ForestWind Siberian Cats

4 indications that the pet food you are buying is top quality:

A whole food protein source tops the list of ingredients. The key here is to look for named meat, typically one-word descriptions of the protein in the formula, for example: beef, turkey, lamb, chicken, etc. Avoid any product with non-specific descriptions like 'animal,' 'meat' or 'poultry.'Most commercial pet foods also contain meat meal, which is fine as a secondary ingredient to a whole food protein source. Meal consists of meat with the moisture removed, with or without bones and has the right calcium/phosphorus balance. Like the primary whole food protein source, meal should be from a named, specific meat.

It's grain-free, or at least low-carbohydrate. Your carnivorous pet has no biologic requirement for grains (or potatoes or other carbohydrates). Many grain-free formulas use potatoes instead, but potatoes or other starches should not be added in excess simply to offset meat content.

It has an AAFCO guarantee. AAFCO has established minimum standards for complete and balanced pet nutrition. Most of us concerned with animal health realize there's room for improvement in the AAFCO guidelines. However, you can be reasonably sure a pet food meeting those guidelines will provide all the elements of nutrition your dog needs to sustain life. A formula without AAFCO certification will likely be deficient as a sole source of nutrition for your pet.

It contains human grade (USDA approved) ingredients. This can be a tricky area, because the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) has very effectively prohibited the use of the term 'human grade' on pet food packaging. As a result, very few pet food labels contain the phrase*.

However, if the manufacturer is using ingredients fit for human consumption, you'll know by the information provided on the bag, as well as their marketing materials. The company will want you to know why their food is more expensive.

The better the brand (and higher the cost), the more likely it is the ingredients are human grade. If all else fails, you can visit the manufacturer's website or call their toll free number to get your questions answered.

Bonus? the listed protein source is free-range or pasture-ranged, and hasn't been raised on hormones and antibiotics.

* According to TheBark.com: AAFCO says "human-grade" is false and misleading, and constitutes misbranding, unless every ingredient in the product—and every processing method—meets FDA and USDA requirements for producing, processing and transporting foods suitable for consumption by humans, and every producer of the ingredients is licensed to perform those tasks. Few pet food companies can meet these criteria.

If you own a companion animal and feed him store-bought pet food, chances are you’re aware of the many pet food recalls in recent years. Both animals and humans have been made sick by tainted pet foods.

There was the massive 2007 recall for pet food containing melamine. Melamine is a toxic chemical used in plastics, cleaning agents, laminates, fertilizer and other products. It was found in combination with cyanuric acid in the wheat gluten in certain pet foods, and traced to ingredients imported to the U.S. from China.

The combination of melamine and cyanuric acid is known to cause renal failure in pets, and many dogs and cats became severely ill, some fatally, after eating contaminated food. Well-known names like Iams, Eukanuba, Purina and Science Diet were some of the over 40 brands involved in the melamine recall.

Most major pet food brands and manufacturers have recalled products known or suspected to be contaminated, in particular with the salmonella bacteria.

In 2008, following massive recalls for salmonella contamination, major pet food manufacturer Mars Petcare US was forced to close its doors. The CDC traced the salmonella to the flavoring room of the manufacturing plant where dry pet food was sprayed with flavor enhancers prior to packaging.

For a complete list of recalled pet foods by product name, visit FDA.gov. As you scan the list, note that even pet food brands considered very high quality are not exempt from contamination.

The List of Best-to-Worst Foods

Dr Karen Becker, DVM

1. A balanced, raw, homemade diet is the best food you can feed your dog or cat. It will be nutritionally balanced because you're following a recipes. Raw means the food is unadulterated and still contains all the enzymes and nutrients that are typically destroyed during cooking or other types of processing.

Homemade is the best option because you are in complete control of the quality of ingredients in your pet's diet.

2. Commercially prepared raw diet, like Nature's Instinct. This is a prepared raw food. It's important that the diet is balanced, and you should be aware that there are raw food pet diets entering the market that are not yet proven to be nutritionally complete. These foods often say "For supplementation or intermittent feeding" on the label. Others will be simply all meat and bone with no heart or liver added. If you can't tell, be sure to ask.

