Like my colleagues who keep cats, there are basically no snacks, so they freeze-dry with cat food and staple food, and occasionally feed them with freeze-dried or molar snacks.
First, cat snacks can also be simply divided into several categories: 1, molar snacks, such as freeze-dried chicken neck, freeze-dried chicken heart, freeze-dried grinding rod and so on.
2. Snacks that help cats spit hair balls are basically cat grass, such as cat grass sticks, freeze-dried cat grass particles and so on.
3, cheat water snacks, basically freeze-dried canned, such as freeze-dried chicken, wet food bags, cat strips and so on.
Second, then, how to choose cat snacks? 1, depending on the cat's own needs.
For example, when a cat vomits, there are hairballs in the vomit, which means that there are hairballs in the cat's stomach, and it is necessary to buy snacks or nutrients that can help the cat vomit hairballs. Nutrients are mainly hair milk, and snacks are cat grass snacks.
Or, if the cat has bad breath, dental calculus, etc. It needs to choose a molar snack. In short, it depends on the cat's own needs.
You should know what cats can digest and what they can't digest.
It is well known that cats are carnivores. Although I kept cats at home when I was a child, people basically ate what cats ate, but each cat's physique was different, and its growth environment and habits were different. Nowadays, pet cats have been eating cat food for generations. The choice of cat food is basically based on the content of meat and animal protein, and the stomach is more delicate.
My roommate used to have two cats, a blue cat and a civet. Blue cats really get sick easily. Civet cats have never been sick for so many years and have a good stomach. Blue cats are really not as good as civet cats, and they pay more energy.
Therefore, for the choice of cat snacks, you can directly choose cat food.
Cats can digest animal protein more easily, but it is more difficult to digest starch, and the digestion ability of cooked starch is stronger than that of raw starch. In other words, snacks should be mainly meat, and starch snacks should not be chosen. After all, there is already starch in cat food (puffed food needs starch to bond).
3. Learn to read snack recipes.
Take several kinds of cat snacks as examples:
① Cat biscuits
Basically, catnip is added to attract cats to eat, which is helpful for hairballs and grinding teeth, but in fact, if you look at the ingredients, it is mainly flour. Including salmon, tuna and other flavors, the main ingredient is wheat flour.
For example, this catnip cookie:
Raw materials: wheat flour, sugar, frozen salmon 4.5%, palm oil, mint/kloc-0.5%, additives: lecithin, sodium metabisulfite, rosemary extract, brilliant blue, lemon yellow wheat flour, followed by sugar, salmon only 4.5%, sodium metabisulfite as preservative, rosemary extract as antioxidant, brilliant blue and lemon yellow as colorant.
Therefore, buying cat biscuits for cats is not as good as making some biscuits for cats at home, at least there are not so many additives.
② Freeze-dried chicken neck
Freeze-dried snacks, because of the low-temperature freeze-drying technology, are actually raw meat, which needs to be sterilized by irradiation before being fed to cats. When choosing this kind of snacks, you need to pay attention to whether it has been sterilized.
For example, this freeze-dried chicken neck:
Ingredients: frozen chicken neck has a public radiation inspection certificate. After the pure meat is freeze-dried and rehydrated, the water is not turbid and the texture of shredded pork is clearly visible. You can do rehydration experiment when buying freeze-dried snacks. The list of raw materials for freeze-dried snacks is basically only meat, the kind of single meat, unless it is compound freeze-drying or staple food freeze-drying.
③ Cat strips
Cat bars should be paid more attention to, because this kind of snack is genuine, with many brands, some cheap and some expensive, and it is also divided into snack cat bars and staple cat bars. The staple food cat strips are nutritious and basically ok, mainly because the quality of snack cat strips is uneven, so this time it is mainly about snack cat strips.
Take this cat belt as an example:
Raw materials: tuna 80%, water, chicken oil, barley seedling powder 0.2%, hydrolyzed fish protein powder additives: guar gum, taurine, vitamin A, vitamin D3, vitamin E tuna-flavored cat strips. Although barley seedling powder is rich in dietary fiber, which can help cats' gastrointestinal peristalsis, hydrolyzed fish protein powder is a natural attractant, which can improve palatability, while guar gum is a thickener, which can lock water, and excessive addition will lead to.
Buying cat strips, tender in meat and sweet in taste, is a good tasteless cat strip. Moreover, 0 starch 0 colloid 0 attractant, the raw material is mainly meat, and some ingredients beneficial to cats can also be added, such as dietary fiber and prebiotics.
Finally, no matter what kind of cat snacks you choose, remember not to feed too much, at least after the cat has eaten the staple food, or just because you cheated on the water demand, because once you eat too many snacks, the cat will be picky about food and not eat the staple food.