New PZI User...what food do you feed?

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tobygo2

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I just started my cat on PZI since his honeymoon is over and the vet has me feeding him wet M/D with a mix of dry DM. I know they're not the best so I'm wondering what the rest of you feed your cats? He was on Wellness Grain Free but my vet said that's not all that good, even though I thought it was. Just curious what you all feed.

Thanks!
 
You've already heard from me :) we use Wellness, Chicken & Turkey flavors. I'm not sure if that's the same (I believe ours is grain free...?)). Curious why your vet didn't like it? I think it may run a bit high in fat, but other than that I thought it is supposed to be a high quality food. I'm definitely paying WAY too much for it if it isn't, lol!
 
I feed the same as Joanna, Wellness Turkey & Chicken. It's high quality food IMO. I even checked nutritional/vitamin content against kidney foods because Blackie is early CRF and it had more nutrients than those foods.
 
50% mix of Wellness grain free flavors and 50% home cooked.

As for your dosing you might want not want to be raising the dose before you get on the low carb wet food diet. Their insulin needs can drop radically if they were on dry food or high carb before. Make sure you are home testing to keep an eye on things.

Oh and I forgot to say, "Welcome!"

You've come to the right place :smile:
 
My Max is new on Prozinc, too, only about two weeks, but I'm feeding a mix of mostly 9 lives, Sophisticat or Friskies (low carb from Binky's list) and a little wet m/d. (About to ditch the m/d, he hates it and I've learned it's not the best.) Prior to Prozinc, we fed Iams dry kibble. Max's bg numbers are coming down low enough I'm about to post about it, but I think the food change is fixing him.
 
i've always heard Wellness is a quality food so if you've got it, and it's low carb, i say feed it. remember, a lot of vets only know what pet food company sales reps tell them.

i myself feed a variety including a couple flavors of 9Lives, mostly Friskies, some of the new FreshPet raw stuff, and a few other raw things occasionally, i.e. Nature's Variety, Oma's Pride, and some I buy at the grocery store and serve like chicken gizzards & hearts. serving over 500 cans a month takes foods like Wellness out of my budget :-D
 
Cindy + Mousie said:
i've always heard Wellness is a quality food so if you've got it, and it's low carb, i say feed it. remember, a lot of vets only know what pet food company sales reps tell them.

i myself feed a variety including a couple flavors of 9Lives, mostly Friskies, some of the new FreshPet raw stuff, and a few other raw things occasionally, i.e. Nature's Variety, Oma's Pride, and some I buy at the grocery store and serve like chicken gizzards & hearts. serving over 500 cans a month takes foods like Wellness out of my budget :-D
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500 cans a month...how many cats do you have? I have five and I'm guessing we use close to 100 cans.
 
I've discovered too that at Petco (recently they have started carrying the big cans) with the Petco card thingy, I'm getting good coupons now by email. 15% off once you get enough "points", and I just got a $10 off $75 purchase, so the cupboard is now overflowing with Wellness. Still expensive stuff though... Bix barfs up anything cheaper. :sad:
 
Kira & Max said:
500 cans a month...how many cats do you have? I have five and I'm guessing we use close to 100 cans.
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16 for sure mouths to feed plus an occasional stray, Missy Little Stray Kitty being the current stray eating at my back door :-D
 
Cindy + Mousie said:
Kira & Max said:
500 cans a month...how many cats do you have? I have five and I'm guessing we use close to 100 cans.
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16 for sure mouths to feed plus an occasional stray, Missy Little Stray Kitty being the current stray eating at my back door :-D
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Wow. I thought scooping litterboxes for five cats plus two ferrets was bad. I will now think of you and gripe less when I'm scooping :)
 
Welcome to PZI Land! :) We are glad you're here and posting.

I fed Wellness exclusively for 5 months (Turkey; Chicken; Beef & Chicken) until they started to get tired of it. Now I mix 50% Wellness with 50% Fancy Feast gluten free flavors (Tender Beef Feast; Turkey and Giblets Feast; Tender Liver and Chicken Feast). Link to FF gluten-free flavors is here: http://www.felinediabetes.com/glutenfree.htm

Wellness is a very good quality food with very low carbs, but it is higher in fat than a lot of other foods. I buy it online from PetFoodDirect. If you sign up for their e-mail club, they will send you coupons regularly for free shipping, or a percentage off your order. I like it because they have the large cans (12.5 oz) of Wellness. That's good to know, though, that Petco now carries those. I haven't seen them there at mine yet, so maybe soon. I like the convenience of to-my-door shipping. I also can get the FF there, as well as my dog food, so it works out awesome when I get a free shipping coupon. :)
 
I've also called Wellness directly and they've sent me coupons. I have a bunch of the big cans in my pantry so I'm going to start using them.