You'll know if the raw food you've selected is balanced because it will say it right on the packaging: "This food has been proven to be nutritionally complete or adequate for all life stages."

3. Cooked, balanced homemade diet. It's the same diet found in # 1, except it's cooked. This means some of the nutrient composition has been diminished through heat processing.

4. Human-grade canned food. If the label doesn't say the ingredients are human grade, they're not. Pet food made with human-grade ingredients is also a great deal more expensive, so that's another way to tell what you're getting.This type of diet is the most expensive you can feed your pet.

"If you have more money than time, you can purchase human-grade canned food for your dog or cat. But if you have more time than money, I recommend you make a balanced, homemade diet right in your own kitchen for a fraction of the cost."

5. Human-grade dry food. Dry food is not as species-appropriate as a moisture-dense diet. Human grade is very important because the food is approved, in theory, for human consumption, which means it doesn't contain low quality rendered by-products.

6. Super premium canned food which can be found at big box pet supply stores like Petco and PetSmart. 

7. Super premium dry food. 

8. Veterinary-recommended canned food. Vet recommended canned foods are purchased at your vet's office or clinic. Typical brands are Science Diet, the Purina veterinary lines, Royal Canin and Waltham.

9. Veterinary-recommended dry food.

10. Grocery store brand canned food.

11. Grocery store brand dry food.

12. Semi-most pouched food.The reason this type of pet food is so far down the list is because in order for the food to remain "semi-moist," an ingredient called propylene glycol is added. This is a scary preservative that is a second cousin to ethylene glycol, which is antifreeze. And while propylene glycol is approved for use in DOG foods, it can kill cats. I do not recommend feeding any food that contains this additive.

13. Dead last on the list and the worst thing you can feed your pet is an unbalanced, homemade diet – raw or cooked. I'm seeing an increasing number of misguided pet owners in my practice who think they're doing the right thing by serving their pet, say, a chicken breast and some veggies and calling it a day. Yes, the food is homemade, but it's nutritionally unbalanced. Pets being fed this way are showing up at my clinic with endocrine abnormalities, skeletal issues and organ degeneration as a result of deficiencies in calcium, trace minerals and omega fatty acids.

For those of you who now know you're feeding your pet an unbalanced, homemade diet, there's an extremely quick and easy way to soar to the top of the list. All you need to do is add ingredients to balance out the nutrition in the diet you're already serving your dog or cat. This is a fast, simple fix you can apply to turn an unbalanced homemade diet into a balanced one.

Cats have a nutritional need for meat, bones, liver and heart.

Cats do not have a need for carbohydrates or grains. In the cat's ancestral diet grains and seeds were not consumed unless already pre-digested by their prey.

Carnivores require all the essential amino acids – the building blocks of protein – from their foods, since they can not make their own. Plants and starches don't supply a complete and healthy array of amino acids.

Furthermore, obligate carnivores like Siberian cats, as opposed to herbivores like cows, have relatively short, simple gastrointestinal tracts that do not allow for efficient digestion of carbohydrates.A cat's pancreas is unable to secrete the enzyme needed to split cellulose into glucose molecules.  A cat's body isn't  efficient at digesting, assimilating, and utilizing plant material or grains as high quality protein.

Feeding cats an unnatural diet can cause chronic inflammation and illness, obesity, and other metabolic disorders.

Commercial pet foods are loaded with carbohydrates such as rice, corn, barley, potatoes, and starch as cheap sources of energy and calories.

In the chart below you can see how the traditional ancestral diet – the true nutritional needs of your cat – compares with the nutrient profiles of today's common diets.

Calorie Distribution of Diets for Cats

DWe have ordered Dr Becker's Book of Recipes for HomeMade Diets and will be sharing feedback with you about it.

When examining pet food labels, it's not enough to look at the total protein percentage. This is a little trap pet owners get caught in as they become more aware of the requirement for protein in their dog's or cat's diet.

There are different kinds of protein. Some of them are appropriate for your canine companion; others are not.

