How prepared are you should your current pet food make your dog or cat sick? Do you have a back up pet food ready?
‘Things’ do happen; being prepared for those ‘things’ could make a huge difference for your pet and your stress level. One major preparation is having a small bag of back-up pet food in your freezer or several cans stored in your pantry. This back-up food should be a completely different brand than your ‘regular’ pet food (in case the entire line is tainted).
Your back-up food should contain similar ingredients as your main ‘regular’ dog food or cat food. As example, if your regular pet food uses chicken meal as the main meat protein, your back-up pet food should use chicken meal as well. Make sure the back-up food contains probiotics (just like your regular food), chelated minerals and similar health promoting ingredients. Changing foods quickly is not much of an issue with cats, but it can be for dogs. Keeping ingredients as close as possible with your back-up food could help to prevent tummy issues should you have to use it. Cats can get ‘stuck’ on kibble size and shape and become finicky when changing foods.
Keep your back-up kibble food stored in your freezer; not on a shelf in the pantry. The freezer storage will keep it fresh. Every six months replace the old back-up bag of dog food or cat food with a new bag; feed or discard the old bag.
Can back-up pet food can be stored in the pantry; most canned foods remain fresh for 2+ years. However I would change out the back-up food once a year.
Another option is to rotate your pets’ food once a month or so. Have two or three different pet foods you like and trust and change your pet over to a new food in the rotation the beginning of every month. Dogs need to change food slowly (most dogs); ¼ new food to ¾ old food for several days, ½ to ½ for several days, and so on. Dogs that have sensitive tummies need to change foods even slower.
Cats can typically change foods immediately.
If you rotate foods, store the next food in the rotation in your freezer (kibble) and it can/could be used as a back up food if you have a problem with the food you are currently using.
Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,
Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author, Buyer Beware
Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
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