Is It Okay To Feed Freeze Dried Without Rehydrating?

I searched the forum and found mixed answers.

Some important points:

- The main diet for the cats is wet food. This will be for supplemental.

- It’s likely only for a week and it’s either this option or kibble.

Tl;Dr:

Some people said it was better than kibble, others were more focused on hydration since the OP was wanting to feed it as a main meal (so doesn’t apply to my situation), but I also saw a few comments saying that not rehydrating presented an issue in regards to bone content, which is my main concern.

So if anyone could clarify, i’d be very grateful!

Background info:

The issue is that we’re going away for a week and have a ~4 month old kitten to feed. The sitter is coming 3x a day, but we cannot afford for her to come more than that.

The kitten is separated from the rest of our clowder with her now formerly feral mom in their own room. Mom is also a little less than a year old. Kitten is not food motivated whatsoever, but Mom is a typical crazy food fiend and often eats baby’s food.

I usually monitor this in order to prevent it, but it’s impractical to ask of the sitter (who already has a hefty job caring for our 12 critters inside and 12-15 ferals outside).

Only/healthiest option I could think of to supplement more food for the baby without terribly over feeding mom (who would gulp up kibble all at once if we left a bowl out) was to buy two timed feeders and use freeze dried (Feline Natural, broken up into smaller pieces) or air dried raw (ZP).

Two feeders means kitten will at least have a chance at eating from one feeder while Mom is busy eating from the other one. It also means Momma can’t prevent baby from eating by pushing her out of the way (she really is a great Mom, I swear ).

We were hoping to do ZP since it’s not quite as water depleted, but even with pieces broken up it seems to be jamming the feeder. FN is working fine in it, however.

So can we just feed the FN freeze dried without rehydrating?

I personally wouldn't do freeze dried without rehydrating. The freeze dried foods that I'm familiar with usually expand when you add water to them and I would worry about that happening inside the cat's tummy. I really don't know if it would cause any adverse health issues, but it doesn't sound right to me.

If the issue is just leaving food in the timed feeder that won't go bad - you can do that with wet food. I just freeze portions of the wet food ahead of time (using a covered ice cube tray) and then put the frozen portion in the timed feeder when leaving the house. Depending on how warm your house is, it will take roughly 2 hours to defrost and usually stays fresh for up to 5 or 6 hours. I set my timed feeder for 5 hours when I leave the house and never had a problem. Some timed feeders also allow you to put an ice pack next to the food. I usually do both frozen in advance and ice pack to keep it extra cool.

I use this one:

P. S. The canned food I use is Feline Natural canned.

Oh, another option also is to use Ziwipeak air dried instead of the Feline Natural freeze dried. If it's just a short period of time, the Ziwipeak ones are pretty good quality for a dry food. The venison one is the highest in protein and lowest in carbs, but also the most expensive.

I wouldn't want to feed the Feline Natural for a week unrehydrated. The bone level of that food is unclear (this is one of the reasons I've stopped feeding it) so serving it without water could carry more risk of causing constipation.

A Azazel That was our initial plan, but we tested 3 different wet food timed feeders (including one exactly like the one you linked) and Momma cat was able to break into all of them.

The current one we have is a heavy, secure, high quality dry food only type of feeder.

And I mentioned this in the post, but our Plan B was Ziwipeak air dried! We already have 3-4 flavors (including venison) on hand because we usually have the sitter leave out a bowl in the house to ensure our two old/sick kitties get enough food while we’re gone (we feed them as much as they will eat throughout the day under normal circumstances).

But we can’t get it to work with the feeder for Mom and Kitten or any of the other dry food feeders we’ve tried. It just keeps jamming them up.

So it feels as though our options are limited to non-rehydrated freeze dried, or plain old kibble.

We do have high quality dry as our last resort (Rawz, Tiki, Dr. Eisley’s, etc), but I’d assumed non-rehydrated freeze dried food would be our best bet.

You bring up a very good point I hadn't consider though, about the freeze dried potentially expanding too much in their tummies. I'm not quite as worried about the kitten since she self-regulates (probably too much, actually) but Momma cat definitely wolfs it down and I can see it being an issue for her.

