Food Trial Of No Feathered Creatures But What About Egg Yolk?

Lily, 14, has always scratched quite a bit, but it has gotten so much worse since last fall. She scratches her neck constantly and occasionally her ears until they bleed. So what have I tried?

• I switched litter in case she was allergic to the dust (from Dr. Elsey’s clumping clay to Smart Cat clumping grass) with no improvement.
• I’ve done some limited food trials: 1) at traditional vet's suggestion, tried chicken and turkey only for eight weeks; 2) at holistic vet's suggestion, cut out chicken for eight weeks because he said it had more inflammatory properties than many proteins...but he said it was okay to continue to feed other feathered proteins (turkey and duck) as well as pork. No improvement.
• I thought it might be stress because of the introduction of a new adult cat last fall. It seemed to really increase about that time. And in addition to her scratching, she was overgrooming the end of her tail. Plugged Feliway Classic and Multicat all over the house which seemed to help her a bit. Her mood was better, she was less aggressive to Mocha, she didn't overgroom as much, and her inappropriate peeing and pooping outside the box hasn't happened recently. But she still scratches.
• I realized that I had introduced probiotics when I adopted Mocha in October and began feeding raw in December. I discontinued that and actually, her scratching lessened just a bit. But she still scratches and has scabs on her neck from healing scratches.

I discussed this issue again with my traditional vet a couple of weeks ago, and he said to put her on a rabbit-only trial. No feathered critters of any kind. I use Dr. Pierson's recipe and add my own supplements, but I omitted the egg yolks for Lily's food. (The other two are getting meals of chicken and turkey since one of them refuses to eat rabbit.)

I'd like to use Alnutrin for Meat and Bone to simplify the cat-food-making process but it has egg yolk powder in it. Should I not use it during Lily's trial just to be safe?

If her scratching doesn't decrease on a rabbit-only diet, my next step is to find an alternative to the fish oil I'm using to see if she's allergic to that.

Iris, Lily's littermate, has always scratched, too. Instead of her neck, she scratched under one of her eyes, so much so that she has scarred her sweet little face. Oddly, though, her scratching has almost stopped over the past year.

If you suspect that she has a chicken allergy I would avoid eggs as well. I think it's best with LID diets to take it back to basics to figure out what works first, then expand the proteins to figure out what exactly is triggering the allergy. I've heard some people say that their cats have trouble with certain fish oils as well, but then I've also heard it said that fish oils are supposed to be tolerable as they don't have proteins in them. If you have a novel oil that you can try that isn't fish based, it might be worth it just for the initial trial to substitute it.

Just as an FYI - one vet told me that chicken and turkey are genetically similar, so often cats allergic to one are allergic to the other. Duck is supposed to be genetically different enough that it won't trigger a reaction in a cat allergic to chicken. That is to say, if you were mixing the duck and turkey together, your cat might have been reacting to the turkey. You might still be ok with duck.

Good luck!

On the rare instance we've done a no poultry diet we exclude eggs.
Which sucks because most cats (and dogs) really like eggs.

Wile mentioned duck as a genetic distance that might be acceptable. Do you have access to duck eggs? Could you formulate your own short-term supplement with duck eggs vs. chickens?

Wile said:

If you suspect that she has a chicken allergy I would avoid eggs as well. I think it's best with LID diets to take it back to basics to figure out what works first, then expand the proteins to figure out what exactly is triggering the allergy. I've heard some people say that their cats have trouble with certain fish oils as well, but then I've also heard it said that fish oils are supposed to be tolerable as they don't have proteins in them.

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Yeah, I was afraid that would be people's advice about the egg yolks. Sigh. I know some TCS members who have cats with fish allergies are using Iceland Pure Unscented Pharmaceutical Grade Sardine Anchovy Oil. Something about the distillation process reduces the likelihood of allergies. I thought I would get through the rabbit-only trial with my current fish oil before I changed up anything else. Otherwise, if she improves, I won't know why.

1 bruce 1 said:

Do you have access to duck eggs? Could you formulate your own short-term supplement with duck eggs vs. chickens?

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Possibly. The animal sanctuary where I volunteer has both rescued chickens and ducks. I know the chickens are layers, but I don't know about the ducks. If they do have duck eggs, I'm sure they'd let me have what I needed.

What I had really hoped to be able to do was to use the Alnutrin to save myself some time. Easier just to chuck in the pre-mix than to parcel out all of the supplements into multiple batches of cat food since Miss Picky Iris won't eat rabbit. But since it seems like egg yolk--or egg yolk powder--is a "better not," I'll wait it out on the rabbit diet.

Tobermorey said:

Yeah, I was afraid that would be people's advice about the egg yolks. Sigh. I know some TCS members who have cats with fish allergies are using Iceland Pure Unscented Pharmaceutical Grade Sardine Anchovy Oil. Something about the distillation process reduces the likelihood of allergies. I thought I would get through the rabbit-only trial with my current fish oil before I changed up anything else. Otherwise, if she improves, I won't know why.


Possibly. The animal sanctuary where I volunteer has both rescued chickens and ducks. I know the chickens are layers, but I don't know about the ducks. If they do have duck eggs, I'm sure they'd let me have what I needed.

What I had really hoped to be able to do was to use the Alnutrin to save myself some time. Easier just to chuck in the pre-mix than to parcel out all of the supplements into multiple batches of cat food since Miss Picky Iris won't eat rabbit. But since it seems like egg yolk--or egg yolk powder--is a "better not," I'll wait it out on the rabbit diet.

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Is this a short term elimination diet?

1 bruce 1 said:

Is this a short term elimination diet?

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When I did the first elimination trial a couple of years ago, the vet told me eight weeks. Based on research he heard about at the conference he attended recently, he says I need to give it 13 weeks.

Chicken egg yolks are approx 16% protein. Chicken protein of course. So, as others have said, you probably don't want to include them if you are avoiding chicken.

Tobermorey said:

Sigh. I know some TCS members who have cats with fish allergies are using Iceland Pure Unscented Pharmaceutical Grade Sardine Anchovy Oil. Something about the distillation process reduces the likelihood of allergies. I thought I would get through the rabbit-only trial with my current fish oil before I changed up anything else. Otherwise, if she improves, I won't know why.

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Allergies are to proteins and oil is fat so an allergy to fish doesn't mean fish oil can't be consumed. BUT, oil manufacturers aren't obligated to make sure their oil contains no protein unless they label it that way. In reality it seems most fish oils contain little if any protein whether labelled as protein free or not. I read a study where even people with extreme fish allergies were able to take fish oil without a reaction.

Personally, for the purposes of an elimination diet, I would probably skip the fish oil though.

mschauer said:

Personally, for the purposes of an elimination diet, I would probably skip the fish oil though.

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Thanks, mschauer . If Lily doesn’t respond to the current rabbit batches after 13 weeks, my next step will be to eliminate the fish oil.

I’m running out of ideas for what to try, but it pains me to see her scratch so much. The constant itching must be very hard for her to bear. I asked the vet about giving her cetirizine for the symptoms. He said he hasn’t seen it work that well, but I’ve seen TCS members comments about how it brought their cats some relief. But again, I don’t want to compromise the food trial by giving her something that masks the underlying problem.

I'm in exactly the same boat with my Coco. She doesn't scratch as much as Lily does but there is clearly something making her itchy. I've been trying short term elimination diets of only 3-4 weeks and that hasn't been helpful so far. I'm thinking of trying canned hydrolyzed foods just to help determine what the problem protein is.