A protein's source (animal, vegetable, grain) and quality (muscle meat or feet and feathers, for example) determine how digestible and assimilable they are. The amount of protein in a pet food formula is only as relevant as its level of species-appropriate nutrition.

For cats and dogs, the most nutritious protein they can eat comes not from vegetable or grain sources like corn, but from animal tissue.

The ability of protein to be used by you pet's body, and the amount of usable amino acids it contains = its biological value (BV).

Egg has a BV of 100. Eggs have the highest BV of ANY food.

Corn has a BV of 45.  Corn's BV is fairly low. It is also a grain. Grains are not which species-appropriate nutrition for dogs and cats who evolved to eat meat (carnivores).

An ingredient's digestibility and assimilability are not measured for pet food. That's how pet food manufacturers can get away with using types of protein that have no biological value to the animals eating it. In plain English, pet food manufacturers can use ingredients in making pet food that the pet can't get any nutrition from at all!!

Eager to learn more about how to read a pet food label? This excellent - and detailed - article explains why that premium commercial pet food may not be so good for your Siberian cat or your dogs after all!  Although written focussed on dogs, the infomation is as accurate for understanding the ingredients on the cat food label as on the dog food label.

Saying No to Poor Quality Pet Food...

Even When It's Recommended by Your Vet

Recently the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) added a fifth 'vital health assessment' for veterinarians in determining the health status of their cat and dog patients: Nutrition. It joins the  four existing assessments of temperature, cardiofunction, respiratory health, and pain.

Per Michael Cavanaugh, DVM, and executor director of the AAHA: "Incorporating nutritional assessment into the routineexamination protocol for every patient is important for maintaining optimalhealth, as well as their response to disease and injury.

The goal of the new guidelines is to provide a framework for the veterinary practice team to help make nutritional assessments and recommendations for their patients."

Meanwhile, wpecies-appropriate nutrition has always been as the first and most influential of the three pillars of health - the other two pillars being a sound, resilient body and a balanced, functional immune system.

Here is how the AAHA introduced their new "5th Vital Assessment" initiative in October 20102:

 DENVER -- Nutrition is integral to optimal pet care. However, the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) found through its Compliance Study that only seven percent of pets that could benefit from a therapeutic food were actually on such a regimen. The compliance discrepancy along with the many factors considered in assessing the nutritional needs of a healthy dog or cat, as well as the pet with one or more medical conditions, led to the development the AAHA Nutritional Assessment Guidelines.

The phrase 'therapeutic food' gives pause, especially when a major manufacturer of this 'therapeutic pet food' has provided the funding to print the AAHA Nutritional Assessment Guidelines for Dogs and Cats in several languages.

 
Where does this lead? It leads to sales pitches from commerical pet food vendors that will encourage Vets to push clients to buy and feed their pets this very same 'therapeutic pet food.'  In fact, a January 2012 PetfoodIndustry.com article states that pet food vendors "... will make regular visits tomore than 22,000 veterinary hospitals and clinics to help build support for and implement nutritional recommendations as the '5th Vital Assessment' in pet health care.

'Therapeutic' Pet Food Ingredients The following is a list of the first five ingredients in some of the therapeutic pet foods you may hear a sales pitch for the next time you take your pet to the vet for a wellness exam.

 A can of cat food marketed as capable of improving feline bladder health:

1. Pork By-Products
2. Water
3. Pork Liver
4. Chicken
5. Rice

A bag of kibble advertised as good for feline gastrointestinal health:

1. Chicken By-Product Meal
2. Brewers Rice
3. Corn Gluten Meal
4. Whole Grain Corn
5. Pork Fat

A can of dog food to improve cardiac health in senior dogs:

1. Water
2. Corn Flour
3. Pork Liver
4. Rice Flour
5. Beef By-Products

Dry dog food marketed for canine renal health:

1. Brewers Rice
2. Pork Fat
3. Dried Egg Product
4. Flaxseed
5. Corn Gluten Meal

These ingredients are inferior, and species inappropriate.