Yeah some cats will definitely try to break the feeders. I put mine between some heavy books to prevent my cats from moving them and it works fine.

I would just use the Dr. Elsey dry stuff for the week. Honestly I’m not a huge fan of freeze dried food. It’s just as dry as dry food and doesn’t really have any other nutritional advantages generally. I don’t see any reason to use the freeze dried over kibble, especially if it’s jusy for a week.

Can I ask why the heavy feeder wouldn’t work with wet food? What if you pre-portion the wet food to a size that fits and freeze it before putting it in the feeder?

lisahe Thank you, I wonder if that's why I was finding comments concerned about bone content now!

I had only searched "freeze dried" generally, not Feline Natural. However, in hindsight, I am almost certain that the three threads I came across where the bone content issue came up just happened to have an OP asking about Feline Natural.

At the time I didn't make the connection to FN specifically, since it wasn't explicitly stated, and just extrapolated that being a potential issue with all freeze dried, so your comment really helps clear that up. Good to know, I'll scale back our use to strictly small snacks/topper for it in the future.

Do you think constipation would still be an issue if fed in small amounts between meals for only a week and considering I've noticed no constipation issues with it in the months they've eaten it?

Granted, it's never been a regular part of their diet before. Only part of our rotation 1-2x a week for them, fed as a small snack, or used as a treat or food topper. And admittedly, it is difficult to monitor the bathroom habits of 10 cats, especially the ones who spend most of their time separated in rooms.

Would you consider feeding "high quality" kibble preferable, if given the choice? We have RAWZ, Tiki Cat chicken, and Dr. Eisley's.

A Azazel I generally prefer the ingredients in freeze dried compared to even higher quality kibble. I was also under the impression that more of the actual nutrients are preserved through the freeze drying process comparatively. I could always be wrong about that, however.

We don't normally feed either, but this year we've been travelling A LOT.

A week with dry obviously won't kill them, which is why we bought it and have been slowly testing/introducing it the past month or so just in case we needed it. But I'd have preferred to feed a wet food or raw based food if possible. Maybe it's just time to accept defeat here.

The feeder we have is more of a gravity feeder. It is similar to this -
When we were trying to make wet food work, we had tried one like what you linked, as well as two versions like this -
The gravity feeders just won't accommodate wet food, let alone frozen wet food.

Ah, okay. I see about the feeder.
I had a problem with one of my cats trying really hard to break my Catmate feeder too, and they knocked it over several times. But placing it between some heavy books has worked well ever since. I was thinking I might actually try filling the bottom with rocks to make it heavier instead of using the books.

It probably depends on which freeze dried you’re feeding, I guess. I generally stay away from commercial raw foods with bone because they typically have way too much bone in them. If you’re not rehydrating the freeze dried I honestly don’t think it has much of an advantage over a higher protein kibble.

I only feed freeze dried raw without re-hydrating as a treat or a couple nuggets on the side of wet food or homemade. It's really, really dry. I don't know how it compares to the moisture content of dry kibble but I find that a 1 gram nugget requires about 2-3 grams of water to fully hydrate. It really doesn't swell all that much so broken into pieces, I don't think that would be a major problem as there are some dry kibbles that really swell. But the freeze dried is really dry and if the cat isn't drinking the water to make up for it, I'd worry about dehydration. For a full meal, that's quite a bit of water that the cat would really need to drink. But these are just my personal thoughts.

As far as the quality versus dry kibble. The Stella and Chewy's freeze dried, by ingredients, is pretty good stuff. That's the freeze dried that I feed. The only thing that prevents me from feeding it more is the bone content. That and the fact that my cat thinks it crack. He'd eat nothing else if I fed him too much of it. But it's great as a topper, treat or mix in which is all that I use it for.

moxiewild said:

lisahe Do you think constipation would still be an issue if fed in small amounts between meals for only a week and considering I've noticed no constipation issues with it in the months they've eaten it?
<snip!>
Would you consider feeding "high quality" kibble preferable, if given the choice? We have RAWZ, Tiki Cat chicken, and Dr. Eisley's.

