# How to do a food rotation?



## yellowdaisies (Jan 25, 2011)

Hi everyone!

My husband and I just recently adopted 2 kittens, Spencer and Lily. They are about 5 months old now. 

I've read that it is a really good idea to rotate brands/flavors of food, but despite all the research I've done, I'm still unsure of how to go about it. 

Right now, both kittens seem very healthy. At their check up a couple weeks ago, the vet said their weights are perfect and everything is just fine. We are feeding a combination of wet and dry food. We feed them wet in the morning and in the evening, and free feed the dry food. 

The dry food is Chicken Soup for the Kitten Lover's Soul. I'm not sure if anyone has heard of this brand - it's relatively uncommon, but it has a lot of great reviews online. It is not grain free (brown rice), but it has very high quality ingredients, is cheaper than the "premium" grocery store brands, and the kittens love it. If we were to do a dry food rotation, we would probably bring in Merrick Before Grain and/or Wellness Kitten. 

For wet food, we feed them Wellness (the regular kind - they both would barely touch the kitten kind, maybe because their foster mom was feeding them regular Wellness), and Merrick Before Grain. We feed multiple flavors of each, but only the grain free Wellness varieties. We also tried Innova Evo, because of all the great things I've read about it, but Spencer wouldn't eat it. Lily loved it though, so I'd like to keep it in her rotation. 

My question is - how do you set up a rotation? I've read that you have to gradually switch between dry foods, but is it the same for wet foods? What about switching within one brand but between different flavors? How many brands of food and flavors should we be rotating? 

Obviously I am rather confused.  But I really want to be sure that Spencer and Lily are getting the best diet possible, presented to them in a way that will not be hard on their stomachs. 

Oh, and I welcome food recommendations.  We have a really amazing pet store nearby that stocks every premium brand I've ever heard of, and for cheaper prices than I've seen anywhere else, so availability is not a problem. That said...I am not really ready to tackle a raw food diet, so canned and dry only, please.

THANK YOU!!!:smiles


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## saitenyo (Nov 28, 2010)

The gradual switch only needs to be done with foods they've never had before, just in case their digestive systems aren't used to a particular new ingredient and/or need to build up the appropriate gut flora to digest it. Once their stomachs are used to the ingredients in a new food, then adding it into the rotation and switching between already-familiar foods should be no issue at all!

How fast or slow you can go depends on the individual cat. Some are more sensitive to food changes than others. It seems like cats that are already used to variety seem to tolerate introductions of new food better than those that have been consistently eating the same thing for a long time. 

I don't feed dry anymore but when I did in the past, I would always gradually add the new dry into whatever old dry they were on over the course of a week. I never rotated dry foods regularly so I only did this when switching to a new brand for a while, but I would imagine once they're used to all of the varieties you want to feed, it's probably fine to do a different one each day or mix a few together? Not sure.

I never had any issues introducing new wet foods. I didn't have to gradually mix them in, so if your cats tolerate sudden new wet flavors just fine, then I wouldn't worry about doing it gradually. 

The specific way to do a canned rotation really depends on your individual preferences and serving sizes. Number of varieties is totally up to you. I rotate between 3 different brands (Wellness, Merrick, and Blue Buffalo Wilderness). Off the top of my head, I think I do 2 or 3 flavors of Wellness, 1 flavor of Merrick's Gourmet Entrees (the only one of those my cats like is Cowboy Cookout), and between 1-3 flavors of Merrick Before Grain, and then I just do 1 flavor of the Blue Wilderness. 

My specific reasoning behind this arrangement has mostly to do with my personal feeding preferences and costs. Wellness is the cheapest of these 3 brands for me, so I use them for all the easy-to-find meats like Chicken and Turkey. Merrick Before Grain is the only brand I can find that offers quail (and I like to offer a variety of meats) so i always include their Quail & Chicken flavor in my rotation. Sometimes I use their chicken and turkey flavors, but not always since the Wellness is cheaper and I think Apollo likes that better. I don't like feeding beef super often so I use their favorite beef variety for that (the Cowboy Cookout) once a week usually, and I don't like feeding BB Wilderness too often just because it's so expensive! But they're the only brand I can find that has duck, so I include a little of that in the rotation.

How often I rotate just depends on can size and how big each meal is. I used to rotate flavors daily, since one 5.5 oz can would last me one day for both cats when they were both on canned and kibble. Now that Athena is on 100% raw and Apollo is on 1/2 raw and 1/2 canned the cans tend to last me a while longer, so basically I just open a new one when the old one runs out (usually every other day). I like to arrange my rotation so he gets a different meat every time I open a new can (i.e. if the last can was chicken, the next one will be turkey) just because he tends to get finicky if he eats the same thing every day.

So as you can see, a lot comes down to what works best for you and your cats! I don't think there's any specific way you "have" to do it. As long as they seem to be happy, healthy, and eating it, then whatever rotation you choose should work fine. Some cats (like my Athena) seem fine with flavors being doubled-up, and some (like Apollo) refuse to touch their food if they eat the same thing too many meals in a row (which is why he had to stay on half-canned, since I can't get enough variety with just raw currently), so I'd just do what works best for your cats.


