Food rotation?

[ladytimedramon]

I've seen a lot of mentions of food rotation here.
What are the benefits of rotating?

How does that work?

Is it rotating foods? Brands?

Can you use multiple proteins or brands during a rotation?

How frequently do you rotate?

 

[minish]

I had a very healthy dog who lived on human food with a bit of meat addition all his life, at a time when commercial dog food was non-existent. I knew cat nutrition is trickier when I adopted a kitten. Nonetheless, I was suprised by the approach of vets and most cat owners in my country: Commercial food is best for cats, you can't make the right composition yourself. Give commercial dry food, one brand, switch only slowly if absolutely necessary. Don't give wet food more than once a week. It's bad and addictive.(!!) This didn't seem right but everybody including experts were in agreement..

When minish was kitten, I fed her primarily on a single food. But was afraid the brand might change formula, run out from shelves etc. so I gave her different brands almost identical in composition (Origen, Acana, N&D chicken, changing as the pack ran out not daily or weekly). Afraid that she might become picky, I offered other things as treats in very small amounts (vegetables, grains, meats, mayo, yoghurt, egg yolk, liver... so that she got acquinted with different stuff)

As minish matured, I read about allergy risks, benefits of variety of protein sources and wet food. I didn't have the financial means to feed completely wet and I was afraid I would make unbalanced food myself. So I started rotating. No scheduled basis. There is usually 1 or 2 kinds of dry, a couple of wet foods at home. She gets dry and wet almost everyday, different brands (protein percentage and nutrient composition similar, protein sources different). I also offer home made foods cooked and raw as whole meals now when I can. She is very healthy but tends to gain weight so I will phase out the dry or reduce it to treats.

I believe these helped with her allergy to chicken based commercial food (most products have chicken parts even if they are primarily other meat but she shows no bad reaction to home made chicken food. Maybe it's the source of carbs in some foods I don't know for sure). She's also not picky at all and adapts very easily to changes with no digestive problems.

 

[LTS3]

Some people rotate proteins. Other rotate brands. Some rotate both. It's really just preference How often to rotate is also preference. Weekly is good. Daily or every single meal is probably too much and might result in a finicky cat.

Rotating brands is ideal because if one brand has a recall or is discontinued, you have other brands that you know your cat will eat.

Rotating proteins keeps cats from being addicted to one particular protein and it offers variety in the diet. If for some reason later in life a cat develops a sensitivity to a particular protein, you can easily drop that protein from the rotation and feed another one and not have to go through a process to entice your cat to try a brand new protein.

 

[ladytimedramon]

What about the "tapering off" everyone seems to recommend? Do you have to do that every time?

 

[minish]

I guess it's recommended for digestive adaptation, a cat used to same food all times tends to get diarrhea with the change. When I switched to a very similar food when I was feeding minish on a single brand and type, there was no need. No need for protein source change of the same brand either, as long as the composition is similar.

Another reason people do it is in case the cat refuses. Minish never completely refuses a food, I have a glutton in my hands!

If you want to start switching or rotating, I see no need unless these two problems occur.

 

[ladytimedramon]

I was doing that initially with Delilah before this whole supposed allergy thing, but i was giving her a different food each meal or each day. But since she's still itching despite the prescription food I wanted to get her back onto some regular canned, which she enjoys far more. For the itching I'm investigating dry skin as recommended by a dog owner friend who experienced a similar incident with her dog.

I just want to make sure I do this right.

 

[minish]

I don't think change of food would trigger itching, rather some of the ingredients if it's food related. I guessed minish had chicken allergy because my vet had warned me before, and she got better with pork or rabbit based foods. However, her case is hyperesthesia attacks, rippling of the skin and then biting and excessive grooming herself, not a consistent skin problem. In any case, these changes don't take effect as soon as we would like to see.
If I were you, I would continue feeding as before, while I tried dry skin remedy (in case it's not the food). If that didn't work, I would turn to food allergy issue (trickier to handle if allergy food doesn't solve it) Hope Delilah gets better soon

 

[ladytimedramon]

Chicken was my concern but it could all be incidental. I'm taking her to a groomer that specializes in cats (only pet supply that I found in my area that is primarily cat everything).

Since I was concerned with that, I had been giving her the vet prescribed Royal Canin dry. But she was still itching, and I started noticing less in the litterbox so I decided to go back to wet breakfast and dinner (Lotus Just Juicy Venison, which I'm sure she never had before), dry RC twice per day.

Does everyone have a variety of dry food they keep stashed for rotating?

 

[KarenKat]

I feed Olive a rotation of wet food / dehydrated raw. I feed her different brands and proteins and I rotate every meal. She doesn’t seem to have any issues with this digestively, and if I feed her the same food too many times in a row she gets bored.

We don’t feed kibble at all, Olive tends to overeat and throw up if we feed a mix of dry and wet. She gets too fat on dry food, and the wet always seems more satisfying.

 

[ladytimedramon]

The dry is mostly because when I start work that's going to be her lunch. Also she likes nighttime snacks.

 

[She's a witch]

I'm not an expert on dry food as I don't currently feed it, but I always believed rotating dry is tricky and in fact not recommended as it takes more for a cat to get used to digestively to dry than to wet. When mine were kittens and I changed their dry, I did this very slowly and still they both had some issues. With wet, they had variety and rotation since I had them and no issues with any change at all.

I personally rotate brands and proteins every meal, as they like this the most this way. They get commercial frozen raw in the morning (limited to poultry), and canned in the evening (poultry, rabbit, lamb, venison, once a week fish). But I have smaller rotation of raw so sometimes they get the same brand/meat every day. I've never been tapering their wet food and there were always fine, but if rotating is new to your cat, I'd definitely make this slower and see how they react.

The other plus of rotating is that if there's something nutritionally incomplete about the food (in theory it shouldn't be but well, I don't trust pet food manufacturers in general), cats get what they need from other brands. PLus, the way I see it, I'd be very unhappy if I were to eat the same food for every meal, why should my cats have such limitation

Good luck!