By-products are what are left after all the good stuff is harvested for the human food industry: Beaks, feet, feathers, wattles and combsare chicken by-products. There could be something beneficial thrown in, like the heart or gizzard, but because there's such potential for undesirable pieces and parts in 'by-products' it's better to avoid them altogether.

Corn in any form (including corn gluten meal, whole grain corn, corn flour, etc.) is an extremely allergenic food and very difficult for cats and dogs to digest. It's also one of the three crops most highly contaminated with aflatoxins.

Brewers rice is a low quality ingredient that also happens to be a by-product. In addition, it's a grain. Grains are not species-appropriate nutrition for carnivores.

Read here for the secret to cracking the code on your dog's(or cat's) pet food label.

Just Say No to 'Therapeutic' Pet Foods

Unfortunately, veterinary students don't learn much about nutrition in their coursework. They graduate, go into practice, and become easy targets for pet food companies eager to fill your Vet's reception areas and storage closets with inferior quality 'prescription' diets for dogs and cats.

Now that the AAHA has added nutrition as the 5th vital assessment of a pet's health, I think many pet owners will be hearing more about diets during vet visits. I also suspect many of these conversations will end with a recommendation to buy a 'prescription' (therapeutic) pet food.

We do not recommend the extremely low quality, species-inappropriate pet food formulas being sold through many vet practices as 'therapeutic.' Instead,  learn everything you can about the vital importance of biologically appropriate, high quality nutrition for the health and longevity of your pet.

Dr Karen Becker March 9, 2012

References:

1 Nutrition, the 5th Vital Assessment

2 Nutrition Can Positively Impact Pet Wellness: AAHA Nutritional Assessment Guidelines for Dogs and Cats

3 AAHA Nutritional Assessment Guidelines for Dogs and Cats

Source: PetfoodIndustry.com January 13, 2012

Source:  PetfoodIndustry.comJanuary 12, 2012

Cats can, and should, eat raw meat. Pet owners often get an argument from their veterinarians when they mention raw feeding their cats or dogs.

The debate about raw food doesn't make a lot of sense. Dogs and cats have consumed living, raw meats for thousands of years.

To this day barn cats catch and kill mice, and no one calls poison control saying, "Oh my gosh! My cats just ate raw meat, how do I induce vomiting?'

The truth is both cats and dogs are designed specifically to consume raw meat. Their bodies are adapted to process raw, living foods.

Fast Food is Bad for Pets, Too.

The first bags of commercial pet food entered the market about a hundred years ago. From a historical perspective, processed dog and cat food is a relatively new phenomenon, and your cat's GI tract has not evolved in those hundred years to make good use of an entirely kibble-based diet – and it never will.

Fortunately, the bodies of cats are resilient and are capable of extracting some butrition from foods like kibble or canned that aren't biologically appropriate. Unfortunately, this adaptability has led to a situation of 'dietary abuse' among the veterinary community.

Commercial pet food has been successfully marketed to Veterinarians and pet owners alike because it's easy, inexpensive and owners think they are doing the right thing by recommending or using it.

Most veterinary students don't learn about species-appropriate pet diets in vet school. The only foods discussed are the processed, commercial pet formulas in bags and cans.

Feeding a living food diet is foreign to many vets. If a client mentions he feeds raw, the vet may ask, 'Aren't you worried about parasites and all the vitamins your pet needs?'

Eliminating Parasites Many  people open to raw feeding are concerned about parasites. Parasites – roundworms, hookworms, tapeworms – are passed up the food chain and end up in the intestines of animals.

We don't feed guts to our pets! If you buy a commercially available raw food diet, you will not find guts in the formula because guts contain parasites.

If you prepare a homemade raw diet for your dog or cat, you don't include guts. Do not feed the stomach and small and large intestines. Those are the parts of the prey we get rid of, because those are the parts that harbor parasites.

Muscle meat – the part of the prey used to prepare raw food diets – is sterile except in rare instances when parasites escape the GI tract (guts) and travel there.

Certain parasites that get into muscle meat (like toxoplasmosis), can make your pet sick. This is why you should freeze raw meat for three days before feeding to your dog or cat.