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## Susan (Mar 29, 2010)

A lot will depend on the cats and how tolerant their "system" is. But, normally, you can rotate wet from one meal to the next -- that is, you don't need to do any sort of gradual rotation. That applies for both rotating brands and rotating flavors. How many brands/flavors is really up to you and what the cats will eat. If you're feeding Merrick BG, Wellness and Evo, that sounds like a good selection. There are various flavors within each brand that you could choose from, which would give you quite a good variety. I would stay away from too many fish flavors, since too much fish is not good...and, once cats get a taste of fish, they sometimes refused to go back to non-fish flavors. So, you can feed fish once a week or so, but if they start to get finicky about non-fish flavors, then I would cut out fish altogether.

It's normally recommended that you rotate dry slowly. So, feed one type of dry and, perhaps as the bag is coming to an end, start introducing another type of dry -- 25%/75% one day, 50%/50% the next and so forth. That said, I often feed my girls one type of dry one day, and another type the next day and they don't have any problems with that. Perhaps because they're older (they're both around 2 years old)...or perhaps they just have tolerant stomachs!


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## yellowdaisies (Jan 25, 2011)

Thank you both so much!!! You are extremely helpful!

Saitenyo - Strangely, Merrick BG is the cheaper brand at my store (only by 10 cents, though), and I live in California, too. Go figure. Is Blue Buffalo Wilderness sort of like Wellness CORE is to Wellness? I think I saw it at my pet store, but there seemed to be much less of it than the regular Blue Buffalo varieties. Also, I'm curious about why you don't like to feed much beef. I know beef is not the best meat for humans...is it the same type of situation for cats? I've always thought it seemed kind of weird to feed beef to cats (not sure why, though...maybe because it seems like more of a dog food?), so Spencer and Lily don't get much of it anyway. 

Susan - The point you make about fish is really interesting! I can see that being a danger for Lily...she seems to be a bit of a fish fanatic. Spencer actually seems to like chicken and turkey more than the salmon/tuna varieties, as far as I can tell... Is too much fish not good for the same reason too much of any meat is not good? (Too much of the same type of protein, I'd imagine)..or is this especially worrisome with fish? 

Thanks again for your help!


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## saitenyo (Nov 28, 2010)

Huh! That's funny, must just be store differences. I get my Wellness and Merrick from PetCo. Not checked prices at other local stores since the little non-chain stores near me tend to have too limited of a selection (Petsmart doesn't even sell Merrick sadly).

And yeah, Wilderness is Blue Buffalo's grain-free, higher protein line, kinda like Wellness Core (although some regular Wellness is grain-free too, whereas Wilderness is BB's only grain-free food).

Not feeding much beef isn't so much an end-all rule for me, just a personal preference. I've heard it can be one of the more-common protein allergens for cats (as is fish) although neither of my cats have shown any issues with it. But yeah, mostly I just prefer to feed meats as close to what they'd normally eat in the wild (small animals like rabbits and poultry). I have no specific scientific/medical reason for that preference, just seems to sit better with me. 

But yeah, if your cats don't show any issues with it, then I wouldn't worry about giving it regularly. The info I hear about it being a common allergen is less clear than the issues I hear about fish, and I know plenty of people on here feed their cats beef regularly without any issues at all!

And yeah, feeding only one single protein is problematic only because some cats can develop allergies to them over time (or just become finicky), plus variety ensures they get good nutrition. However there are specific concerns regarding fish. Part of this are the same concerns people have about eating too much fish (accumulation of biotoxins and/or heavy metals). It's also one of the most common protein allergens for cats, that can develop if they eat too much of it I believe.

The other concern I've heard regarding feeding too much fish is that they're high in Thiaminase, which can lead to Thiamine deficiency if too much is consumed, however I'm not 100% sure if this applies to cooked fish, or just raw fish.


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## Susan (Mar 29, 2010)

Too much fish has been linked to various illnesses in cats, including UTI and hyper-T. That said, fish flavors in the rotation should not be a problem, provided they don't eat only fish and they don't go on strike when you feed them other things. I fed my cats fish (and only fish) for a few months before I was aware of the problems, and I had a devil of a time getting them to eat non-fish flavors when I tried to move them away from fish. They wanted their beloved fish! 

Here is an article discussing potential issues with feeding too much fish. Why Fish is Dangerous for Cats | Little Big Cat


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## ibbica (Jul 28, 2010)

We rotate our cats' food daily, both wet and dry. For the wet, they get a different brand, flavour, and/or texture each day. For the dry, they get a different brand each day, or a 50/50 mixture of two brands (ours don't particularly love Orijen, so that one often gets mixed with something else).

The biggest problem was when we first got them... switching from very poor-quality food to very high-quality food can be a bit rough. But we managed to switch their wet food in a couple days, and their dry within 2 weeks. Stools were a little soft but nothing unmanageable. Since then it's been smooth sailing  (knock on wood...)

As for brands, I'm afraid I can't really help you too much... I'm currently in Europe  Two of the brands of kibble we feed are Canadian (Orijen and Acana) so I'm pretty sure you could find them there, but our wet food brands are completely different. 

Basically, for kibble I try to stick with grain-free. For wet, as a start I'd avoid anything with added carbohydrates or plant material, and make sure it's 'complete' and not 'complimentary' food. I also try to avoid fish flavours, and tuna in particular, since they seems to turn some cats into picky eaters.


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## Alpaca (Dec 21, 2009)

I rotate my two within the same brand, Nature's Variety Instinct (wet). They get whatever I pick up from the cupboard on that day so it could be beef, chicken, venison, lamb, duck.

For dinner they have raw quail, chicken, or beef. They also have a bit of canned in water sardine once in a while mixed in with the primary meats.

I feed Orijen dry only as a snack. They also get Purebites dehydrated chicken as well as Go! treats


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