What Novel Proteins Do You Keep On Reserve?

mizzely

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So my late Jasmine we had to go through a bunch of different foods for allergies as it was expected she was intolerant of chicken, turkey, fish, and grains. Lydia of course ate the same foods: venison, rabbit, beef, lamb, etc. But it has been 6 months or more for some of those.

Now that it's just Lydia and we are cementing her new rotation, I'm trying to be mindful of keeping a few proteins aside so that we have a fallback if she develops an allergy at all.

Right now I know she has quail, chicken, turkey, duck, beef as her main diets, but I see a few of the cans I have contain salmon, pork broth, and Lamb.

How many is a reasonable amount of protein to keep on lockdown? Venison, kangaroo, and rabbit I can of course keep her off of, but should I move any other protein off the menu?
 

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Venison, rabbit, and kangaroo are all fine to keep in reserve. They can also be very expensive meats to feed, unless you know a hunter. Personally I would have chosen a cheaper and easy to source meat to keep in reserve like duck, but I think you are beyond being able to do that at this point. If you are feeding canned foods you also have to keep in mind the vegetable proteins that she is being exposed too like wheat, potato, and pea.

For allergy testing vets usually recommend feeding a novel diet. Since she has already been exposed to the proteins you list in her main diet there isn't much point in holding them back. I'm sure she likes the variety too. She is a lucky kitty :)

Edit: I just reread and noticed that she has been already exposed to venison and rabbit too. I guess you are stuck with kangaroo or hydrolized proteins for allergy testing trials
 
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daftcat75

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Unless you are actively doing an elimination diet or looking for trigger foods, I believe three proteins should be fine for regular rotation. I would also rotate which three you use every so often, maybe every six months, put one protein back in reserve and bring a reserve off the bench. I believe food allergies are caused by feeding a cat with an inflamed leaky gut the same proteins over and over enough for them to leak into the bloodstream and the immune system to get involved. If she doesn't have a leaky gut (no active IBD), you're probably fine just rotating through your three regular proteins and rotating one in and one out every so often.

If you do have an active IBD process going, you'll need to heal that first or whatever protein you are using today can become tomorrow's allergen. If I had to do it over again knowing the difference raw made with Krista, I would have bitten the bullet and done the feline-nutrition.org "Introductory Diet" for IBD which is two weeks of raw meat and bone broth to heal and seal before returning to regular foods again (raw or otherwise.)
 
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mizzely

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Well in that case I have no proteins that are safe. She's had all of them while Jasmine was alive. :(
 
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mizzely

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She has no IBD or health issues whatsoever. I just am trying to be proactive.
 
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daftcat75

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She has no IBD or health issues whatsoever.
Then I wouldn't worry about it. Pick three for regular rotation and every few months, bench one and bring a reserve off the bench. I don't think it will be an issue unless she begins to develop a leaky gut from chronic inflammation.
 
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mizzely

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Then I wouldn't worry about it. Pick three for regular rotation and every few months, bench one and bring a reserve off the bench. I don't think it will be an issue unless she begins to develop a leaky gut from chronic inflammation.
She gets bored with food very easily so that's why I have such a spread. :(
 

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I would keep a poultry and a red meat in rotation. You're quite lucky that she likes red meat because that opens you up to a whole bunch of game meats if you really need to find something she hasn't had before (elk, bison, wild boar,...)
 

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Never hurts to keep something back, but if she is a healthy cat chances are that you will never have to deal with food allergies. :)

I'm at a point now where I am starting to realize that the current rabbit diet my boy is on might not be working. I have a recipe for horse meat, goat meat, and a few fish like trout. daftcat75 daftcat75 is right, you are lucky your cat will eat red meat. Mine won't, and it is a pain because he has no interest in more accessible exotic meats like venison.
 
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mizzely

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Never hurts to keep something back, but if she is a healthy cat chances are that you will never have to deal with food allergies. :)
Well she is 9, but Jasmine didn't start having issues until she was 12 :/
 

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Well she is 9, but Jasmine didn't start having issues until she was 12 :/
We never know what foods we feed today can become the problems of tomorrow. This is why it's good to not be all-in but also to rotate your rotation. It spreads the blame around. If there is a problematic protein in your bunch, you're rotating it out every so often. Like letting a field go fallow for a season to allow the soil to replenish.
 

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If Jasmine likes bone broth (homemade or store bought as long as it has no salt, spices, vegetables or other additives), I would add some of that to her food every now and again for the extra gut-regenerative powers of collagen and gelatin in her diet. An ounce of prevention as it were.
 
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mizzely

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If Jasmine likes bone broth (homemade or store bought as long as it has no salt, spices, vegetables or other additives), I would add some of that to her food every now and again for the extra gut-regenerative powers of collagen and gelatin in her diet. An ounce of prevention as it were.
Jasmine sadly died in November due to cancer :( but I do add gelatin and bone broth to Lydia's diet 1-2 times a week
 

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Wrong cat. My mistake. Sorry about that and sorry for your loss.
 
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mizzely

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So a little more info as to why I'm feeding such a large amount of variety right now.

Around September 2014, at the age of 13 (not 12 as I had originally stated) Jasmine started to lick her stomach bare. After testing thyroid, among other things, we found no indication as to why she was doing that, beyond the fact that we'd had a baby recently, and she's always been a bit of an over groomer. After trying anti anxiety meds, prednisolone, etc with no change, we put her on novel protein diets which seemed to help a ton. So we went with that. I fed rabbit, kangaroo, lamb, beef, and venison.

