He's higher than usual today and last night, my chief suspicion is that he's been eating more boiled chicken because of poor appetite recently and I may have overfed. He's eating regular food again so I'll see how he gets on the next few days. I'm away from tomorrow evening and back Sunday evening so I've booked a cat sitter and these are my instructions to her (she's a vet technician): 1. Test on arrival 2. Feed 3. Inject only if 5.6 (100) or higher because no one can monitor 4. Do not inject if he doesn't eat at least half a tray of food before you leave 5. Note down BGs and injection times on my white board and I'll backfill the data on Sunday 6. Clean / Load the timed feeder to dispense food at +4 and +8 She's staying for 30 minutes at each AM and 1 hour in each PM. She'll spend the spare time after feeding / injecting playing with them.
88@AM+6. His new kibble arrived. I've given him a small handful as a taste test and he devoured them in seconds. I plan to continue to feed wet food throughout the day and mostly wet food in the PM cycle, feeding a kibble 4am snack as he won't eat his wet 4am snack. The kibble is 8.7% carb and his wet food is 0% carb. This is day one of an experiment of raising his carb intake from 0% to 2% in order to see how that impacts his BG. Monty occasionally loses appetite and the kibble will also help for days when he won't eat his regular food. I'd prefer to give him something he will eat that is nutritionally complete than boiled chicken.
I've also found a cut and a clump of hair missing on his chin - he must have had a fight with Molly! I've cleaned the cut with anti-septic wipes and cleaned the blood out of his fur, it's a small cut.
Just to double check my figures, Monty usually eats 5 trays per day of Lily's kitchen for a total of ~360 calories per day. According to the packet of dry food, the carb content is 12%, not 9% as advertised in the UK food chart (although I think the packet might be wrong). So to get 2% total calories from carbs he should get 1/6 of his calories from this kibble: ~60 calories which is about 16g of kibble (100g is 382 calories). So I plan to feed him 4 to 4.5 trays per day and 8g of kibble 3 hours before each injection. I'll do this for a week and see how it impacts the BG. Another advantage of this small kibble snack is that I don't need to worry about wet food spoiling in the auto feeder for 10 hours.
The difference in carb% might be because the packet would have values on a Guaranteed Analysis basis while the UK food chart might have values on an "As Fed" basis. I assume the actual values must have been sourced from the pet food companies while preparing the UK food chart. @Elizabeth and Bertie am I right?
Hi, haven't had a chance to read through the thread in detail yet, but UK foods are usually 'typical analysis' as is the case in the rest of Europe (for the time being anyway....) And we're lucky because this is far more accurate than the US's 'guaranteed analysis'. Gonna read back through the posts, BRB....
We are discussing why there is a difference in carb% between the cat food label and the UK Food Chart.
Ah, it looks like they've changed the recipe.... That pack says 12% carb content, and previous packs said 9.5% carb content (which equated to 8.7% cals from carbs...) Will take a look at the Thrive foods tomorrow, but if they have changed the food that is going to be a real blow for a lot of UK folks feeding dry food....
Thrive replied, 12% is the correct amount and their website is being corrected shortly. I'll continue to give this to Monty because he only gets 1/6 of his calories from this food but this sucks for kibble only cats.
Have they given you nutritional values on an "As Fed Basis" or "Dry Matter Basis"? What are you feeding Molly?
We're lucky in Europe, Bhooma, in that cat food data is usually 'typical analysis', unlike the US where 'guaranteed analysis' is on the label. (...Although the labelling rules may well change after the end of this year when we are completely out of the European Union... )
Tom, @Tom & Monty It's possible that the carb content of the 'chicken' flavour (not 'chicken & turkey') has actually gone down... Someone bought a bag of that a couple of weeks ago, and the carb content on the pack is now shown as 9.5% by weight (down from the previous 10.5%). This calculates as 8.86% cals from carbs... If this is the new formula for the chicken flavour then this would be some good news...