By freezing meats three days before serving (a lot like how human grade fish is handled for safer sushi making), and by leaving out the intestines of prey species, one successfully avoids exposing your raw fed pet to most parasites.

Salmonella The most important thing to understand about salmonella -or any other potentially pathogenic bacteria - is that contamination absolutely does occur. It's a fact of life.

Salmonella is the reason for most recalls of dry pet foods (and human foods as well). When a salmonella outbreak occurs, there is contamination in the food chain.

The word salmonella is used to describe over 1,800 serovars (species) of gram-negative bacteria. This bacteria lives in many species of mammals. The most common bacteria riding around in your dog or cat is Salmonella typhimurium.

Quoting from an article titled Campylobacter and Salmonella-Associated Diarrhea in Dogs and Cats: When Do I Treat? written by Stanley L. Marks, BVSc, PhD, DACVIM (Internal Medicine, Oncology), DACVN, Davis, CA, for the Veterinary Information Network (VIN), we learn,

"The clinical significance of bacteria such as clostridium and salmonella causing diarrhea or illness in dogs and cats is clouded by the existence of many of these organisms as normal constituents of the indigenous intestinal flora. The primary enteropathogenic bacteria most commonly incriminating in canine and feline diarrhea is Clostridium perfringens, Clostridium difficile, Campylobacter, and Salmonella.

Veterinarians are faced with a quandary when attempting to diagnose small animals with suspected bacterial-associated diarrhea because the isolation rates of these pathogenic bacteria are similar in diarrheic and non-diarrheic animals, and because the incidence of bacterial-associated diarrhea is extremely variable.  Salmonella species are commonly isolated from both healthy and hospitalized dogs and cats."

What this article is saying, is that dogs and cats naturallyalready have some Salmonella (and other bacetrium), in their GI tracts much of the time – it's not some unknown foreign invader but rather one their bodies are familiar with.

In an article written by Rhea V. Morgan DVM, DACVIM, DACVO for the VIN, the doctor asserts the following about illness resulting from salmonella:

"Factors that increase the likelihood of clinical disease from Salmonella include the age of the animal, poor nutrition, the presence of cancer or neoplasia, and other concurrent diseases and stress, as well as the administration of antibiotics, chemotherapy or glucocorticoids [which are steroids]."

The bottom line is potentially harmful bacteria reside in your pet's GI tract whether you feed raw foods or the commercial foods.  In other words, your pet is already 'contaminated' with Salmonella.

Dogs and cats are built to handle bacterial loads from food that would cause significant illness in you or me. Your pet's body is well equipped to deal with heavy doses of familiar and strange bacteria because nature built him to catch, kill and immediately consume his (raw) prey.

Your dog's or cat's stomach is highly acidic, with a pH range of 1-2.5. Nothing much can survive that acidic environment – it exists to keep your pet safe from potentially contaminated raw meat and other consumables.

In addition to the acid, dogs and cats also naturally produce a tremendous amount of bile. Bile is both anti-parasitic and anti-pathogenic. So if something potentially harmful isn't entirely neutralized by stomach acid, the bile is a secondary defense. And your pet's powerful pancreatic enzymes also help break down and digest food.

Keeping Your Pet's GI Tract in Good Shape  To help your pet's digestive system remain strong and resilient enough to handle a heavy bacterial load and to support overall immune function, there are several things you can do.

* minimize stress by feeding a species-appropriate diet, the kind your dog or cat is meant to eat. It's important to feed vegetarian food to vegetarian animals, and meat-based food to your carnivorous dog or cat.

* minimize drugs, such as antibiotics.

* use Probiotics. Reseed the gut during and after antibiotic therapy with a probiotic. It's also a good idea to maintain your dog or cat on a daily probiotic to balance the ratio of good to bad bacteria (gut flora).

* consider using a good-quality digestive enzyme. Enzymes help your pet's body get the most out of its food.

* Avoid commercial diets when possible, when not, be sure to read labels to select the healthiest food available.