Around June 2018, Jasmine stopped eating any of the novel proteins she had, and was losing a lot of weight. Her poops also stank crazy when she did eat. She was vomiting almost daily. Her symptoms on the assumed intolerances were much less mild, so with the blessings of the vet, we gave her what she would eat with gusto - Friskies, 9 lives, Paws N Claws.

In November, Jasmine went from skinny to severely bloated in 12 hours, wasn't eating, using the litter box, or moving. The next day we took her to the vet. She had a mass in her abdomen, and it was filling her entire abdomen with a cancerous fluid. She was suffering and while we could delay the inevitable for a week at most, we made the decision to out her down.

Lydia stopped eating. All of the food she had eaten with Jasmine the last several months she would not touch. I rushed out to the stores to buy a can of everything in town. I asked companies for samples. I drove 45 minutes to PetSmart for more variety to try. I tried cuts, shreds, gravy, pouches, pate, mousse, broths, cans, and trays. I bought a SureFeed Pet Bowl to keep her food moist. I also bought a few dry foods as she has always liked dry.

In the end the foods she LOVES are the ones I kept. She only likes Pate or Mousse 99% of the time

- Wysong Epigen 90 dry food (Chicken)
- Wysong Archetype Quail Freeze Dried (Quail)
- Nature's Variety Instinct Chicken (chicken, turkey)
- American Journey Variety Pack (chicken, turkey, beef)
- Weruva Slide N Serve Newly Feds (beef, salmon, mackerel)
- Tiki Cat Mousse (chicken)
- Nutro Soft Loaf Duck (Duck, Chicken Broth, Pork Broth)


Then I have a few cans/pouches of random stuff still that she does eat but not with any excitement, so I probably won't be buying more of anytime soon; these contain lamb, chicken, turkey, mackerel, beef. I'll feed them as they are gone (I have 1 to 2 cans of most of them)

If I feed her the same food 2 days in a row, she will not eat it. If I feed it every other day, it is hit or miss. But if I feed it, wait 2 days and then feed it again, she'll eat it just fine. So each week I need at least 3 types of food in rotation in order to keep her interest.

Anyways, that's why I cast such a far net. She is just now starting to lick her bowl clean again this week. I use the freeze dried Quail as a topper. They do have a chicken recipe but she doesn't care for it, whereas she loves the Quail.

She has not been fed Kangaroo, Venison, or Rabbit since prior to June 2018. If she does have an allergy at some point in life, and I can't use those, then so be it.

I have tried raw with her several times: homemade frozen, freeze dried, etc. She won't even eat the freeze dried reconstituted, even though she loves it dry or on her wet food.
 

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Are Lydia's texture preferences a recent development? When was the last time she had a full dental exam under anesthesia with X-rays? This month is Pet Dental Health Awareness Month. You should be able to find some kind of discount on the kitty dental this month.

If the teeth are in good shape, you do what you gotta do to keep them eating. Krista's rotation is more a supply issue than anything else at the moment. She eats Rawz Turkey, Duck, and Rabbit flavors. Of the three or four local stores that sell Rawz, none of them sell all three flavors. So the rotation is which store had what flavor when I bought a stack of cans. We go through a stack until I start to run low. Whichever stack I bring home from whichever store had one of her flavors is the flavor that we feed until that stack runs out. I'm fortunate that she's fairly amenable to this arrangement. She's fortunate that I'm willing to do this for her.
 
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mizzely

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Are Lydia's texture preferences a recent development? When was the last time she had a full dental exam under anesthesia with X-rays? This month is Pet Dental Health Awareness Month. You should be able to find some kind of discount on the kitty dental this month.

If the teeth are in good shape, you do what you gotta do to keep them eating. Krista's rotation is more a supply issue than anything else at the moment. She eats Rawz Turkey, Duck, and Rabbit flavors. Of the three or four local stores that sell Rawz, none of them sell all three flavors. So the rotation is which store had what flavor when I bought a stack of cans. We go through a stack until I start to run low. Whichever stack I bring home from whichever store had one of her flavors is the flavor that we feed until that stack runs out. I'm fortunate that she's fairly amenable to this arrangement. She's fortunate that I'm willing to do this for her.
She's always only liked Pates in her whole 9 years. Jasmine was the same. I tried the other textures just in case but they were still a no go. She still eats and enjoys dry food (if she had her choice she would only eat dry but I keep it at a minimum as she is not a good drinker.)

I've never had her knocked out for a dental exam. We've only done the wellness check and that was back in June 2018 when Jasmine had her checkup too.
 

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Since we don't have any food-related issues, I don't. The foods I feed include chicken, turkey, tilapia, tuna, salmon, beef, venison and sometimes buffalo.
 
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mizzely

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Since we don't have any food-related issues, I don't. The foods I feed include chicken, turkey, tilapia, tuna, salmon, beef, venison and sometimes buffalo.
I'm only concerned because Jasmine had no issues for 13 years :( But, she was on basically chicken, fish, turkey or Orijen original for majority of her life. So that probably contributed. Lydia has had more variety starting around age 5 for her so hopefully she doesn't have any issues later in life!
 

tarasgirl06

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I'm only concerned because Jasmine had no issues for 13 years :( But, she was on basically chicken, fish, turkey or Orijen original for majority of her life. So that probably contributed. Lydia has had more variety starting around age 5 for her so hopefully she doesn't have any issues later in life!
Yes, I join you in hoping she will never have these problems! Poor Jasmine.
 
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