Vitamin K In Freeze Dried Food?

[Laudine]

I live in Australia, and I've been having problems finding food that that my 10 months old kitten likes AND good for him. (I'm SO jealous of US peeps! So many variety to choose from! )

His favourite thing ever is freeze dried food. He inhales both moistened freeze dried and when used as topper. There is not much selection here unfortunately. We got Feline Natural, but only the ones containing Salmon and Hoki. I'm not comfortable giving him too much fish so I've been looking for alternatives.

Recently I found this food, and almost everything looks great! Thing is, one of the ingredients listed is Vitamin K. I contacted them inquiring whether it is Menadione or naturally occurring vitamin K, and they said "For the vitamin K we use Phylloquinone from Primrose". From a quick google search it seems like it's sourced from plants. Is it safe? Or is it the same as Menadione?

Thank you in advance!

 

[lisahe]

This is a good question! I googled it up, too, and found this page from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It appears that they are different forms of vitamin K.

The Raw Meow food does sound good, though you might want to watch for constipation due to the relatively high bone content.

 

[Laudine]

This is a good question! I googled it up, too, and found this page from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It appears that they are different forms of vitamin K.

The Raw Meow food does sound good, though you might want to watch for constipation due to the relatively high bone content.

Thank you so much! Whew that's good to know, I was worried that it's the same as Menadione. I'll definitely give it a try then!

Oh I didn't know high bone content could lead to constipation I looked again and they have a boneless option where they substituted bone with eggshell powder. Can eggshell cause constipation?

 

[lisahe]

Thank you so much! Whew that's good to know, I was worried that it's the same as Menadione. I'll definitely give it a try then!

Oh I didn't know high bone content could lead to constipation I looked again and they have a boneless option where they substituted bone with eggshell powder. Can eggshell cause constipation?

I'm glad you asked about the vitamin K, that was interesting to learn!

It's my understanding that eggshell generally shouldn't (given cats' quirky systems, I'd never say never!) cause constipation. We feed our cats quite a bit of food -- probably around 40% of their diet -- that's around 10% bone (or a little less) and I wouldn't want to increase that amount. The other raw foods in their diet are two frozen brands that are probably mostly available in the US -- Rad Cat (eggshell instead of bone) and Oma's Pride Purr (bone) -- but those are fairly small meals. They also get homemade food with eggshell instead of bone; there's also a daily canned meal. The cats eat a very low-carb diet so don't produce much solid waste (there are days when there isn't any in the box) and even though I don't see them straining over the box, I still get the feeling it's best not to raise their intake of bone.

Rad Cat has a FAQ answer about eggshell that you can read here. And how nice that Raw Meow makes a food with eggshell, too! I'd probably want to feed some of each. Our cats love variety!