Anyone use Orijen?

[Caylynn]

Does anyone use Orijen?
http://www.championpetfoods.com/orijen/orijen/

It sounds like quality food, and is grain free, but I'm curious about all the vegetables and fruits in the cat food.  I understand that cats need some carbohydrates, and since this food contains no grains, the fruits and vegetables and providing the needed carbs.

Right now I'm in Germany, so I'm using a very high-quality EU food (Almo Nature), but when we move back to Canada I know I won't be able to find Almo Nature locally, so I'm seeking out some options in advance.

Thanks for any feedback!

[alek0]

Sorry, I have no experience with Orijen (I use Timberwolf Serengetti which has similar composition and no grains), but I would appreciate if you;d share your experience with Almo Nature.

I am considering to get some almo Nature canned, I currently feed some japanese canned foods and solid gold, only chicken and tuna are avilable flavors, so I need to find something else good and safe to feed to provide some variety. I've been trying to cook for my kitties but they don't seem to be interested. And vitamin supplement ingredients look almost as bad, if not worse, than foods. Not sure what to do.

[Caylynn]

Almo Nature is a very high quality food.  A lot of breeders and veterinarians here in Germany recommend it.  The wet food (cans, not the jelly, pate or pouches) contain 74% meat, 24% cooking water and 1% rice for most of the flavours.  Some of the flavours have slightly different compositions.  The meat is 100% organic meat from hormone-free ranges, or 100% sea fish (not farmed fish) and the rice is organic.  My Sphynx loves the poultry and fish flavours, and the flavours with added shrimp as a treat after a bath.  (Sphynx have to be bathed about once a week, so as a treat after the bath, he gets one of the flavours that has shrimp in it.) 

My cat loves the Almo Nature.  I have to tell him to slow down when he eats it because he just gobbles it right up!  We've had no problems with it.  We've had no health problems and he's never brought the food back up.  (He has, however, brought up dry food when he eats it too quickly.)

When I take the Almo Nature out of the can, it looks just like canned chicken or tuna that I could buy for myself, with a few rice grains throughout the meat.  It's the only soft/wet/canned food my Sphynx receives, and I'm very happy with it.  His breeder uses it as well (which is why we started feeding it) and it is recommended by our veterinarian.  Sphynx have fast metabolisms, so they really need a high-quality food, and the Almo Nature is excellent.

[Sharon L.]

I've just started using Orijen and my cats *love* it. After their diet is stable for a month or so (I've been doing brand switching) I'll be taking them to the vet to check the ph balance in their urine.

It's amazing what I have learned about pet nutrition during the past few weeks.

[Caylynn]

Thanks Sharon.  I hope it works out well for your cats.

I studied human nutrition in university, but until the past few weeks, I didn't know much about cat nutrition.  Growing up, we had two cats who lived to be 19, and they were fed Iams dry their entire lives.  Needless to say, after having access to very high quality foods here in Germany, and with this pet food recall, I won't be doing that with our current cat when we move back to Canada.

[garypen]

I currently feed some japanese canned foods and solid gold, only chicken and tuna are avilable flavors,

Which Japanese brands and varieties? And, how do you get them in North America?

I remember being impressed with some of the Inaba high-meat varieties I saw in Japan. My Japanese wife would love it if we fed them a high-end Japanese brand!

[alek0]

Caylynn, thanks for the info on Almo Nature, got some to try.

Garypen,
I am in Hong Kong, so we have both US brand imports and japanese brand imports. I often order online dry food and treats from US to get something (at least I thought so!) better quality than Iams and Hills, so I have been freaking out since this whole mess started. Only one of my three cats is willing to eat home cooked, they are all interested in raw but I can't feed raw on regular basis since I don;t want to feed meat from China because of poor safety standards, and imports from Australia and New Zealand and France are fresh enough only immediately after defrosting, i.e. 1-2 days per week.

As for which Japanese brands, I feed Aixia and Inaba. For Aixia, ingredients are tuna or chicken (can be with whitefish, prawns, etc), jelly, oligosacharides, and vit. E. Not too happy with oligosacharides, but the fish and chicken pieces look real (in both Aixia and Inaba, as well as Maruha and Mimmy Mio), just like the tuna in cans for human consumption. My cats prefer Aixia over Inaba. I am not sure where you can find those in North America. There are several pet stores here which accept online orders and ship overseas, but selection is not that great. This one has several Japanese brands, it does not have Aixia but it has Maruha which is very similar, see details:
http://www.upet.hk/shipping.html
Shipping fees are in HK dollars, exchange rate is 1 US dollar=7.8 Hong Kong dollars.

[garypen]

I'm familiar with Inaba. Some of the varieties I saw in Japan looked like bits of chicken and vegetables that a human would eat.

Thanks for the tip!

[jenny]

Anyone know how many calories are in a cup of this?  I had emailed the company but they never responded.  I know the other high protein ones (EVO, CORE) are over 500 calories in a cup - too much for my boys.

[Sharon L.]

Same with Orijen ... reading from the bag of feline dry it has 540/kcal per 250ml cup. 40% energy from protein, 15% from fruit & vegetables, and 45% from fat.

I've compensated by cutting down the amount of dry food I leave out. I used to free free dry and open a can of wet two times a day, but I'm now trying to move my cats primarily to wet food. I'm still experimenting with the best way to schedule, but at the moment I feed a greater amount of wet, and then supplement with a small a small amount of dry after the wet is (mostly) eaten.

Sharon L.

[jenny]

Thanks Sharon - my cats are about 1/2 canned, 1/2 dry now.  I eventually want to move them over to more canned as well. 

Is the kibble size pretty small?

[Sharon L.]

Yeah, the kibble is a good size. It is a triangular shape ... same shape and slighly larger then the dry Wellness Core (not the regular Wellness dry, which quite small and pebble shaped).

My cats just love this food. The biggest problem I have is that it is not sold in the Los Angeles area. I've been having it shipped from The Bark Market in Portland (for those in the Portland area, the owner, Piotr Orloff, is a prince among men), but the shipping is killing me.

http://thebarkmarket.com/

Sharon

[garypen]

So, why not feed them Core or EVO?

[Sharon L.]

Well, dry EVO is lower in protein, and higher in fat and magnesium so I'm not considering that option. As for Orijen, my cats prefer it over Wellness Core ... I can even get a stray that doesn't recognize wet food as real food to eat some canned as long as I mix with Orijen kibbles. I also really like that the company obtains its raw ingredients locally.

And I've been doing a lot of food switching and I really wanted to stabilize my cats on a consistent diet so I can get a baseline pH level with the new foods. Should the out of state shipping become so much of a burden that I can only get intermittently, then I'll move on and stabilize my cat's food on Wellness Core.

Innova EVO
Protein - 42.00%
Fat - 22.00%
Magnesimum - 0.14%

Wellness Core
Protein - 50.00%
Fat - 18.00%
Magnesimum - 0.10%

Orijen
Protein - 45.00%
Fat - 20.00%
Magnesium - 0.09%

Sharon L.

[garypen]

Going by the above analysis alone, I'd choose Core from those three.

BTW, have you looked into Nature's Variety Raw Instinct. It is also a high-protein zero-grain formula. The magnesium may be too high for you though.