what to feed my new kittens.

Hi guys,

I have some questions about feeding my two kittens.

They are 10 weeks old and we adopted them this Saturday (July 14).

Their foster mum had been feeding them Iams canned kitten food and TechniCal dry food. Are these foods good for my kittens or should I change it (if so any suggestions?)

Also how many times should I feed them.
for the past 2 days I have been feeding them canned food twice a day (morning and afternoon) and left dry food out all day.

and finally how much canned food should a kitten be given.

sorry for all the qustions but i just want to make sure i do this right.
i'll really appreciate any help:love:

on the subject of feeding you will get as many answers as there are. :laughing:

maybe you should ask what OTHERS feed and why??

we feed all of our cats a raw prey model. if we had as kittens i dont think we would have the gingivitis problems we ahve now nor, i suspect, the weight problems we do. if you guys are interested, check out the raw food forum here. folks here have had great advice and i know, personally, ive done hours and hours of research on it..... itsd way way more simple than it sounds!!

if you dont want to feed your animals raw foods, i would strongly suggest a wet, grain free food slightly watered down with raw chicken rib bones for dental care. cats dont have the instinct to drink water like most other mammals do. makign sure they get enough water is sometimes a hard thing to do. grains and rice are not a part of their natural diet. they lack the length in their intestinal tract to process it.

they should be fed several times a day or free range unless you notice they are getting a little pudgy. most kittens will eat what they need and leave the rest.

congrats on your two new beauties!! i miss the kitten stage sometimes. :D

-ashley

Going along with what want4rain has said, I think if I was starting over with kittens, I’d be doing the raw thing. I also realize that it’s not for everyone, in which case, a quality canned food is the way to go. In my case, on the weekends I feed my cat (14yr old diabetic) a pre-made raw food that I buy from my local pet food store and during the week he free-feeds on canned (mostly Wellness grain-free varieties, occasionally Innova, Natural Balance, Wysong, stuff like that). It took me probably a year or so to wean him off kibble, but it’s made a big difference in lowering his insulin requirements (and it was dry food that made him diabetic in the first place).

So ya, there’s no need to feed any dry at all, not even for dental health (it’s an old myth that dry food is better for their teeth –actually quite the opposite is often true). You can leave wet food out for free-feeding if that’s what you would prefer, but meal-feeding is more in line with the way a cat does it in nature. The other advantage to set meals in multi-cat households is that you can better keep an eye on how much each cat is eating. Loss of appetite is often the first sign of illness in cats and it can take longer to figure out who has a problem in a free-feeding situation. Kittens probably do best with 3 or 4 meals a day (or if you aren’t going to be home, enough food left out to equal that), but as they grow up, 2 meals a day are fine. Wellness makes a decent canned kitten food, but you really don’t have to get specifically “kitten” food, any quality adult food is also fine. Here's an article on choosing a canned food with a list of some of the better brands: http://www.catinfo.org/commercialcannedfoods.htm

If you are at all interested in giving raw a try, you can download a free coupon here: http://naturesvariety.com/tryit/
for a 3lb bag of frozen raw Nature’s Variety (http://naturesvariety.com/content.lasso?r=1146778&page=1430&-session=naturesvariety:D1521A84117b71BE33rkIv84AAF 6) (their canned is also excellent – and grain free - although it tends to be expensive).

One caution about changing food is that it should probably be done gradually. Some kitties have sensitive stomachs and switching too fast can result in temporary diarrhea. Whatever you decide, let us know how it goes. And good for you for being so thorough regarding the care of your new family members!

Thanks!!:D

I don’t think we ca do the raw food thing.
So we’ll have to go with canned food.

And we’ll prolly feed them twice a day. I am home right now but school starts in about 6 weeks.
A book I read suggested kittens need (300g-500g) canned food. Does that sound about right??

The adoption rep suggested Wellness, but they were given Iams @ the foster home. So I didn’t want to risk upsetting their stomachs by making the change right away.