Schesir Born Carnivore Chicken and Egg Grain-Free Dry Kitten Food - 1.25 kg

Schesir Born Carnivore Chicken and Egg Grain-Free Dry Kitten Food - 1.25 kg is a complete grain-free oven-baked dry food for kittens, chicken and egg, which Schesir puts at 33% fresh chicken as the first ingredient.

Key Features

• 33% fresh chicken as the first ingredient: An ingredient figure: that is how much fresh chicken went into the recipe before baking.
• Formulated for a growing kitten: A kitten needs roughly twice the energy per kilogram an adult cat does, with a far smaller stomach to put it in.
• Fibre for digestion: Stated by the brand for this recipe, and useful while a kitten's gut is still settling.
• Oven-baked at low temperature, not extruded: The brand's method for the range, and the reason the kibble is lighter and crumblier than most.
• Omega 3 and 6 in the recipe: Which is the part that shows in the coat before it shows anywhere else.
• Made in Canada: Stated on the pack, and unusual for a brand otherwise made in Italy.

A Complete Dry Food, Unlike Schesir's Complements Line

• Complete and balanced, so this can be the whole diet.
• Worth saying because Schesir also sells a Complements line, which is a complementary food by its own label and is capped at two servings a day. The names are similar and the consequence is not.
• If you are feeding one thing and nothing else, a complete food is what you want, and this is one.

Two Kinds Of Percentage On This Range, And They Do Not Compare

• Schesir quotes two different measures across these bags, and this page quotes an ingredient figure: how much fresh meat or fish went into the recipe before baking.
• Other bags in the range quote an analytical figure, measured on the finished food. The two are not numbers you can put side by side. Fresh meat is mostly water and the water leaves during baking, which is exactly why they differ.
• Neither is a trick. They answer different questions. If you are comparing this against another brand, or against the other bag sizes here, make sure you are comparing like with like - and ask us if you want help doing it.

Oven-Baked Rather Than Extruded

• Most dry food is extruded: forced through a die at high temperature and pressure. This range is baked at a lower temperature instead.
• The brand's claim for that is better retention of vitamins and minerals. That is their claim and we are passing it on as theirs rather than dressing it up as a finding.
• What you can see for yourself is the texture. Baked kibble is lighter and crumblier than extruded, which some cats prefer and some do not.
• Made in Canada, which the brand states on the pack.

Grain-Free Here Does Also Mean Low-Carbohydrate

• This matters because grain-free usually does not. Plenty of grain-free dry foods simply swap the cereal for potato or pea starch and end up at much the same carbohydrate level.
• Born Carnivore publishes its carbohydrate figure, and it sits around 11 to 12%. For a dry food that is genuinely low, and it is the reason this costs more than a supermarket kibble, rather than the grain-free label on the front.
• If you are managing a cat's weight, or a diabetic cat on your vet's advice, that published figure is the number that actually matters. Talk to your vet first, then come to us.

A Dry Food Carries Almost No Water

• That is the convenience and it is also the catch. A cat on dry food alone has to drink the difference, and a great many cats do not drink enough.
• Put water in more than one place, away from the food bowl, and consider one wet meal a day alongside. In this climate it is the cheapest insurance against urinary trouble there is.
• Reseal the bag and keep it out of the kitchen heat. Fat in a dry food goes off, and a bag left open here goes stale faster than the date suggests.

255 g Or 1.25 kg

• The 255 g bag is a trial size. Buy that first, because a cat that refuses baked kibble will refuse 1.25 kg of it just as readily.
• Once you know it is eaten, the 1.25 kg is the better value per kilogram. Tell us your cat's weight and we will work out how long a bag lasts.
• Do not buy more than about a month's worth at a time whatever the saving. An opened bag of dry food in this climate does not stay fresh.

Good To Know

• Mix a new dry food into the old one over a week or so rather than swapping the bowl in one go. Cats object to change, and a baked kibble feels different in the mouth from an extruded one.
• Kitten food until about twelve months, then move to an adult food over a week or so. The adult Chicken and Egg is the natural next step.
• Get a kitten used to wet food as well as dry now. A cat set in its ways at three will refuse anything new, and that becomes a real problem the day it needs a prescription diet.
• The 255 g bag of this same recipe is also listed, which is the sensible first buy for a kitten.
• Ask us for the full composition and analysis and we will photograph it. The front of a bag is not enough to compare two dry foods.