Kitten

[dahowlers]

How long should a kitten be given milk replacer?

This is the kitten I got Tuesday, that I was talking about in my Orijen vs WellnessCORE thread. I almost ran her over with my car so I picked. The problem is, she's only about five weeks old. She'll be going to the vet on Wednesday to get a check-up and see what I should do about her healing leg.

[RattiesSix]

At about five weeks, you can be weaning her off the milk replacer, definitely. At five weeks, kittens are usually eating hard foods. I've seen people homing them at that age, so they're fairly sufficient. I'd say wean her off over the next week and she should be fine.

[KellyNZoo]

I wouldn't put a kitten that small on hard food at all. I'd keep her on canned - especially because it's better for her long term (less health issues & more moisture) and she won't learn to "love" kibble and become an addict.

[RattiesSix]

  That's actually my bad. I didn't mean hard kibbles, just hard foods. Solid foods would probably have been a much better term to use.  Canned food is much better for cats than kibbles. When she gets older, you can mix kibbles into her canned if you prefer, but if you can keep her eating canned throughout her life, you'll be happier for it in the long run. It also made it much easier to slip raw into our cats foods, if you end up  going raw.

[dahowlers]

But rehoming kittens at five weeks is way to early, and also actually illegal in my state. So should I keep up the replacer mixed with wet food until she's eight weeks and then just so completely to wet?

We free feed our adult cats TOTW, and she started nibbling on some kibbles last night because Kick Start was eating.
She's learned a lot from watching him, he's a good momma lol

I know wet food is better digestively(us this even a word?) speaking, but aren't kibbles better for their teeth? Wet food don't scrap plaque off like kibbles do. I would rather feed raw, but we can't do that right now.

[RattiesSix]

I was just using that as an example that mother's do start to wean kittens earlier than 5 weeks. Between 4-6 weeks is the norm for mother cats to wean their kittens. So you can begin weaning her now. If she is nibbling food, it's a definite indication that she's ready to begin hard foods. You can mix the KMR with her wet food. A little less KMR each day or every other day.

To me, it's depended on the kitten. I've bottle fed a lot of kittens. And some runts, I've used KMR after 8 weeks. The bigger, healthier ones have been weaned off by 6-7 weeks mostly on their own. Once they started in on the solid foods, the KMR wasn't as necessary.

[missamy]

But rehoming kittens at five weeks is way to early, and also actually illegal in my state. So should I keep up the replacer mixed with wet food until she's eight weeks and then just so completely to wet?

We free feed our adult cats TOTW, and she started nibbling on some kibbles last night because Kick Start was eating.
She's learned a lot from watching him, he's a good momma lol

I know wet food is better digestively(us this even a word?) speaking, but aren't kibbles better for their teeth? Wet food don't scrap plaque off like kibbles do. I would rather feed raw, but we can't do that right now.

I would mix the replacer with wet food for a few days, and then start to mix it with the dry food, then start to wean her off the replacer by the time she's 7-8 weeks. In my experiences, they usually start to wean themselves off of it if offered wet and dry food, but it'll be good to keep mixing it in for the next few weeks for the added nutrition and to make the transition less hard if she is resistant to it.
 
Pros and cons of wet and dry food are debated and everyone has their own opinion about it, but I personally think that feeding a mix of these is the best option. The dry food is good for their teeth and can be more filling. It's also good for grazing throughout the day. Wet food is good for the added protein and the extra moisture, which helps prevent bladder/urinary problems since a lot of cats don't drink as much water as they should.

[Marybelle]

I generally don't believe the teeth argument for dry food.  I've cleaned up enough cat vomit to know that most of the food doesn't actually get chewed, it gets swallowed whole...  If you're concerned about teeth, you're better off starting them on raw bones at a young age.  Raw bones don't splinter like cooked ones, and they'll actually get chewed to help scrape the plaque off. 

[Eternal Dream]

I wouldn't mix milk replacement with dry food, or canned food with dry food for that matter on a kitten that young. I've seen kittens inhale their food like normal thinking it's only mush only to half choke and gag on an expecting hard chunk. If you want to mix in dry food, I grind it down. They way they'll start to get the taste of it, without having to suddenly try to chomp down on a large piece of food.


How I wean my kittens is I mix Goats Milk (heated of course, and you can find the stuff in the milk section at Walmart) with baby Rice Cereal and Canned cat food. Do not use the chunks or shaved kind, you'll want something you can smooth into a consistent paste.  The younger the babies, the more sloppy I make it. The older they get, I start to cut out the goats milk and cereal. Eventually you'll be left with feeding them just canned food. I personally don't like the kittens eating dry food until they are a good almost 7 weeks if I can help it. I have 7 week old kids right now, they chew on the dry if it's the only thing down, but they do much better on the canned food.


If you want to feed raw, which is good and everything, but again, I've seen too many young kittens gag on raw meat, even choke to death, because they were fed something they were not ready for. We feed raw at my mothers, heck our boys get full chicken legs, but the kittens do not get anything that isn't ran through the meat grinder first! And they don't start getting raw food until they are able to eat dry without issues. Bones I wouldn't do until they are much much older!

[Kati33]

I generally don't believe the teeth argument for dry food.  I've cleaned up enough cat vomit to know that most of the food doesn't actually get chewed, it gets swallowed whole...  If you're concerned about teeth, you're better off starting them on raw bones at a young age.  Raw bones don't splinter like cooked ones, and they'll actually get chewed to help scrape the plaque off. 

The only dry foods that will help with their teeth are those specifically formulated to do so- ones that are included on the VOHC accepted products list. And those diets only work if the cat actually chews them. And, as with any diet, treat, bone, etc- it will only work on the teeth the cat uses to chew, which is less than half of the ones found in it's mouth. The best option for dental care is daily brushing (which cats can be trained to accept) and routine dental care under anesthesia at the vet's office. With the prevalence of severely painful dental diseases found in cats- tooth resorption and stomatitis- routine dental exams under anesthesia are a must.

[forkyfork]

I make canned cat food soup at 5-6wks and work up to plain canned, crushed kitten kibble (small round shape) and a side of goats milk at 7-8 wks. I start goats milk at 7-8 weeks and continue goats milk with regular food until 12-14 wks depending on weight.

Marybelle is right about not chewing. With 8 cats Ive seen a lot of cat puke.