Mixed diet for 3 month old kittens - recommendations?

[dippica]

We got cute-as-can-be kittens from RSPCA and they were being fed on Royal Canin (sp?) dry food. They are now on Whiskas complete (dry) kitten food.
I'd like to try a mixed diet for them - they've been a bit sloppy in the ploppy department for a few weeks, and I'm not sure the Whiskas complete food agrees with them (although tinned/pouch food might be different).

Any recommendations for brand / balance between wet and dry / etc etc? My experience of the cheapest value cat food (with my older cat) is not great - she leaves it or vomits it back up - yuk. But I don't want to get into buying an expensive brand at this stage - might as well get them used to a brand I want to pay for long term.

Thanks from the kittens for any replies - one acting as my scarf round my neck and one playing with computer cables.

I buy dry food in bulk from a garden centre (massive bags aimed at cattery owners - generic brands which are the same as the main brands - someone on here might know which is which) or big pet shop for large bags of e.g. Hills, Iams, or own brand - obviously you will have to check it agrees with them first. I have found own brand dry food to be better than own brand wet food.

I use Whiskas for pouches and try to buy them when on offer. I tend to avoid Felix as it's produced by Nestle if that is a concern of yours.

Oh and my 1 year old cat has 1-2 pouches a day and dry food always available. He drinks a lot of water, if yours don't drink water then more wet food is advised, you can also mash it up with a little bit of water to get them to drink more, cats evolved to get their water from their food and if fed totally on dry food some cats can be prone to cystitis.

Sorry will stop posting in a minute! I meant to add, I got him when he was 3 months old and used to feed him half a pouch of kitten food three times a day, with dry food always available. If I give him half a pouch now he complains and wants more so I tend to give him a whole one first thing in the morning and another at night if he is really bugging me, but the rest of the time dry food. He seems better (less upsets) on something like Hill's than the boxes of dry food like Whiskas etc. (It's also more economical)

I wouldn't feed Whiskas to our local hedgehog!

Royal Canin is an excellent food, and works out much cheaper than wet food if you buy it in a large bag. James Wellbeloved is another very good dried food.

Cheap cat foods typically have lots of cheap fillers in them hence lots of sloppy poos. Changing back to a good quality dry food should sort this (make any changes gradually, over 5 days or so).

Make sure their worming is up to date too.

HTH

my 3 cats (1 is 3 and 2 are 15months) all eat GoCat fish variety dry food which sorted out the 2 younger cat's sloppy ploppys.

i know that GoCat is only a supermarket brand but sticking to that one seems to have sorted them out. They have been on this one for about 2 months now and all seems well. i bought Whiskers the other day as it was on sale but their sloppys came straight back! i dont give them any meat but do give them tinned fish occasionally as a treat

was told by the vets to stick to the fish varieties as some cats have an intollerance to chicken and other types.

Hope this is some help to you

Right, that is exactly what I was after - thanks everyone.
Will change from Whiskas dry food (gradually) and start on some wet food too. They do drink loads of water, which the older cat doesn't (but she's on wet food pouches), so adding some wet food might mean that I don't have to fill up the water bowl every 5 minutes!
Thanks, any more recommendations?

Definitely try to get off whiskas if you can - ours won't eat anything else and I'm fully aware how crap it is, which makes it worse! They were very ill as kittens so we were just happy to find something, anything, they would eat - and whiskas was it. We've tried all the big brands of dry and wet food since then, but they refuse to eat it. I'm sure they put something in it to make it addictive - on of our cats will actually turn her nose up at fresh prawns to eat her whiskas

All that is changing tomorrow though (gulp!). DH has just had instructions to go and buy them a new food I've found from PAH. It's one of their own brand premium foods called (stupidly enough) 'Purely Scrummy' - the wet food is at least 90% meat/fish, and the dry food is at least 60%, with no nasty additives in either. It's more expensive than the whiskas (obviously, most things are) but that doesn't really matter to us as long as they're healthy. And with good quality cat food they'll eat less anyway. They'll get a tray of wet food each per day (half in the morning, half at night) with a small bowl of dry food left out all the time if they want it. I intend to be unswayed by pleading eyes and whiskers-withdrawal howls, but I'll let you know how I get on!