How to teach a cat to dry food?

The desire to transfer a pet to a proper and full-fledged diet in the form of dry food sooner or later visits each owner of the animal, who is often forced to stay for a long time during the day. Ready meals, indeed, can be a simple and convenient solution to the feeding problem. But how to teach a cat to dry food in adulthood? Often, pets who have received only natural food since childhood simply abandon their unusual delicacies.

How to transfer a cat from natural food and wet food to dry? How long will it take, can we do without radical measures like a complete cessation of the issuance of the usual food? What common mistakes are better not to allow when feeding an animal? Only having studied the answers to all these questions, it is worth moving to decisive actions in practice.

What are the reasons for the transfer of an animal from a normal ration to a dry one - consider the most common.

1. Dietary imbalance. If an animal does not initially eat any foods, it may lose valuable amino acids, vitamins and minerals that ensure the normal development and preservation of health.
2. Health related nutrition restrictions. With a high risk of urolithiasis in sterilized cats, it is recommended to transfer the animal to the finished food.
3. Lack of control over the freshness of products. If there are doubts about the quality of meat, fish, other ingredients of the cat diet, ready-made food will not waste time searching for them.
4. The need for long-term storage of ready-made food. Dry food is not weathered, eliminates the risk of poisoning, reproduction of pathogenic microflora.
5. Taste variety. Offer the animal shrimp or salmon pate for breakfast, and not every owner is ready for beef for dinner.
6. Dieting. If the pet has gained weight on a normal diet, it is quite difficult to determine the optimal caloric intake on its own. Dry food allows you to build a diet with a certain calorie and the frequency of meals.
7. Features of the breed. Almost all purebred cats need a specialized diet according to their individual needs.

The process of converting an animal from regular food to dry food can be started at any age upon reaching the actual weight of the adult animal for the breed. Even if the cat ate exclusively cooked food by the owner all her life or, on the contrary, lived on the street and ate irregularly, in any case, the transition to the full menu would be useful for her. Upon reaching the year and until old age, the selected time will be successful.

Consider how many days it takes to get your pet to completely change the natural diet to finished industrial food. To cope with the task in one or two days will not work. It will take much more time, on average - from 7 to 10 days, and the process should take place gradually. You can not immediately deprive the animal of the usual diet, it can be dangerous to health.

The older the cat, the harder and longer the transition to a new food. But in any case, consistency and severity is important - you should not interrupt the process that has begun, go after the animal. When combined with wet food during the transition period, it is recommended to use only products of the same brand, so that the pet will get used to its taste more quickly.

Phasing manifests itself in the volume of dry food added to the usual food. On the first day, you can offer a cat 10% of the new diet right in the form of granulated or soaked in broth. Dry food is mixed with regular food. Daily its volume should increase. An average increase of 10-15% will allow you to spend on translation no more than 10 days.

It is important to stop stirring the feed from the third day of diet replacement, and from the fifth day it is no longer mixed with regular food, but is given in a separate portion. One feeding must include only dry ready meals. By the tenth day, you should completely abandon any other food, carefully monitoring the state of health of the pet. Anxious symptoms include:

• persistent stool disorder;
• pain, cramps in the stomach;
• reducing the amount of food eaten;
• lethargy, changes in behavior;
• the appearance of discharge from the eyes, nose, ears, indicating allergies;
• manifestation of aggression against the owner.

Getting enough liquid is very important for a cat turning on food with dry food. The animal must have constant access to clean and fresh water. Volumes of needs of the pet in the liquid in this period, indeed, increase, and its lack will lead to excessive dryness of the stool, more rare urination, general dehydration of the body.

When switching to a new menu, animals are offered a much larger amount of water. At first, it is better to place drinking bowls in several places. You can offer a large container or purchase a special drinking fountain, many pedigree animals prefer precisely flowing water.

Teaching a cat to dry food, you need to remember a number of simple rules, allowing to make the situation less traumatic for the animal.

1. Phased. It should proceed gradually, carefully and carefully. You need to be ready for a change in eating behavior, violation of the chair, flatulence.
2. Lack of coercion. Even if the feed remains intact, it can be crushed, mixed into regular food. It is necessary to get used to the animal's smell and taste of new food.
3. Combination with wet feeding. It is necessary to stock up on spiders or canned food of the same manufacturer, and in the first days to give them along with dry food.
4. When mixing the granules you need carefully connect with the usual food so that the animal is more difficult to separate them.

Selection of suitable nutrition is a difficult task. It is worth offering a pet a choice of products from several manufacturers. Perhaps, after finding the desired flavor combination, the problem of getting used to unusual food will be completely solved.

The transition from wet to dry food usually does not cause difficulties, especially if it occurs without changing the brand. To facilitate the assimilation of food, it is worthwhile to increase the dose of the granulated variant gradually.

Teaching a cat to dry food after a natural meal, it is necessary to choose a food that can completely replace the old diet. Preference is given to products of premium and super premium classes, in which natural meat is the usual varieties. This category includes pellets from Hills, Royal Canin, Eukanuba, Acana. Breeding animals, neutered and sterilized cats are selected food with appropriate marks on the package.

When switching to dry food, owners often find it difficult to accurately dose the pet's nutrition. Do not allow overeating, the daily volume of feed for an adult animal is 30-35 g / kg body weight. The time of receiving food should also be carefully observed, ensuring the formation of the correct mode of the day.

There is a list of the most common mistakes that make almost all pet owners, embarking on the transfer of their pet to dry food. The first thing that should be avoided is force methods of influence. This can scare the cat and even cause psychosomatic reactions of a negative nature. Veterinarians are advised to act gently, unobtrusively, gradually helping the animal to adapt to the diet unusual for him.

Another wrong step is to refuse to feed the cat with any other products. If the pet categorically refuses to eat ready-made food, instead of the usual dishes, it is worth gradually and gently offering him dry food. Cause of trouble can be poor digestion of food.

Buying the cheapest pet food that needs a diet change is a very bad decision. Cheap products from the mass market segment are not suitable for pedigree animals. The older the cat, the more carefully will have to pick up food. The best solution is super premium or holistic class food made from natural raw materials by famous brands. Allergy in 99% of cases of ready-made food is associated with the purchase of low-grade goods, and not with individual intolerance to the ingredients.

Failures of an animal to eat dry food can be associated with the fact that it is not properly stored or loses an attractive taste and smell. The pellet container must be hermetically closed. After eating, a bowl with food residue should be emptied, thoroughly cleaned from food residue.

To learn how to translate a cat into dry food, see the following video.