Hi, I keep seeing things about cats needing these supplements, how can I know if my cat has enough of these from her diet?
I do half and half dry and wet. The dry is Tiki Cat Born Carnivore, and the wet is Raws 96% rabbit.
I emailed raws and asked about it and they said:
Omega 3 - 1.108
Omega 6 - 0.994
but I have no clue what those numbers mean, there isn't even a unit.
Any advice on this would be great.
Hi there,
There has been less research on omega 3 in cats compared to dogs. The optimal daily dose for cats is therefore somewhat unclear but I try not to exceed 350-400mg per day for general supplementation.
The numbers you have I suspect are percentages, because for such small numbers, that’s all that makes sense. For canned food, this is likely percentage on an as-fed basis, or in other words, the percentage of the food with its moisture included. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to determine milligrams with that information, only what percentage of the calorie content is derived from the omega fatty acids.
You might want to email them back and ask if they can provide the omega content in milligrams per 100 kilocalories of metabolizable energy (100kcal ME). With that, you could figure out how many milligrams of omega 3 you’re getting per amount based on calories that your cat is eating per day. Most cats at an ideal weight should be eating about 200-250 kcal of food per day, so that could be a general marker for you. If they get back to you with omega-3 milligrams/100kcal ME, repost that info here and I could help you figure the daily amount out based on how much your cat eats per day.
@chris-vanderhoof Thank you very much for your reply, I will email and ask for that info. Just for more info (though likely not important. I have 2 cats, both are healthy weight and one is 7.5 lbs and the other is 10lbs. Both are spayed. The smaller one gets 178 kcals a day, the larger one gets 241. Both get 94kcals per day of wet with the rest being dry food. The dry food has the following: Omega 3 Fatty Acids* (min) 1% Omega 6 Fatty Acids* (min) 2.75% So with dry food is that easier to calculate what they are getting?
(edit: no I see what you're saying I need mg instead of percent of calories. I will email the dry food company too!)