Best Age To Switch Kittens From Free Feed To Scheduled Meals?

EmmiTemmi

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My two boys, Colby and Monty, are both almost exactly 6 months now. I’ve been leaving dry kitten food out for them all day/night (about 3/8C per kitten) and then twice a day (8am and 8pm) feeding them ½ can of 3oz wet food (with extra water mixed in). I know that eventually I want to switch them over to fully scheduled meals since I can better control their diets that way (When Monty went to the vet they said he was on the heavier side of healthy).

I’ve read several conflicting articles on when the best age to do this is. Some say 4-6 months, in which case I’d like to start switching to just meals soon. Others say around 10mo-1yr, so I would have a lot longer to wait before switching them over. Do any of you on this site have experience switching a young cat over from free to scheduled feedings? Any advice is appreciated.

For reference, Colby is almost 7lbs and Monty is a little over 8lbs. Monty eats a ton of dry food during the day and Colby barely touches the dry and just waits for the wet food.
 

Neo_23

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In my opinion 6 months (and even sooner) is a good time to do this. Otherwise I fear that they will get used to having food all the time and will be difficult to switch over to meals when they are older. I switched my kitten over to "semi-meals" a month ago. I call it "semi-meals" because he gets the same amount of food every day (he eats all canned) but sometimes he gets it at different times or in different portions depending on his appetite. The only reason for this though is that I'm doing all canned and I don't always want to leave it sitting out.
 

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Hello EmmiTemmi EmmiTemmi , you can start them on scheduled feeding as from now. In fact the earlier the better, but as they age, their eating patterns will change. They eat less amount and also less often.

Take away free feeding (dry) and feeding wet food will help control weight gain. Do it in progression so that their system can make adjustments.

Feed a certain amount of wet and watch how much is being consumed and from there roughly gauge the amount for the next feed. Amount and number of times goes hand in hand.

At 6 months old, they are very much kittens still. So feeding them wet food which is proteins will help them in their growing age. And feed them as much as they can eat and you can’t over feed a kitten. Dry food are carbs and very low in moisture and wet food is proteins and high in moisture and your cats will be more hydrated with wet than dry.
 
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EmmiTemmi

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So feeding them wet food which is proteins will help them in their growing age. And feed them as much as they can eat and you can’t over feed a kitten. Dry food are carbs and very low in moisture and wet food is proteins and high in moisture and your cats will be more hydrated with wet than dry.
So I’ve heard many times that wet is better than dry because of the protein content. But when I do dry-basis protein content calculations the results show that there’s more protein in the dry food I’m feeding than in the wet food. Friskies Pate is roughly 190 calories and 31% of those calories are protein (dry-basis). Simply Nourish Kitten dry food ½ cup (about 200 Cal) is 42% protein db. Simply also has LESS carbs db than friskies and about 0.1% more Taurine.

So if between a daily serving (5.5oz) of wet and a daily serving (1/2C) of dry, the dry has more protein and fewer carbs, shouldn’t I be using mostly that? I add in several tablespoons of water to their meals so moisture really isn’t too much of a concern for me. And strictly on a db the dry food seems more nutritious. I’ve heard over and over again that any quality wet is better than any dry, so why do my calculations show the dry as being more nutritious?

I’m fully on board with the idea of going fully wet once they’re on scheduled meals, but I want to make sure that it’s definitely the most nutritious plan for them. I'll try to add in a screenshot of the excel I used but I've never added a picture so I hope it works! The blue highlighted areas are given by the manufacturer and the red is the estimate of percent carbs after subtracting the given percents of macros.
upload_2017-10-17_22-12-41.png
 

Summercats

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EmmiTemmi EmmiTemmi
I don't think Friskies is one of the best quality wet foods. Some wet foods have less meat/protein and more sugar and carbs.
Also consider the source of the protein, what is the protein source.
We used to feed Friskies canned ages ago and lots of dry, I would not do that these days knowing what I do about cat health and nutrition.
 

Neo_23

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EmmiTemmi EmmiTemmi You are right that many dry foods have more protein than wet. I don’t think wet is necessarily better for that reason. I think the 2 main reasons are that wet has more moisture and less carbs (generally). But in some wet foods the carbs are replaced with fat and not protein.
 
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EmmiTemmi

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tabbytom tabbytom I don't actually feed my boys Friskies. I was just having fun on Excel and when I saw the dry-basis values I wanted to know other people's opinions since I've heard many times that even feeding the lowest quality wet is better than any dry. Thank you for the earlier advice about when to switch to meal feedings. I think I'll slowly start doing that over the next couple weeks!

Neo_23 Neo_23 You're completely right that most wet have fewer carbs/more protein than dry. I expanded my list to include several more popular varieties of wet and dry, and saw that Simply Nourish Kitten dry food had, by far, the least carb/most protein of the drys I evaluated. I also included price per daily serving in my chart this time, which was interesting to compare among the brands!
 
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