included (the same mix in the supplement mixes I can buy to put in home-made), but not an exact mg/kg food or anything like that. I was thinking of going ahead and also buying a bit of the supplement mix and just upping their vitamin intake, but I don't want to risk toxicity from too much of a vitamin or taurine or anything. Does anyone know or know of a site that has any numbers on what sorts of levels can become a risk? 

 

[di and bob]

I would just google it you would be amazed at the results. I agree with you though, if their coats aren't as nice something must be lacking. I hope someone with more experience comes on to help you, mine get cheap because that is all they will eat and there are too many of them!

 

[LTS3]

I would just follow AAFCO guidlines for cat nutrients: http://maxshouse.com/nutrition/aafco_cat_food_nutrient_profiles.htm A mre current one  (2014) is at http://www.aafco.org/Portals/0/Site...osed_Revisions_to_AAFCO_Nutrient_Profiles.pdf

 

[mschauer]

Here's a link that will download the European pet food nutrient recommendations that include maximums :

https://www.google.com/search?q=FED...i57.296j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

The pre-mix you are using more than likely adheres to those recommendations and so additional vitamin supplementation shouldn't be needed. Although you might check with the manufacturer to make sure they do adhere to them.

I believe coat condition is affected by the amount and type of fat and oils in the diet more so than vitamins. Is it possible that the raw meat you are using is very lean? Cats do well with fairly fatty meats. Do you add fish or krill oil? You might check the ingredients of the processed foods you were using before to see if they included oils. I think the European labeling standards don't require all ingredients to be listed however.

 

[lonelocust]

Thanks for the links guys. And yes I did Google before asking, but while I found sites describing the symptoms of toxicity from various vitamins and which vitamins a cat can overdose on, I did not in fact find the doses. The aafco report and EU guidelines seem to have the numbers I was looking for. 

I don't think they "need" the extra as in they are becoming malnourished or gaining deficiencies. But as to minimal amounts, supermarket brands must also meet those minimum requirements. I will consider changing the fat content also if I don't see a change or if the numbers don't seem safe for adding additional supplement. After checking I see that the raw foods have 10-20% less fat than the dry food (there's a few different varieties of the raw food with slightly varying fat percentages), although the dry food was already a low fat food at 13% fat compared to some that are 20+% fat.

 

[mschauer]

When comparing the labels on pet foods be sure to compare them on a dry matter basis in order to get a true comparison. This is especially true when comparing a wet (or raw) food to a dry one.

In the image below Product 1 could be a typical wet food while Product 2 could be a typical dry food.  Just looking at the as fed values you might think the canned food is far lower in fat than the dry food. After conversion to dry matter you see the wet food actually has slightly more fat.

DMB.png

• mschauer
• Feb 29, 2016

http://www.k-9kraving.com/resources/calculator.php

 

[lonelocust]

Good point Mschauer. Luckily the percentages on the particular products I looked at is given in dry matter percentages. Wet food in cans that I've seen tend to list the moisture percentage (I'm not sure if this is required by regulations or is just the way it's done) along with the other percentages for a total of 100% rather than breaking down the non-moisture alone, so in those cases the numbers do look extremely different at a glance.

 

[lonelocust]

Thanks to everyone for your advice. I managed to get an email back after a while from the pre-mix manufacturere with micronutrient details. I didn't quite want to double what they were getting on some ingredients, and putting in less consistently would be difficult, so I got them some supplement treats, and also got a coat-specific (or so it's marketed) fat supplement. A few mg a day brings them back up to their previous fat percentages.