Don’t change your dog’s/cat’s food or they’ll get an upset stomach and have diarrhea!
So would you if you ate the same thing over and over and over again ad nauseam and then suddenly ate something different. Think about it in this way: say you eat general American fare most of the time for months on end; cheeseburgers, potatoes, spaghetti, etc. and then one day you decide to go out for spicy Thai food. Yep. You know what that means. It’s exactly the same for your dog or cat.
If you’ve read this far, then you know that I’ve been feeding Ziggy all sorts of different proteins: chicken, turkey, venison, lamb, buffalo, beef, etc. Once your dog or cat gets used to variety and rotation they’ll be able to switch to different flavors and brands of kibble, canned, or raw no problem!
Why rotate? Good question. No diet can be 100% balanced for long term feeding. It may be well balanced for that particular meal but for weeks, months, and years on end it’s not. You couldn’t do it and neither can your pet. By varying the brands, flavors, kinds, and types of food you’ll provide your beloved companion with the maximum amount of nutrition. Remember that your pet is very closely related (at least internally) to their wild cousins and the mother nature model is a good one to go by. In the wild, they would not eat chicken & brown rice for every meal. Sometimes they’d manage to catch a rabbit perhaps, or possibly come upon a deer carcass. Some days their hunt would be unsuccessful and they’d fast for a meal. (As a side note here, in her book Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats: The Ultimate Diet Kymythy R. Schultze explains that “Fasting is a normal occurrence for wild carnivores. It enables the energy used for digestion to be used elsewhere in the body.” [p 40] She and others recommend that dogs and cats over one year of age fast at least one day per week.)
Click here for more information about variety and rotation in your pets diet.
- Mag & Ziggy
