Young again experiences?

[Athenaglaukopis]

hello there,
I’m wondering if anyone is feeding young again zero to your kitties and if so, what are your experiences?
I heard stinky poo ( and I smelt it), half dry and half wet food with great bg results, what are your experiences?
My kitty was refusing her fancy feast and I had to go on a trip so I had her on dry in the morning and wet at night with good feeding results.(I have 5 kitties so at night she was locked in her room with her wet .food)

 

[Chris & China (GA)]

We've heard a lot of complaints on the Feline Diabetes group on Facebook about the stinky poo and crazy diarrhea with the YA

The Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein doesn't seem to cause the problem that the YA does.

But if you can do without any dry, that's the best. Dr. Lisa even wrote about "Considering more than the carb content"

 

[Athenaglaukopis]

We've heard a lot of complaints on the Feline Diabetes group on Facebook about the stinky poo and crazy diarrhea with the YA

The Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein doesn't seem to cause the problem that the YA does.

But if you can do without any dry, that's the best. Dr. Lisa even wrote about "Considering more than the carb content"

Thank you, I read all the pins back when I install joined,I’m a very info and data driven kitty owner. I did do without dry for about 6 months, but she started refusing food, to the point of not eating even a 3 ounce can a day... I can’t afford her not no eat though.

 

[Diane Tyler's Mom GA]

Thank you, I read all the pins back when I install joined,I’m a very info and data driven kitty owner. I did do without dry for about 6 months, but she started refusing food, to the point of not eating even a 3 ounce can a day... I can’t afford her not no eat though.

@Athenaglaukopis hi once and awhile I will give my cat Dr Elseys Clean Protein Dry chicken flavor maybe less than a quarter cup once and awhile, never had a problem with stinky poop or diarrhea.I e-mailed them and they said the carb content is 4.69% for the chicken flavor

 

[Athenaglaukopis]

@Athenaglaukopis hi once and awhile I will give my cat Dr Elseys Clean Protein Dry chicken flavor, never had a problem with stinky poop or diarrhea.

Have you tried young again? I haven’t had a problem with diarrhea just stinky poo

 

[Diane Tyler's Mom GA]

Have you tried young again? I haven’t had a problem with diarrhea just stinky poo

Hi no I gave never tried young again

 

[FurBabiesMama]

You may have a few bags of Young Again that are fine, then the next one you get may causes horrible poop issues/diarrhea. I used it early on when transitioning my girls to wet food until I got one of those poop issue bags. Never again. I was only giving them a little as a wet food topper; I can only imagine how bad the poop would have been if they had been eating more of it. The very fact that some bags are fine and some are very much not fine tells me there is obviously a quality control issue.

I switched to Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein Chicken for the rest of our wet food conversion and had no issues. We got to a point where I could use PureBites freeze dried chicken as a food topper instead, then I was using the dry food just as a testing treat. Then, we got to the point that I did not even need it for that. Mia gets pieces of home cooked chicken for her testing treat. The conversion to wet food can be very hard, especially for some cats (Mia was much harder than Willow), but it is possible. For us, it took trying SO many different foods and jumping through quite a few hoops. I think texture was a big part of it, so the PureBites proved to be very helpful in finishing up the transition. To this day, Mia will not touch her wet food until I sprinkle some crumbled up PureBites on top. I sometimes miss the days of 'easy' cat ownership when I just put out dry food. A 100% wet food diet is much more work, but I felt so good when the transition was complete, and there is no way I could go back knowing what I know now.

 

[JanetNJ]

my cat did really good on it for a while but after a year she started getting diarreah from it so we eliminated it.

 

[Bella & Liz]

Both my cats got terrible diarrhea from the food. The website says that can happen and to just keep feeding them it and they will adjust in a handful of days. I personally couldnt wait the few days as they were ruining my carpets! But they did seem to enjoy the taste of it

 

[JamieH]

I have 5 cats and they all get some YA Zero Mature kibble. Here's my experience:

Shiva and Oliver, healthy, no issues with diarrhea or stinky poo.
Thomas, advanced CKD, no issues with diarrhea or stinky poo.
Muffy, CKD and diabetes, did not have diarrhea or stinky poo while her diabetes was in remission (9 months). When her diabetes returned she did not get diarrhea, but her poo was stinky whenever her blood sugar was above 180.
Cat, CKD, diabetes, intestinal cancer, has uncontrolled diarrhea and his poo could clear a whole city block. His diarrhea is due to his cancer, not the YA food. The smell of his poo gets exponentially worse the higher his blood sugar gets, but even with good blood sugar his poo still smells deadly.

