What did you feed your kittens?

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Just looking at options, obviously we'll continue what the breeder is using for the first week or so and gradually wean. Did you feed any dry? Did you fed raw? Did you feed kitten specific tins/pouches? Any lessons learned? Many thanks.

My most recent kitten had royal canin baby cat dry and kitten wet for the first 12 months - he had a lot of growing to do as his mama is a pedigree maine coon. He's a very slim 6kg now at almost 2. Once he turned a year old we were really mean to him and made him eat weaned him onto iams adult and whiskas wet like our other cats, much to his disgust.

I wouldn't buy any food stocked in a vets, they get paid commission (I believe) to sell it which doesn't sit right with me.

Animal by products are fine, you will find them in even the best quality food. It's things like offal, etc, basically bits from an animal that aren't muscle meat.

Are you looking to buy from a pet store or online moln?

My kitten is on royal chin Persian kitten, I leave the biscuits for her to graze all day. She is also offered half a packet of whiskas kitten twice a day but she doesn't seem too interested in that.

Royal canin!

Raw feeding is easy to do, but if you are nervous why not try one of the premade raw suppliers? There is Natures Instinct, Natures Menu and Nutriment.

My two cats (A maine coon and a ragdoll) are fed one meal of raw and three meals of wet (Bozita, Smilla, Macs, CFF) a day, with a tiny handful of Wainwrights dry for them because I work all day.

They are kittens so are fed to demand basically. When they get a bit older I'll cut them down to 3 meals a day instead of 4.

If you go to The Happy Kitty Company or Zooplus you can get so many great grain free foods for your cats that you won't find in supermarkets or P@H.

You want to ideally avoid a wholly dry food diet because they are packed with carbs that cats struggle to digest and also reduce fluid intake, and cats tend to get majority of their fluids from their diet

I'm not sure I'm fine with either just need to decided!

There's a pet store down the road to me which I've yet to get to (this whole kitten coming to live with us was a bit unplanned!!), from it's web site it sells

Royal Canin
Arden Grange
Science Plan

Obviously if I go for online with say www.zooplus.ie the world is my oyster (so to speak)

Personally I wouldn't feed Royal Canin or Science Plan to my cats purely because of the cost, and that they aren't that good compared to other cheaper foods.

I was reluctant to buy from Zooplus at first but it's so convenient and the service is pretty good. Although beware, I end up spending a fortune on there on toys and cat trees lol!

Zooplus is a really good bet, deliveries can take 3-4 days though so just bear that in mind when you are ordering (I got caught short last month).

You could try happy kitty company too, not sure if they ship to Ireland though?

Also Fetch do quite a few good foods.

I'll take a look at them thanks (if they don't ship to Ireland there is parcel motel which is great solution for that issue!)

Can you feed them raw meat or fish?

I'm wary of the bones and choking the poor thing.

Cats are designed to eat bones and raw meat. What they should never eat is cooked bones. These are at risk of splintering and causing very serious internal tears and sometimes death.

Feeding cats commercial raw means the bones are ground up but the best way to keep a cats teeth healthy are to give it a raw chicken wing or small drumstick to chew :)

Just think of all the birds and mice cats eat!

Fish you should be careful of though. Generally you should feed fish cooked (poached white fish is a favorite in my house).

Thanks for the info, interesting.

With the pre-packaged/prepared raw (e.g. nutriment) is it unlikely to contain worms / parasites compared to if you prepare raw yourself?

The pre packed stuff is all human grade so shouldn't contain worms anyway.

I've never heard of a cat getting worms from raw food :)

great thanks- i will give raw a go once they're settled