Peak Food Consumption for Kittens

[orange&white]

I have a few weeks of data now since I purchased the handy-dandy scale that can weigh both food and cats.

Warning: This information may only be interesting to my fellow data geeks.

Farrell's weight has increased every week, but is now starting to increase at a decreasing rate.

As her weight has increased, the "% of body weight in food" she is eating has consistently decreased (which was my original query).

The average ounces of food per week has increased, until last week. I rotated from a lean turkey mix the previous week, to a fattier and higher calorie chicken mix last week. That accounts for the drop in ounces per day. She got full faster with the chicken mix. Average calories would be more useful than ounces of food, but my food rotations vary too much, so I doubt I'll be trying to calculate the calories per ounce in each mix.

 

[orange&white]

Bummer.  My data graph didn't publish after I hit "Submit".  I'm apparently not geeky enough to figure out how to insert an Excel chart on TheCatSite.

Here is the raw data:
 

	Farrell Weight	Ounces Food	% of Body Weight
03/05/17	5.750	6.01	6.54
03/12/17	6.188	6.20	6.26
03/19/17	6.438	6.46	6.27
03/26/17	6.750	6.50	6.02
04/02/17	6.969	6.10	5.84
04/09/17	7.156

 

[orange&white]

Farrell is doing great on her raw diet. Sunday is weigh-in day.

She gained 6 ounces this week to 7.53 pounds, her second-highest weight gain.

She ate less than usual though. Only 5.5 ounces of food a day and 4.8% of her body weight. I was getting a little worried about her eating about an ounce a day less food, until she weighed-in today. The first half of the week, I was feeding a fairly high-fat, high-calorie chicken mix.

 

[petercotton]

I have not posted in this thread lately, but your last post prompted me to do so.

Gracie seems to be doing the same as Farrell. She is not eating nearly as much as she was. Now all she really wants to eat is her 3oz serving in the morning and at night. No snack during the day or at night while I sleep. Maybe it is the warmer weather that is making them not want to eat as much?

Just weighed her, much to her dislike, and she is at 8.6 pounds. That is down from 9 pounds about 2 weeks ago.

 

[orange&white]

Yes, it could be the warmer weather. I try not to start running my A/C constantly until I can't stand the heat anymore...and it's getting about that time to start paying high electric bills for comfort. So the house is pretty warm in the afternoon/evening.

I was also feeding a really fatty mix most of last week (chicken thighs with all the skin). Trying to get my fat senior to lose weight, I was giving 2 pieces of skin to Farrell for every 1 piece of skin my senior ate. The rest was all thigh chunks, hearts, gizzards, liver and their supplements. I'm thinking Farrell ate less mainly because the food was calorie-dense. She did have an almost record-setting weight gain for the week (and my senior only lost 1/2 of one ounce even with less food and less fat).

Gracie is approaching 9 months, so she is probably 90% of her full weight I think? She may be levelling out. 6 ounces of food is 4.2% of a 9lb body weight...still a ravenous kitten portion.

Farrell continues to eat more food than the 15.5 pound senior cat.

 

[orange&white]

Today's weigh-in:

Farrell gained 3 ounces last week to 7.7 pounds. She's now 6 months + 3 weeks old.
She's been eating noticeably less over the last two weeks. Last week she ate 5.3 oz avg per day, or 4.4% of her body weight.

 

[orange&white]

Farrell gained 4.5 ounces last week to exactly 8 pounds, just in time for her 7 month birthday!
When I got her at 4 months old, she weighed 4 pounds, so she has grown like a weed in 3 months.

She ate 5.74 ounces of food per day last week, or 4.65% of her (previous week's) body weight.

 

[orange&white]

Farrell's appetite was "off" this week. She started refusing to eat breakfast in the mornings, but ate 2-3 healthy-sized meals late afternoon and late evening.

Her food consumption decreased to 4.37 ounces avg per day, and she lost one ounce of weight from 8 pounds to 7.94.

I would like to move her to two meals a day, breakfast and dinner, but with her skipping breakfast she is trying to foil my plot! Yesterday I offered her 4 meals in the morning which she didn't eat, and 4 in the afternoon to night which she nibbled bits of each for 4.9 ounces yesterday.