Question For Cat Guardians Who Feed Darwin's

mannie3moon

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Hi! I recently got my trial order of Darwin's cat food, and my kitty loves it! She's never been crazy about raw chicken or duck from any other brand (including fresh cuts from the grocery store), but she'll eat those proteins from Darwin's. I'm excited to plug these into her rotation, but I am concerned about bone content, since the birds' necks are always the first ingredient.

I saw that the Ca: P ratio is within an acceptable range, but I am still worried. Have any of you had the experience of developing bladder stones while feeding Darwin's?

Thanks in advance!
 

lalagimp

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I can't find them listed in any commonly available chart to give the total bone percentage. The standard is 10%. Some people do less because of A)constipation issues or B) bladder issues or maybe even C) I don't know anything about kidney diets
Tommy developed a brief history of FLUTD before we got him into surgery, but I spoke with Dr Pierson of catinfo.org and we decided to go less than 10% bone for Tom's diet as a just in case. He didn't have issues with calcium oxalate crystals, just struvites during one big flare up(he was on a kibble diet and his pH was an 8), and assumed cystitis for another big flare up (he'd been on raw for two months and his pH was down to 7). We're doing whole ground rabbit cut 50/50 with boneless turkey meat. Our rabbit starts out at 75% meat 15% bone 10% organ before we thin that out with turkey.
If your cat doesn't have a predisposition, and you ask customer service what their bone in percentage is, and it's not some heinous number, you'll likely be fine. This type of diet is far superior to many on the market. If you don't like what you find, you know she's liked all of these proteins in the sampler and you can try with another brand.

As a however... I'm looking up their Yelp reviews and it's going way back and forth https://www.yelp.com/biz/darwins-natural-pet-products-tukwila
 

Ardina

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I tried the introductory order, and my cat loved it. And this is from the world's pickiest cat. But I didn't end up reordering because her stools were very pale and hard, so the bone content is probably pretty high. Not to mention the cost - I could make homemade food for less than half the price of Darwin's. No issue with bladder stones, but she was on the Darwin's for only a couple of weeks.
 
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