Rotation schedule

Cleo2014

Forums Enthusiast
Since feeding raw is not going to work for Cleo, we are sticking with kibble. However, we still want to give her a variety. Can anyone give me any insight on food rotation? I want to do this with Cleo, and I am curious to find out what everyone else is doing. I have heard so many different ways to do a rotation that it all seems confusing. I want to do something that won't cause much tummy upset. Thanks!
 
I'm doing a rotation diet with the Fromm 4-Star (non-grain free) line. There are 5 varieties in that line (white fish, chicken, duck, pork and salmon) and I change proteins with each bag I purchase; roughly monthly.

When I started, I mixed the foods together 50:50 for about a week to introduce the new protein. Now I just switch bags (except for Keiran who is still going through the rotation for the first time). Fromm formulates all their kibble the same, changing only the protein, so it's easy to do a rotation with it.
 
I feed the Fromm Gain free, I mixed the food the first few times I switched proteins and it never bothered him, so I don't bother to mix the old and new food anmore. However if I were switching brands I would then mix the old and new food together.

I have been wondering is it good enough in a rotation to switch protein or should there also be a rotation between brands every once in a while?
 
we go through brands with the same protein and take a while to switch between brands. then at some point, we switch to a different protein within a brand and eventually go through some brands and then switch up again.
so we go through one or two proteins per year and 2-3 brands- depending on what's going on, we could stay with one kind for more than 6 weeks....

we've been burned as in when we went to switch to a brand/protein, the pet store didn't carry it anymore..... guess there wasn't enough demand when we switched off it......
 
:winkgrin:What about doing Honest Kitchen?

I have looked into that as well. It is not sold here in town and I looked online at Amazon and I can't afford to spend $80.00 a month on that at the moment. If I could I would though... I have a 4 year old that goes to daycare and we pay $130.00 a week. And it is draining our wallets. However, once he starts school next year, there will be no more daycare! Yay!
 
Thanks guys. Sounds like you all usually switch when the bag is done. I think I will do that and gradually switch her from one protein to the next. :smile2:
 
I am the odd person out, I guess. I do the Fromm 4 Star line but Addie gets bored of food very quickly. She will inhale any new food for approximately 4 days, and then get bored of it and becomes uninterested in eating it. When I started feeding it, she was a little over 9 pounds, her first week she went to 10 pounds, then got bored and dropped back down to 9-ish pounds.

Concerned for her weight, I researched and because the Fromm line is so similar, she is on the Beef Fritatta AND the Pork & Peas. We are almost out of the beef so we are getting the Chicken a la Veg this weekend (to add into the mix, and then it will be just Chicken & Pork). She LOVES the Fromm, but would skip out on eating because she simply did not feel like having the same thing again. I couldn't risk her losing any more weight. I started out with the beef, then added the pork. Some days she gets beef for breakfast and pork for dinner, some days it is vice versa, some days its all the same flavor. Since doing this, some feedings she still skips if she really wanted the other flavor, but usually will eat the next go round. When she eats, she eats the whole serving happily. I have never had any issue with tummy problems on Fromm, and am even thinking of trying their version of Surf and Turf once the pork is done.

Bless their hearts, but my in-laws use Orijen for their dogs, and when they puppy sat for us one night, they did not stop Addie when she started eating it (even though we asked them not to let her eat anything but her own food). The next day she had major tummy issues. They also did that when they fed Wellness & TOTW. She has tummy issues. So, I am confident I saying that if she was going to have problems with this Fromm rotation, she would have already, and hasn't.

She is finally at 10.4 pounds and maintaining. I can't feel her hip bones so prominently. On the Merrick, I would have considered her underweight, looking back.

Hope this helps.
 
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