Plan to transition from dry food to raw for IBD cat

Greetings one and all....

I was just able to confirm that Petco (which is open today) has the raw food that I am wanting to try and transition Skooter to.

I wanted to give an outline of my plan and see what people's thoughts were. My problem is going to be with my work schedule, I cannot guarantee being able to come home at lunch every day and test him to see how he is doing.

I am going to start with the Instinct Originals Cans for Cats so I can find a protein that he will like and eat. Once I find that, I would like to then get him into the bag variety with the medallions.

I would like to start at dinner tonight, so any feed back would be great.

What I would like to do is do the transitioning over the weekends, when I will be home to test him and make sure he does not hypo. My plan would be to slowly replace his dry food with the raw starting at dinner time on Friday nights. Then based on how he does with that and maintains, do any changes during the weekend. By Sunday night, whatever dry/wet food proportions I would like to keep until the following Friday night and continue on until he gets totally on the raw. I know this may be at a slower pace, but I tend to freak out easily and get paranoid and think it would help me keep sane if I can do it this way. I don't want to be worrying about him all day at work....while this may not be ideal, I am thinking with my current work situation it would be best.

He gets approximately 1/2 cup twice a day (in the morning and when I get home from work). He is 12.8 pounds, which is not overweight, we like to keep him between 12-14 pounds and currently on 5U 2xday

Here are my questions:

1. If I start tonight, do I still want to give him the full 5U or should I do a lower dose? If so, what dose of insulin should I go down to?
2. What is the ratio of dry food to raw food should I be giving?
3. If I want to try and make changes at each meal throughout the weekend, what should I adjust the ratio to each meal or will it depend on what his numbers look like during the cycle following the change?
4. How often should I feed? Should I break down his cup of food into 1/3s and do a morning, night and before bed meal?
5. How will I know when/if to reduce his insulin? (I am trying to be able to learn how to read the data and determine based on that what to do, I know some of that will come with experience. I guess it would be helpful when suggesting a dose decrease to explain to me why as I am thinking that is the only way I am going to be able to start figuring it out on my own).

I think that is it for now....I am trying really hard to do tests every 2 hours today, in order to get some good numbers/data....so off to run all my errands I go, hoping to be back in 90 minutes in order to get that +8 reading.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Skooter's human, Molly

Hi, Molly

First of all, welcome to Lantus Land!

With regards to your questions, the only thing that I can say is since you'll be doing a food transition, the best thing to do is to do it slowly... Over the course of 7 days or longer. This way, Skooter will get used to the new food, and hopefully there won't be problems with diarrhea. If you suddenly switch him, you will more than likely have diarrhea problems. Forti Flora can curb the diarrhea if he has a problem eating raw meat. Some cats react to the new food by giving higher #s. Some don't. ECID so you'll need to keep a watch on him and make sure he doesn't go too low.

If you need to, you can get an automatic feeder during the day if you're not able to be home to test him, and you want to make sure he eats while you're away so that he doesn't drop too low.

As far as feeding schedule goes, that would depend on how often you want to feed him. Just remember that you have 10 hours to feed (from AMPS to +10) as you want him to be without food for 2 hours before his PMPS test, otherwise, the # will be wrong, and you may be shooting a wrong #. Some cats are fed throughout the day, whereas others aren't. Take mine, for example. Initially when we started Blackie was fed PS, +1, +2, +3, and then she was fed PS, +2, +4, +5 or something like that... I can't remember. Since I've noticed that her #s were all over the place, I decided to try feeding only 4x/day, and it seems to be working for her. She gets fed PS and +1 only 2x/day. She's fed a certain amount of food each feeding. Plus, I keep tabs on her weight every other day so that she maintains it at a certain level. Only you can figure out when to feed, and how much, etc. Getting a pet scale will help to keep tabs on his weight, if you're interested in doing that.

I know that I didn't answer all of your questions, however, I hope that I was able to give you some tips on some of your questions. FD is, for the most part, an "experiment" of sorts. All of things we do for our kitties is trial and error. Eventually, you'll find something that'll work for Skooter, and stick with it.

Good luck, and I hope that someone will come by to answer your dosing questions for you.

Hi Molly - some thoughts on transitioning from dry food to raw food. First here is a general description of converting from the place where I get Neko's raw food. One important thing they say and I've heard elsewhere is that it's best (if you can) to switch from dry food to wet food, then switch from wet food to raw. Dry food is digested at a different speed than raw food so it's easier on their digestive systems to step to wet food first as it's digested faster than dry but not as fast as raw. If you are going with Instinct Raw, they also have some canned foods of similar proteins and you can try those first to see if he likes them.

It's easier to put the probiotic on a wet food, others have suggested FortiFlora which is a good one. I've used PetDophilus although Marje found it raised Gracie's BG. It didn't for Neko. If the cat tolerates dairy, some use plain greek yoghurt with probiotics. I've know some people who have built up the probiotics in the gut for a week or two before doing the switch to raw. So gradually switching to canned food with probiotics for while before introducing raw may be the way to go.

When I converted my cats, I switched to all canned wet food first, then started with mostly canned food with a spoon of raw. Once I saw that was accepted I moved to 1/4 raw and 3/4 wet. I increased the percentages slowly as they wanted. Neko was practically an instant switch within a few days, my civie took longer. I added warm water to their meals to enhance the smell. It's good to add water to a diabetics meal as they can be dehydrated.

More smaller meals are better for the healing pancreas, so spreading out the meals in the first part of the cycle is better if you can. Since you are working, you should consider an autofeeder. Since raw shouldn't be left at room temperature very long, get one where you can fit in an ice cube in the feeding compartment along with the food, or one that has room for an ice pack.

Molly and I talked a little before she headed to the store

The last I heard, her plan was to buy some of the Natures Variety canned and start with that. See what Skooter liked and which protein he tolerated best. I think she was going to try chicken, turkey and beef.

If that transition goes well, she'll work on transitioning to the raw with the same protein source.

One of her main questions is how should she do this? Leave his regular dry down and offer the wet for small meals thoughout the weekend? Or mix wet with dry? Or ???

With the 5 unit dose, one of her biggest fears is going low with the reduction in carbs. I told her to go ahead and post her plan here and start getting some feedback from others.

It's probably best to switch this conversation over to Skooters 7/4 condo so we have everything together. That way, we can discuss food transitions and dosing as needed but everyone has all the info

Wendy's idea is an excellent one; I never fed dry so didn't have to go through the switch. It makes slot of sense. NV also has rabbit, venison, and duck....plenty of novel proteins to try if the others don't work.