Diabetic with suspected food allergy

Cosmo is my 15 year old diet controlled diabetic cat. He has been OTJ since 2008 and I've been feeding him Friskies canned pate (under 10%kcal from carbs based on Janet & Binky's chart).

Today I brought him to the vet because he has obviously been scratching his ears and the back of his legs. He has done this in the past but I always suspected it was from the dry weather. A steroid shot and some antibiotics would get him back to normal.
But today, I saw a different doctor and looking at him and his history, she suspects a food allergy and specifically mentioned chicken.
None of the varieties I give him have chicken in the title but they all mention "poultry by-products" which I suppose could include chicken.

The doctor suggested that I change his diet for about 8 weeks and see if it makes a difference and suggested duck or venison.

Here are my concerns...

He has been doing so well with the diabetes on his current food that worry that if I change his diet it will affect his diet controlled status. As long as I pick a brand/variety that is high protein/low carb he should be ok, right?

Cost. I've been shopping around on the internet and it looks like the brands that offer duck or venison varieties are quite expensive. Friskies is only about 52 cents a can where these better brands are at least 3 or 4 times that much.
This will get extremely costly if I have to switch all 4 of my cats to these brands. I could probably manage to feed him separately for a trial period but not for long term. Is anyone aware of a brand that I could try that isn't all that expensive?

Thanks!

 

Hello and welcome to the forum,

My cat bailey is allergic to chicken too. We tried other types of food like venison and rabbit (cat food list http://www.catinfo.org/docs/Food Chart Public 9-22-12.pdf) but he didnt really like them and they were expensive. I now give him the non chicken varieties although they do have chicken by products in them , he isn't as itchy.

You could try the fancy feast ones to see if they have less chicken in the non chicken ones, or the fish flavors. I don't think the fish fancy feast have chicken in them but due to mercury and other pollutants, people here don't recommend you feed them fish more than twice a week. But if you can't afford the venison etc then he needs to eat something and I would go with the fish if it works.


Steroids shots are not good for the diabetes FYI.

Wendy