Providing your favorite pooch or feline with a balanced, biologically sound diet, a healthy lifestyle, digestive enzymes and probiotics, will nourish your pet, support healthy immunologic function, and bring overall vibrancy to her body.

Keeping your Siberiant on the kind of diet she was designed to eat, helps support her vibrant good health.

Dr. Karen Becker

Feeding a kitten is simple, right? You just open the bag and scoop some kibble into a bowl. Oh, and change out the water once in a while. Well, yes, those are the basics, but in order to really understand how to feed your kitten a healthy diet, you need to look a little bit deeper.

The first thing you need to know is that cats are obligate carnivores. Because they evolved to be carnivores, they lack certain enzymes needed to convert vegetable proteins into the amino acids they need. Your kitten cannot live on a vegetarian or vegan diet. Not now, not ever. She must eat meat in some form or another, or she will get sick and likely die.

Adult cats' diets need to have at least 26% protein and at least 9% fat. Kittens, because they're growing so rapidly, need much higher amounts of energy in their food. By the time your kitten is six months old, she still needs about 25 percent more nutrition than adult cats. This is why you should feed your kitten a food specifically designed for kittens' nutritional needs, and you should continue feeding kitten food or an "all life stages" kibble for the rest of her life.

The label on your cat food contains feeding instructions. These guidelines are very general recommendations, and it's possible that your kitten may need more or less food than the label suggests. Talk to your breeder to be sure you're feeding your kitten the right amount and type of food.

Cats' food preferences are generally established by the time they're six months old, so you need to get her used to eating a nutritionally complete diet at an early age. In order to avoid the "tuna addict" phenomenon, choose two or three different products, in different flavors, in both kibble (dry) and raw or lightly cooked meat with cat vitamins and chicken stock (wet) and feed them interchangeably.

Feed your kitten three times a day until she's at least seven months old. Kittens' stomachs are very small and they need to fill up regularly. Free feeding with kibble may be acceptable if you can't be around all day to feed them. Do keep in mind, however, that spaying or neutering decreases your kitten's energy requirements by 25 percent, so standard feeding recommendations may not work as well for cats that were fixed before 6 months of age. Healthy, engaged Siberian cats do not overeat. To avoid overfeeding do not offer food rewards or "treats." Only feed your Siberian meals in their dining area to avoid begging.

You shouldn't need vitamin or mineral supplements with good quality kibble, but you should add them to the raw or lightly cooked meat - check with ForestWind Siberians for the proper amounts and where to buy.  In fact, overdoses of certain vitamins can actually do harm.

Cat foods are made with cats' nutritional needs in mind and are fortified with amino acids like taurine in order to keep your cat healthy. However, dry food has a lot more carbohydrates than a cat needs. When assessing your options, note that canned foods have a higher percentage of meat. We avoid canned as the additives to make it congeal tend to promote diarreah. Feed real food (real meat) as the healthy alternative.

Feed your kitten the highest-quality food you can afford. Good food is health insurance, and it's worth the extra cost to buy products that have better-quality meats and few if any chemical additives. Some people recommend a raw-food diet, but don't go for it unless you really know what you're doing in terms of nutrition and food safety. If you do eventually choose to use a raw diet, work closely with your Breeder and use raw diet recipes from established authorities on the subject.

Catster 02.18.2012.

"It is Not WHAT We Feed Our Pets but HOW We Feed Them That is Making Them Fat "

Dr Ken Tudor of PetMD.com February 16, 2012

The combination of treats and feeding by the "cup" are major causes of obesity in pets. They lead to feeding your pet too many calories.

Treats 

According to studies, 59 % of owners feed their pets "people scraps." Don’t get me wrong. I have no problems with feeding people-food to pets. The problem is accounting for the calories in those treats and scraps. A piece of cheese, meat or cookie could add as many as 50 to 100 calories. For a small pet, that could be half of its total daily calorie requirement!

The “CUP” 

Although pet food labels clearly state "8 oz. measuring cup," owners are inclined to translate the meaning of a "cup" differently. The three containers to the right of the green measuring cup were called "a cup" by various clients. The numbers on each container indicate the actual number of measured cups each can hold.