Generally my cats only get about 5-10% of their calories from the YA kibble and are on wet food for the rest. Muffy is my dry food addict, so she gets probably 30% calories from YA, 30% from her renal kibble, and the other 40% split between homemade food and low carb canned food.

 

[Athenaglaukopis]

I have 5 cats and they all get some YA Zero Mature kibble. Here's my experience:

Shiva and Oliver, healthy, no issues with diarrhea or stinky poo.
Thomas, advanced CKD, no issues with diarrhea or stinky poo.
Muffy, CKD and diabetes, did not have diarrhea or stinky poo while her diabetes was in remission (9 months). When her diabetes returned she did not get diarrhea, but her poo was stinky whenever her blood sugar was above 180.
Cat, CKD, diabetes, intestinal cancer, has uncontrolled diarrhea and his poo could clear a whole city block. His diarrhea is due to his cancer, not the YA food. The smell of his poo gets exponentially worse the higher his blood sugar gets, but even with good blood sugar his poo still smells deadly.

Generally my cats only get about 5-10% of their calories from the YA kibble and are on wet food for the rest. Muffy is my dry food addict, so she gets probably 30% calories from YA, 30% from her renal kibble, and the other 40% split between homemade food and low carb canned food.

Thank you, this is really helpful, what wet food do you give your diabetic and ckd kitty? I’m starting to attempt to lower the phosphorous intake of my senior diabetic kitty, but I don’t seem to understand quite well how to read the phosphorous content of the food table :$

 

[JamieH]

Thank you, this is really helpful, what wet food do you give your diabetic and ckd kitty? I’m starting to attempt to lower the phosphorous intake of my senior diabetic kitty, but I don’t seem to understand quite well how to read the phosphorous content of the food table :$

For wet food my cats like pate texture. I use either Hi-Tor Neo, which is low carb and low phos, or I'll use off-brand foods similar to Fancy Feast. Tiny Tiger brand, from Chewy, has the same nutrient profile as FF, but it's cheaper. Tiny Tiger doesn't have low phos recipes though, so I have to use binders to keep the phosphorous down.

Reading the food tables can be a challenge. I have to convert carbohydrates to % so I understand them, and phosphorous I have to convert to dry matter basis. For CKD cats you generally want the phosphorous to be 0.50 - 0.60% with the dry matter measure.

There are caveats to that number though. For example, one of my CKD-diabetics also has very low phosphorous levels, so he needs to eat normal or even high phosphorous foods. My other CKD-diabetic has phosphorous readings a little higher than where I'd like, but still within range for a CKD cat. She gets some binders in her higher phos foods, but not a huge amount. Then I have a non-diabetic CKD cat who gets binders in everything AND takes niacinamide as a second binder just to stay at the top end of the okay range.

I haven't used Dr. Pierson's food chart much in the last couple years. I have use the phosphorous levels in this chart a lot lately: http://felinecrf.org/canned_food_usa.htm Though, now that Dr. Pierson has updated her list it might be more current than the one I've linked. I often use this calculator to calculate the % carbohydrates of the wet food http://fnae.org/carbcalorie.html

Finally, for figuring out how much aluminum hydroxide binder to give, I use this calculator http://felinecrf.the-colonel.info/Documents/index.html?BinderCalc.html

I will say that both of my diabetics have come out of remission recently. One due to the pred that he's taking for his cancer, and the other due to the fact that she's been eating a bit more dry kibble lately. She went on strike against wet food after coming home from spending several days in hospital for a UTI. Then she had very low urine pH and was at high risk for developing calcium oxalate stones. And she refused oral potassium citrate. So, I had to give in and give her KD kibble (which she absolutely loves) in order to correct her pH. It worked, but now that she's also eating more wet food I'm attempting to wean her off the KD so that her glucose will be easier to control.