The vet called and said to move him up to 3 units twice a day :shock: Is that normal? I asked her about testing for infection and such but she said since she recently saw him about 2 months ago she doubts it's that. I'm just concerned since 3 units seems like a lot to me!
 
tobygo2 said:
he vet called and said to move him up to 3 units twice a day :shock: Is that normal? I asked her about testing for infection and such but she said since she recently saw him about 2 months ago she doubts it's that. I'm just concerned since 3 units seems like a lot to me!
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I would absolutely start a new topic about this here in PZI. Have you created a spread sheet yet? To help you we would like to see how your testing is going.
 
I'm feeding Friskies (choosing based on the food chart). We are using ~5 cans (of the 5.5 oz) a day (5 cats). I also leave some dry Wellness Core out for a couple of the cats where Soccer can't get it. (We play "musical cats"!)

I ordered 10 cases (240 cans) from PetFoodDirect for ~$125. So, that'll last a month and 1/2. I recently found the big 13oz cans locally for 69cents. I was too lazy (and strapped for time) to stock up there this go-round but will do so when we run low on this shipment.

Soccer has done really well with his diet change. I really think that this had made all the difference.
 
tobygo2 said:
How do you set up your spreadsheets and add them to your profile????
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Instructions are in the Tech Support Forum but here ya go with the direct links:
Spread Sheets
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16

Profiles
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=531

And the Tech Support Forum for more reading [just in case]
viewforum.php?f=6

BTW, increasing the dose by a whole unit seems excessive to me too. Make sure to read all the reading in the sticky at the top of this forum http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/view ... =24&t=1979 particularly about "start low go slow" [SLGS]. The general recommendation is to make dosing changes in .25u [or .2u or even .1u once you get going with U-100 syringes] increments . But again post a new topic in this PZI forum when you get your spread sheet up and ask for help.
 
AMP means morning (am) preshot. The correct abbreviation is AM PS but it's been combined into a single term over time.

BTW, Lucy has been eating Wellness (Chicken, Turkey, and Turkey/Salmon) combined with 1 medallion of Nature's Variety raw (frozen) chicken and turkey for the past 5 years. We experimented with some of the other higher end foods, like Merricks, but she wouldn't eat them consistently.
 
Sarah and Buzz said:
I fed Wellness exclusively for 5 months (Turkey; Chicken; Beef & Chicken) until they started to get tired of it. Now I mix 50% Wellness with 50% Fancy Feast gluten free flavors (Tender Beef Feast; Turkey and Giblets Feast; Tender Liver and Chicken Feast). Link to FF gluten-free flavors is here: http://www.felinediabetes.com/glutenfree.htm
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Sarah, just curious/brainstorming - does the timing of the food change correlate at all to Buzz's higher #s? I know they are all LC of course, but could be minor differences...? Just a random thought...
 
Joanna & Bix said:
Sarah and Buzz said:
I fed Wellness exclusively for 5 months (Turkey; Chicken; Beef & Chicken) until they started to get tired of it. Now I mix 50% Wellness with 50% Fancy Feast gluten free flavors (Tender Beef Feast; Turkey and Giblets Feast; Tender Liver and Chicken Feast). Link to FF gluten-free flavors is here: http://www.felinediabetes.com/glutenfree.htm
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Sarah, just curious/brainstorming - does the timing of the food change correlate at all to Buzz's higher #s? I know they are all LC of course, but could be minor differences...? Just a random thought...
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I've been thinking about this for a couple of days, trying to remember when exactly I switched to FF. It was right around the time that Buzz went OTJ because when we went on vacation, we had just switched to the FF. However, I was thinking in my mind that you could be right because I thought the FF was higher carbs. I just checked on the chart and they actually aren't! I am surprised. Wellness is 4 and the 3 flavors of FF that I feed are 3 and 4 carbs.

That's not to say that a food change couldn't still be playing into the higher #s, but if so, it's probably not because of the carb content. I also haven't changed foods since then and Buzz seems to have no problems with going low. ;)

Thanks for brainstorming; it's always good to have a second (or third or fourth) opinion/way of thinking about something to see things you might miss when you're down in the situation. :)
 
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