The tendency is to feed to the size of the food bowl, despite instructions. Bigger bowls look empty. Food bowls should be the smallest possible size without making eating difficult.

But even owners who follow label instructions often overfeed. Feeding instructions on pet food are based on weight. Few owners know the weight of their pets, and it is difficult to get an accurate weight using a bathroom scale, especially for large dogs. Every overestimation of one pound can result in overfeeding by 53 calories. Owners with an accurate knowledge of their pets’ weight can still overfeed due to the range of "cups" in the feeding instructions for each weight category. So what is the answer?

Count the calories, not the cups 

Most veterinarians do not charge for weighing pets and an accurate weight is a must before you can calculate your pet’s daily energy requirement (kcal/day). Once the weight is known, a pet’s daily calorie requirement can be calculated. For neutered, inactive pets the daily energy requirement (DER) is: 

[30 x (Weight (lbs.) ÷ 2.2) + 70] x 1.2 = DER (kcal or calories/day) 

For intact or active pets, use 1.5 instead of 1.2 as the multiplier. For kittens and puppies, pregnant, lactating, or performance and working animals, consult with your vet for the appropriate multiplier.

If your pet is overweight, these calculations do not apply. Overweight animals need calorie restrictions and special foods. Feeding the overweight pet is the subject of upcoming posts. 

Weigh the food on a kitchen scale. Weighing is far more accurate than measuring. You will need to find the kcal/kg of the food. Pet food companies are not required to provide this on the packaging. If it is not available on the package, the company website will have it. The formula to determine the amount to feed is: 

(DER kcal ÷ kcal/kg) x 1000 = grams to feed per day* 

(* to convert to ounces divide the number of grams by 28) 

Divide the grams or ounces of food by 2, and that is the weight of each meal you feed. Feeding dogs twice daily is better than feeding one big meal. The amount of canned food per meal is calculated the same way. (Feeding strategies for cats will be covered in a future post.) 

If your pet’s Body Condition Score increases with this volume of food, cut back in 10 percent increments every two weeks until he/she maintains a perfect BCS. If the BCS decreases, add food in 10 percent increments.

We are often asked how large a Siberian gets. While the original farm and forest cat was extremely large (about 20 pounds or more), currently the Siberian cats in breeding are smaller.

Show conformation standards specify weight ranges for Siberians. We find that the ranges are close for our breeding Queens and Studs. On average they weigh from 9 to 11 pounds for females, and 11 to 13 pounds for males. You'd be surprised at how heavy" a 12 1/2 pound male actually is! Everytime I go to the Vet's for an annual check up with one of our boys I think "For Sure he is going to be 15+ pounds." Nope! never. The heaviest breeding male we had was about 14 pounds!

Above is our Jorrah Karat. In this picture he was a teenager. I am 5 foot 7 inches tall. See how large he looks against me? He was 12 pounds in this photo!

We find the larger sized Siberians are our ForestWind desexed pets. A desexed pet does not expend energy in breeding, parenting, etc, and tends to get larger - not fatter - larger - than a whole (unnuetered) Siberian. We have many reports from our Kitten Families of HEALTHY Siberian males at 15 to 17 pounds and healthy females at 13 to 15 to 16 pounds.

It is extremely rare for a happy and healthy Siberian to be overweight. The Siberian is a large, stocky breed (heavy boned and well muscled). For those Vets who are accustomed to seeing the tiny, light Persian or Siamese cat, there is often a worry that a pet Siberian is "too big."

How to tell if your Siberian is fat? You should not feel "rolls" of fat around the cat's body. Many Siberians have a "pouch" for their stomach that droops a bit under their torso, but it should not be packed full of fat - it is a looser droop of tummy. I am guessing so that the wild Siberian can gorge when food is plentifiul. remember the Siberian is a natural breed only recently brought into the world of Show breeding. Prior to that it was a farm cat and family pet who "earned" its keep mousing and detroying other vermin.

If you are worried about your Siberian's weight, just send us an email to consult at SweetSiberians@aol.com

Warmly, ForestWind Siberians.