Natural Instinct and changing puppy from kibble

[jmanagh]

Hi All,

The Natural Instinct order should be arriving today and actually I am quite excited about it  as I have taken the decision to move the boys from kibble to raw. I am fine with changing over Basil and Eddie (adults) and will follow the advice on the Natural Instinct website (3/4 kibble in the morning 1/4 NI in the evening) and will make sure that the change is gradual.

Alfie, on the other hand is another matter. I only collected him on Sunday, he is on Royal Canin but is quite a scratchy, itchy boy. I would like to switch him over to NI asap but with only just having him and the fact that he is on four meals a day, I am unsure on how to make this transition. I'm hoping COLers can help me I don't want to upset his tum and I have read about not mising kibble and raw due to the different way they are digested.

You may be wondering why I am changing from kibble. Firstly, Eddie my Papillon is really fussy and does not seem to eat kibble. I found a new food called 'Encore' but this is pretty expensive and I think that NI is healthier and cheaper anyway. My old boy, Basil is due to have a number of teeth extracted and I thought NI would be easier for him to eat. Finally, being a new mum of Alfie, I want to give him an excellent diet too and reading other people's reviews on Natural Instinct and the fact it seems so straightforward to use has swung me in this direction.

Thanks, Jacqui

[Jonnydog]

Actually, giving them little tastes of different foods when they are puppies is no bad thing, so I suggest mixing a tiny bit of the NI into his kibble at each meal and gradually upping the quantities.

[KellyT]

You could leave him on the kibble for a couple of weeks and let him settle into your household, and then do the following ...swap out 1 of his kibble meals a day for raw. Do this for a week, then 2 meals for a week, then 3.. you get the drift
If was me I'd just start the swap straight away, but only use 1 type of meat (i.e. stick with chicken or turkey, don't mix and match). Also,

Just for your info the NI puppy food has no different composition than the adult food, the difference is the grind is finer on the puppy food; this may be important for you with a young pup, but when I used NI and we got Hazel she was 5 months old so we stuck her straight onto the adult mixes.

The mixing kibble and raw thing; It's not so much don't do it during the same day, the advice is around mixing in the same meal, however I mixed them in the same meal for a week, didn't do my girls any harm at all.

As an aside NI got me into raw feeding too - I really liked it, but be careful as not all of their foods contain offal meat and sometimes my girls got constipated on it.  I use RawToGo now who are a Durham Animal Feeds distributor - not as prettily packaged as NI but lots of varieties and the girls seem to like it and aren't constipated any more

[jmanagh]

You could leave him on the kibble for a couple of weeks and let him settle into your household, and then do the following ...swap out 1 of his kibble meals a day for raw. Do this for a week, then 2 meals for a week, then 3.. you get the drift
If was me I'd just start the swap straight away, but only use 1 type of meat (i.e. stick with chicken or turkey, don't mix and match). Also,

Just for your info the NI puppy food has no different composition than the adult food, the difference is the grind is finer on the puppy food; this may be important for you with a young pup, but when I used NI and we got Hazel she was 5 months old so we stuck her straight onto the adult mixes.

The mixing kibble and raw thing; It's not so much don't do it during the same day, the advice is around mixing in the same meal, however I mixed them in the same meal for a week, didn't do my girls any harm at all.


As an aside NI got me into raw feeding too - I really liked it, but be careful as not all of their foods contain offal meat and sometimes my girls got constipated on it.  I use RawToGo now who are a Durham Animal Feeds distributor - not as prettily packaged as NI but lots of varieties and the girls seem to like it and aren't constipated any more

Thank you so much for this post, it has been really helpful