Advice re alternative food

[Tc's Servants]

Hi again,

Our cat T.C has had a skin problem for approx 3 months now, which the vet says is a food allergy. He was put on a special diet of Hills Z/D low allergen food, and this has helped a lot.

However, he has now gone off this food and refuses to eat it at all. The vet then changed this food to Hills D/D venison formula, but the cat still refuses to eat it.

Its got to the point that we now have a very grumpy cat, who obviously is hungry, and so in desperation we have had to give him normal cat food (Whiskas) as we cant bear to see him go days without eating!!

Consequently, the skin problem is now becoming an issue again, and we fear we will be back to square one. Plus its becoming quite expensive as we buy this food, which is not cheap as its prescription!!

Does anyone have any ideas of an alternative diet that can help skin problems that we can try?

Ps, the Z/D and D/D are wet food in tins, do you think its worth trying the dried equivalent instead?

Thanks for looking

T.C's Servants

[dinahsmum]

Does he eat dried food?
Maybe that would be a simple enough solution - just rotate wet/dry allergy & venison - there's a choice of 4.
I've always rated Burns. It's only dry and only chicken or fish. But it promote itself as very 'natural'. Here's the website http://www.burns-pet-nutrition.co.uk/ and they will answer email questions on nutrition. If you read through the site I'm sure you will find testimonials from people whose pets have had skin problems which were cleared up on Burns.

Or go completely natural and feed raw! :shock: There are a couple of threads here if you search. Not the easiest but you'd know exactly what TC was eating and that it was perfectly pure.

Edit: here's the raw feeding link http://www.catsey.com/showthread.php?t=18391&highlight=barf+food

[Fran]

Royal Canin do a dried food for sensitive skin, I think it's called skin care 33? Might be worth a try if the other suggestions fail. I use the one for sensitive tums and it's brilliant :)

[tilly]

Hi there is a d/d dry food which he might like better. I feed it to Tilly as she has food intolerance as well. I also feed her sensitivity control. below are some link to what prescription diet there are about the place.
http://www.hillspet.com/zSkin_2/products/pd_product_list.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=25343743 02024101&bmUID=1200657616673&bmLocale=en_GB

http://www.nutrecare.co.uk/prod5.asp?prod_id=1834&id=146&grpid=1834&msg=&offset=#prod_anchor

http://www.nutrecare.co.uk/prod5.asp?prod_id=1679&id=146&grpid=1679&msg=&offset=#prod_anchorvvvvvvvv4

http://www.petmeds.co.uk/Products/Eukanuba-Cat-Dermatosis

hope the link are some help

tilly

[Steph]

Oscar had a similar problem. He didn`t take to `prescription` food either. We fed him small amounts of specialist food and a small amount of chicken and raw liver while we rotated about every commercial brand.

We did find a couple he could tolerate. So it might be that some types would work?

[Amber]

Trying the dried food may be an option. Royal Canin Waltham Hypoallergenic is also a good diet for animals with food allergies, as stated in the name, it is completely hypoallergenic - may be worth mentioning to your vet. It is a prescription only diet so can only be purchased from vets, Royal Canin also sell varieties that are sold in pet shops, but they are generally not as effective.

Your practice probably use Hills rather than Royal Canin, as we use Royal Canin instead of Hills. However, If the Royal Canin suited, I'm sure they would be happy to order it in for you, as we have some clients who feed Hills, who get their supplies from us, even though it's not the food we primarily sell.

And if you followed all of that you're very clever as I've confused myself :-D