Chicken Allergy?

[PipersMom]

I suspect Piper may have an allergy or sensitivity to chicken. She seems to get sick every time I give her something with chicken in it. She recently had a severe GI reaction with loose, bloody stool after eating a pate with chicken as a main ingredient. She can definitely handle salmon, so I decided to find a salmon based limited ingredient food (Merrick) and go from there. How do you go about working back in other types of foods and does a chicken allergy necessarily mean an allergy to all poultry? I've never gone through this process, so I am trying to find out how to do it the right way. Thanks!

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi!
This doesn't necessarily answer your question fully, but these are from @Wile from other discussions;
"To figure out problems with a food intolerance you need to run a proper trial elimination diet the same way you would for food allergies. This means feed something like Hills Z/D or a novel protein-based limited ingredient diet for 8-12 weeks. I personally would not feed something like weruva, wellness, or any other non-LID diet during a trial because they tend to mix multiple protein types together, which makes it really hard to figure out what ingredient is triggering the vomiting."

"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."

 

[verna davies]

I have a cat that has an allergy to chicken. If he eats it he has really bad diarrhoea. I feed him turkey dry food but he can eat turkey, lamb or beef wet.
I dont swop daily but tend to feed one wet flavour for about 2 weeks and never change the dry.
Food trials take a bit of time but need to be done. I hope you find the answer quickly

 

[white shadow]

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Hi PipersMom - two points for you

• Cats can develop allergies to certain proteins over time (in my experience it's often to chicken)...so, if Piper used to tolerate chicken in the past, perhaps this is what has happened.
• If you haven't already started with Salmon, I'd strongly recommend against using any fish...there are many reasons for avoiding it, all of them health related. Fish is a very 'addictive substance' for most cats, and people often find it difficult to 'wean' cats from it. As the post above and the quote in the post above that illustrate, there are other available proteins from which you can choose.

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[PipersMom]

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Hi PipersMom - two points for you

• Cats can develop allergies to certain proteins over time (in my experience it's often to chicken)...so, if Piper used to tolerate chicken in the past, perhaps this is what has happened.
• If you haven't already started with Salmon, I'd strongly recommend against using any fish...there are many reasons for avoiding it, all of them health related. Fish is a very 'addictive substance' for most cats, and people often find it difficult to 'wean' cats from it. As the post above and the quote in the post above that illustrate, there are other available proteins from which you can choose.

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Thanks! She is a stray that I've only had for 4 weeks and she was severely malnourished and infested with fleas and ticks when she showed up. I started with salmon because it was the one thing I knew she could tolerate that I've given her (I haven't had a lot of time to experiment yet), but so far she's been willing to eat anything I put in her bowl. Chicken was one of the first things I gave her and it's always been a problem, I only recently really connected the dots when she couldn't tolerate a chicken treat either. I was going to go with duck, but I wasn't sure if it would too similar to chicken? Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough, but I didn't see a lot of limited ingredient foods with anything else. Any suggestions?

 

[white shadow]

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Canned Turkey, Lamb, Beef and Duck, were mentioned in the other posts, and there's also Venison.

I believe the Duck would be fine. If I were doing it, I'd probably start with something totally different to start....maybe Beef.
.

 

[daftcat75]

I don't know if my Krista is allergic to chicken but I know she always looks rough after eating it. As much as I want to use the chicken Rad Cat, I don't like the way it treats her. However, she has no trouble with the turkey. And while I didn't do a full trial (only a meal, really), she seemed okay with Stella and Chewy's Duck Duck Goose. I've also found that rabbit agrees with her. She really really likes the rabbit Rawz. It's a new food introduction for her. Give it a couple weeks and she'll probably be like, "this again?" Nevermind I'm trying to introduce new foods for her so she doesn't do that. She was also getting Tiki Cat Aloha Friends Tuna with Pumpkin despite the fish advice above. I give her an ounce of it as a tweener (between meals meal) for hairball control. It's the only way she will eat pumpkin. She does not get this everyday.

If Piper is stable on salmon, it's better she's stable first. Then you can branch out from there having a stable base. I think there's nothing wrong with fish if a) it's not raw, and b) your cat is eating a variety of other foods too. My Krista probably wouldn't have made it this long with her IBD and pancreatitis if I didn't have Tiki Cat to stabilize her first.

 

[daftcat75]

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Canned Turkey, Lamb, Beef and Duck, were mentioned in the other posts, and there's also Venison.

I believe the Duck would be fine. If I were doing it, I'd probably start with something totally different to start....maybe Beef.
.

Many cats don't tolerate red meat very well. Pork is usually the go-to protein for establishing a baseline. Rabbit is popular too.

 

[Kflowers]

Please read the ingredients carefully. I've found some salmon and other fish foods, and one ingredient foods (chicken isn't that ingredient) that have chicken broth and chicken fat in them. It's annoying and frustrating.

 

[LTS3]

For something totally novel, try the Koha brand which has kangaroo meat.

Some cats who can't tolerate chicken are ok with duck and turkey and other poultry and even eggs. Others cannot tolerate any poultry or poultry product.