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First question: it's hard to say since constipation is a very individual thing. We have two cats who are littermates: one gets constipated and the other doesn't. Cutting out a freeze-dried meal with bone and adding a little pumpkin to Ireland's diet has helped. Ireland now only gets one meal of FD a day and its bone content is only six percent. (The other foods were ten or more. Ireland loved, really loved Feline Natural but with the price rise and uncertainty about the bone content, I nixed it.)

Would I feed dry? If I were faced with your situation and my only choices were FD raw and regular dry food, I guess I'd feed the regular dry food. Dr. Elsey's because it's low-carb. I think "accept defeat" might be my position on the matter, too. "It's just a week" and all that. Though I'd still be unhappy! (Our cats haven't had any regular kibble food since early 2014!)

darg said:

I only feed freeze dried raw without re-hydrating as a treat or a couple nuggets on the side of wet food or homemade.

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A resounding yes to this! When I sprinkle bits of freeze-dried on wet meals, I always notice how really, really dry the stuff is! I do feed occasional Northwest Naturals nuggets a day to Edwina as a treat -- small amounts don't worry me but I wouldn't want to feed whole meals of it without water.

lisahe said:

First question: it's hard to say since constipation is a very individual thing. We have two cats who are littermates: one gets constipated and the other doesn't. Cutting out a freeze-dried meal with bone and adding a little pumpkin to Ireland's diet has helped. Ireland now only gets one meal of FD a day and its bone content is only six percent. (The other foods were ten or more. Ireland loved, really loved Feline Natural but with the price rise and uncertainty about the bone content, I nixed it.)

Would I feed dry? If I were faced with your situation and my only choices were FD raw and regular dry food, I guess I'd feed the regular dry food. Dr. Elsey's because it's low-carb. I think "accept defeat" might be my position on the matter, too. "It's just a week" and all that. Though I'd still be unhappy! (Our cats haven't had any regular kibble food since early 2014!)


A resounding yes to this! When I sprinkle bits of freeze-dried on wet meals, I always notice how really, really dry the stuff is! I do feed occasional Northwest Naturals nuggets a day to Edwina as a treat -- small amounts don't worry me but I wouldn't want to feed whole meals of it without water.

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I agree with lisahe and A Azazel . I’m an ardent homemade raw food advocate, but I wouldn’t leave non-hydrated freeze-dried raw out.

I use half nuggets of dry freeze-dried NW Naturals for treats, too, and sometimes I crumble a nugget on top of Iris’s food in particular to encourage her to eat. (She’s slightly underweight, picky, and eats slowly.) It really is incredibly dry. I wouldn’t leave it out for them to graze on.

I’d supplement with Dr. Elsey’s dry (which is the best of the kibbles IMO). In fact, I have supplemented with it. Given the overall quality of what I feed, I figure the odd day or week here or there isn’t going to ruin their health.

I know Mom and Baby aren’t that far apart in age so they may be close in size, but I had a thought. If Mom is a lot bigger than Baby, can you create a space that only Baby can squeeze through and put the food inside? Of course, if Mom is that food motivated (and I have one of those), she might try to push her way in and get stuck.

Tobermory said:

I know Mom and Baby aren’t that far apart in age so they may be close in size, but I had a thought. If Mom is a lot bigger than Baby, can you create a space that only Baby can squeeze through and put the food inside? Of course, if Mom is that food motivated (and I have one of those), she might try to push her way in and get stuck.

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Have you done this, Tobermory? I seem to remember someone mentioning doing something like this! It's a great idea.

lisahe said:

Have you done this, Tobermory? I seem to remember someone mentioning doing something like this! It's a great idea.

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No, I just remembered reading it here on TCS and thought I’d pass it on.

I don’t know if you need another feeder moxiewild , but I used the feeder below with the ZiwiPeak air dried and it worked great. I just needed to tape the feeder to something (wall, chair) as my cat would try to knock it over to get to the food (he never managed though)
WOPET Automatic Pet Feeder Food Dispenser for Cats and Dogs-Features: Distribution Alarms, Portion Control, Voice Recorder, Programmable Timer for up to 4 Meals per Day