Young Again dry - free-feed or timed-feed?

I would like to try out the Young Again Zero carb dry food after reading some positive comments about it. It's going to be a really tough sell weaning our cats off dry, so I would like to at least have some low-carb option available. We're using up the DM Purina dry from the vet in the meantime (which is what replaced the dry food they were eating). Wet food is low-carb of varying varieties put down twice a day. ( Joshi always gets a bit before her insulin, too).

Now, the Young Again website suggests free-feeding their dry which is what we've always done; but, I'm curious what others do? I want their main food to be the wet, but to have the dry be available for the cats that just aren't fond of the canned food. When you have seven cats, feeding options are really complicated, especially when one of them is a sugarcat. We're only a month in on treatment for Joshi, but her BG numbers could stand to be lower.

The food thing is proving to be the biggest challenge.

 

Also, I noticed there's a regular and a Mature Cat formula. All of our cats are 9 years and over - has anyone noticed differences between the two formulas re: BG control? (Note: I have started home BG monitoring with Joshi, so we wouldn't be going this blind).

 

From their website. Mature is left column
TYPICAL DRY MATTER ANALYSIS


Crude Protein 57.9% 57.6%

Crude Fat 28.8% 28.6%

Crude Fiber 3.3% same

Soluble Fiber 4.8% 4.6%

Carbs/Starch (digestible) Trace <1% Same

Ash 5.20% 5.6%

Moisture 0% same

KEY MINERALS
Calcium .60% 1.24%

Phosphorous 0.50% 0.81%

Phosphorous mg/100 kcals 121mg/100kcal 192mg/100kcal

Potassium .70% 0.95%

Sodium 0.31% 0.25 %

Magnesium .05% or 500mg/kg .08% or 800mg/kg

Iodine .58 ppm 1.11 ppm

Lysine 4.45% 4.21%

Taurine 0.26% same

Total n-3 Fatty Acids 1.61% 1.05%

Omega 6 Fatty Acids 4.39% 4.92?

EPA 0.64% 0.28%

DHA 0.77% 0.22%

EPA+DHA 1.41% 0.5%

Food pH 5.4 5.5

Target Urine pH 6.2-6.5 same

 

I think the YA is free fed is because cats don't tend to eat very much in one setting. My understanding is that it is a rich food and the cats learn to just eat a small amount at a time.

At 6 cats we are at the lowest we've had in 3 years now. We re down to just one diabetic, but have had 3 most of the time. We have 2 that we cannot get off of the food they eat and we need to feed them often -close to free feeding as possible- or they will binge and puke. It was a lot of watching after feeding them, but now we have Sureflap Microchip feeders for our dry food and it works great. You can code multiple pets to one feeder or get one for each though they are spendy. Meal feeding a lot of cats is time consuming but it is worth it to make sure our diabetics get the correct diet.