Trying Darwin's as first raw for cats - anything to keep in mind?

[Annieca2016]

My two girls (both DSH, one 9, one 7) are eating me out of house and home! The vet and I both want them on majority wet food. I'll never have them be on 100% wet food because I do not appreciate a paw in the face at 4 am to be fed so they get Instinct Raw Boost in an auto feeder for their morning meal. So they're each getting 2 3oz cans of wet a day. I've been switching up between Fancy Feast Naturals pate and Tiny Tiger pate but the amount of cans is kind of annoying. (Seriously, 132 cans in a month is a lot of can washing before putting in the recycling!)

So, I was doing some research and realized that it's not that much more expensive (like maybe $20) for them to eat Darwin's. No cans! Better quality than FF or Tiny Tiger! Seems like a win provided my cats will eat it. But, I also know transitioning to raw is not something to be done overnight, and I've heard commercial raw can make a cat constipated initially because of bone content.

So, what advice do you have for me starting out? I JUST got a big shipment from Chewy so I plan on feeding one meal a day raw, one Tiny Tiger, and one kibble. But if they are getting constipated, is it something that adding water to the raw will help? I've tried pumpkin in the past but the only way to get SnapCat to eat it is to smear it all over her tum so her vanity wins out her dislike of pumpkin.

 

[iPappy]

I don't feed Darwins (I have nothing against the company, I just have never used their food) so I'm not sure if this would work for a pre made meal or not, but most of my cats are old and IME require a little less bone than their younger years. If I make up a mix that's a little bone heavy for them, I add chicken hearts, one or two per cat (maybe more if you have a cat that has had bowel issues in the past.) They do tend to loosen the stool a bit, and are really a great source of taurine. I cut them up, because two of my girls will swallow them whole, get them stuck in their throat, then bring them back up. I've used small amounts of chicken or beef liver as a laxative, but if you're feeding something that is already prepared you'll want to check on the organ content of the mix (heart is not an organ, BTW!) to avoid giving too much liver and having the opposite problem.

 

[Tobermory]

I've heard commercial raw can make a cat constipated initially because of bone content.

It depends on the percentage of bone in the food and how susceptible your cats might be to a higher bone content. I don’t know the bone content of Darwin’s, but brands like Stella & Chewy tend to be above 10% which my cats have trouble with (although they love it). I feed Northwest Naturals freeze dried which is about 7% bone and it works better for them. But I also add 1/8 tsp. of Miralax to their twice-daily meals. When I was making their food, I substituted eggshell calcium for bone because of the constipation problem.