Hi I am looking at three different dry foods, the Nulo Freestyle Chicken and cod, the Open Farms Wild-Caught Salmon, and the open farms raw mix prairy. Which of these would be the best kibble option?
Also I was gonna add in some tiki cat wet food but I dont know how to start wet food exactly since I cant mix in the kibble. Do you guys have any recommendations on that?
Harvest Chicken Freeze Dried Raw Cat Food is actually something I'm looking at right now
Hi Glockodile! I'd definitely recommend freeze-dried raw food if it's within your budget. Any kibble is going to contain more carbohydrates and be low in moisture. Open Farm's Harvest Chicken freeze-dried is very high-protein and calorie-dense, so even though it's a little pricey, the portion sizes aren't ridiculous (definitely refer to the feeding guidelines to make sure you're not overfeeding).
My cats love Open Farm freeze-dried and I find that it rehydrates pretty easily, especially if you kinda crush the pellets with your fingers before soaking it. If you go with this product, I'd say you wouldn't even need to add Tiki Cat unless you're just doing that for variety. Rehydrating the freeze-dried food will satisfy most of your cat's moisture requirements.
Of the dry cat foods you mentioned, I don't think there's a huge difference. All of them include a lot of animal protein but also significant amounts of peas, lentils, or other legumes. I'd prefer to recommend a dry food that contains whole grains instead, as they're generally more nutritious and easier to digest for cats.
If you decide to supplement any of these diets with Tiki Cat, I'd recommend a chicken-based product rather than fish. Or rotate the chicken and fish. There's some concern about mercury levels with a primarily fish-based diet, but feeding small amounts and rotating with other proteins helps. And you can just spoon it right on top of the dry food (or freeze-dried) or offer it alone at one meal a day and the other food at the second meal.
Hope that helps!
@kate That is helpful thank you. Jazz isn't really liking the nulo dry that much. She also doesn't seem thrilled with the chicken tiki cats. She seems more happy with the nulo freeze dried turkey and duck (I would be interested in what you think of that food). She loved the Fancy Feast Salmon, but like you said I would worry about fish being her main food. The only problem I can see with the Nulo freeze dried is the price, it's not cheap for sure.
(Edit I meant to say, it just seems like she isnt much into chicken, at least right now)
Would love to hear your thoughts!
I've only tried the chicken and salmon recipe from Nulo but my cats seemed to like it. It's higher in carbs than the Open Farm, but it seems to come mainly from flaxseed and cranberries (not peas or something). I personally feed my cats Stella & Chewy Absolutely Rabbit and they love it. The brand has a bunch of other flavors too. Freeze-dried is always going to be pricy but I've found that Stella & Chewy's is often included when Chewy.com has sales—I especially keep an eye out for the buy $100 get a $30 giftcard sales which happen every 6-8 weeks.
If you want more options to try, we have a long list of freeze-dried foods I sampled here: https://cats.com/best-freeze-dried-cat-food