Orjien for kittens and general kitten feeding query.

[Sheli_80]

How old are your minis?

Baxter is 6 months now and Basil is 17 weeks.

I'm just really annoyed now that I could be given such a ridiculous piece of information by a vet, it may seem like almost nothing but I need to trust my vet. If I need to make a decision based on the information given to me by the vet how do I know she wants what's best for the cats or whats best for their wallet. Ahh if only my PC hadn't been broken over the last couple of weeks, I could have gotten the right information from my purrs peeps instead asking when Basil was having his jab.

I will most likely start off by mixing it in, I prefer to err on the side of caution, thanks for the tip (and lol at the kitten mousies, maybe the vet thinks baby cats eat baby mice?)

[Millys Mum]

How old are your minis?
I tend to feed adult food to little ones as kitten is normally too rich so dont worry about them not being able to survive, its nonsense 

[Susanne (urbantigers)]

Your vet is talking nonsense in saying that kittens can't survive on adult food.  What does he think they ate before there was kitten food?  What does he think feral kittens eat?  There is no special kitten mouse in the wild.  Kitten food contains more calories, but that's about all.  It's slightly different in it's nutrient profile, but not very much.  I remember comparing the bags of adult and kitten JWB once and there was negligible difference - something like 1% more fat and maybe a little more protein.  As to runny bums - kitten food tends to be richer than adult food and is more likley to cause runny bums (I was told by both the rescue when i got Jaffa years ago and the breeder who sold me Mosi 3 years ago that they were eating adult food because kitten was too rich for them).

If you do switch to Orijen, make sure you do it gradually though as high meat content foods like that can cause upset stomachs if a cat isn't used to them. 

[Sheli_80]

Well that's good to know, just put an order in for a 7kg bag without thinking about if they would like it or not. It should be ok though Charley tends to prefer things like JWB with a higher meat content.

Kinda annoyed with my vet though, think she just wanted to try sell me a bag of hills for the kittens, a bag for Garfield and another bag for Charley's diet 

Knowing Basil he will no doubt take no interest in the adult food now he is allowed to eat it.

[Angiew]

A lot of our kittens are now brought up on Orijen.

I was thinking about this the other day (as you do  ) and decided that most cat food nowadays contains so much rubbish that to optimise profits they may well have to add different nutrients for different ages just to top up to ensure that they get the right nutrition.

As orijen is as close to natural feed as possible and (hopefully) contains so much good quality ingredients it is suitable for all age groups.

(I must also declare an interest now as we have just become a seller of Orijen - or will have when we decide what to call ourselves )

[sheryl]

I have to disagree with your vet because years ago there was so such thing as "kitten" food they were fed the same as the adults.

My youngest Bengal was on Orijen from 10 weeks of age (I took a bag to the breeders so that he was used to it when he came home)

[Sheli_80]

We are thinking of moving over to Orjien for my chunky Charley as no matter how much we exercise we are still finding it hard to get him to shift some of his bulk. We have tried some of the lighter cat foods but he refuses to eat it and goes and helps himself to whatever the kittens and Garfield are eating. It's really hard to keep them apart during feeding because Baxter relies on Charley to keep him safe while he eats. So I thought of orjien and how a numbers of purrs peeps had used to help some of their cats with weight loss due to its high meat/no grain content.

Now to the kittens, it says orjien is suitable for both adults and kittens but now I'm confused as I was told by my vet that kitten food had certain stuff it in (no idea what, just *stuff*) and that kittens couldn't survive on adult food. The dry food will be supplemented with Felix/whiskers kitten food for the mini's (I like to give them a good quality dry so I don't feel as guilty about feeding Felix AGAIL which they love). I'm not to worried about runny bums from eating adult food because Basil is a little b**ger when it comes to eating and often helps himself to some of the adult food (which is why I queried my vet about kitten feeding) and Charley oftens leaves some of his food for Baxter so he can finish Baxter's food (they kinda swap over towards the end).

So I guess from my ramblings what I'd like to know is, what do kittens need that they can't get form adult food and is orjien in fact good enough to give kittens what they need? My OH is no help he says I read too much into this and am suffering from conflicting informationistis.