Hi everyone,
Sorry this message is quite long, I'm looking for a bit of advice. I adopted my lovely 6-year old boy about 2 months ago and he is already my whole world. At the time, I was told that he had diarrhea when he got "stressed", and that when they had taken him to the vets he had been put on royal canin 33 sensible dry food. She said that he had always had soft poos. Naively I did not think much more into this I just thought his food obviously needed to be changed.
Once I brought him home I kept him on this food and he continued to have diarrhea (sometimes slightly more formed but always liquidy and varying between lots of small droplet poos and several big poos). I then tried feeding him only turkey mixed with probiotics and felini supplement to see if would calm his stomach, as I read online it is good to feed a bland diet to treat diarrhea and also the benefits of raw. I also gave him slippery elm bark and psyllium husk which did not seem to do a great deal. He definitely has allergies as when I tried mixing some salmon oil into his food he came up in a rash that went away within 2 days. Having discovered that turkey/chicken is actually a high allergen food, at the advice of the vets, I tried to switch him to pro plan hypoallergenic dry food to eliminate allergies (done so over a period of 7 days) - he hated this! refused to eat it and when he did eat it he would vomit between 12-3am. The ingredients in this are "rice starch, hydrolysed soya protein, soybean oil, minerals, hydrolysed digest, animal fat, fish oil" - so even though it is an allergy specific food I assume the rice/fish oil it does not agree with him. I am pretty sure he is also allergic to fish/turkey/chicken/some kind of grain in the food.
I have read several threads on here about rabbit/duck being best for potential IBD/allergies so I tried feeding him some of the grain-free leftover duck wet food his previous owner had been giving him which they had given to me whilst waiting for some raw food to arrive in the post. The wet food (Feringa pure meat duck - 97.8% duck (50% neck, 20% hearts, 20% liver, 10% stomach), 1.75% cottage cheese, 0.25% valerian, 0.1% spirulina, 0.1% minerals) also did not agree with him, which I assume is either because of the cottage cheese (why that is in there I do not know) or because of feeding him it too quickly without slowly introducing it even though he had been on it before.
His delivery of frozen premade raw rabbit/duck food finally arrived earlier this week and I tried him on the duck. Within a few hours, he did a normal poo!! He also has far less ear wax and eye gunk already and is now only pooing 2 times a day. However, after two days on the food (two days ago) and then again this morning at around 6am he has been throwing up small pieces of bone in liquid. This morning some of it was more jelly-like as though it had been partially digested. Does he just need time to adjust to digesting bone or should I take him off the food ASAP? Or is it because his stomach is empty in the morning and he needs feeding in the middle of the night – I'm currently feeding him at around 7.30am, 12.30, 5pm and 10pm and he wakes me up in the morning asking for food. He has not thrown up directly after eating, only in the morning as far as I am aware. I tried grinding the food up finer yesterday using my blender to make the bone pieces even smaller, although they were not huge to begin with. I also tried to pick some of the bone pieces out by hand to reduce the amount of bone but it is impossible to get it all out.
I'm at a bit of a loss of what to do as it is not like I have an alternative food to put him back on that doesn't cause him problems. I don't want to take him off raw as it is the first thing I have found that works for him and he also loves eating it, but obviously it cannot be good for him if he continues to throw up. It's also very difficult to get duck/rabbit without bone in the UK without spending an extortionate amount of money. I can't take him to the vet at the moment as they are only seeing emergency patients – I have rung them up several times and they do not think he needs to be seen urgently as he otherwise seems okay, they just told me to see if it continues.
Sorry this message is quite long, I'm looking for a bit of advice. I adopted my lovely 6-year old boy about 2 months ago and he is already my whole world. At the time, I was told that he had diarrhea when he got "stressed", and that when they had taken him to the vets he had been put on royal canin 33 sensible dry food. She said that he had always had soft poos. Naively I did not think much more into this I just thought his food obviously needed to be changed.
Once I brought him home I kept him on this food and he continued to have diarrhea (sometimes slightly more formed but always liquidy and varying between lots of small droplet poos and several big poos). I then tried feeding him only turkey mixed with probiotics and felini supplement to see if would calm his stomach, as I read online it is good to feed a bland diet to treat diarrhea and also the benefits of raw. I also gave him slippery elm bark and psyllium husk which did not seem to do a great deal. He definitely has allergies as when I tried mixing some salmon oil into his food he came up in a rash that went away within 2 days. Having discovered that turkey/chicken is actually a high allergen food, at the advice of the vets, I tried to switch him to pro plan hypoallergenic dry food to eliminate allergies (done so over a period of 7 days) - he hated this! refused to eat it and when he did eat it he would vomit between 12-3am. The ingredients in this are "rice starch, hydrolysed soya protein, soybean oil, minerals, hydrolysed digest, animal fat, fish oil" - so even though it is an allergy specific food I assume the rice/fish oil it does not agree with him. I am pretty sure he is also allergic to fish/turkey/chicken/some kind of grain in the food.
I have read several threads on here about rabbit/duck being best for potential IBD/allergies so I tried feeding him some of the grain-free leftover duck wet food his previous owner had been giving him which they had given to me whilst waiting for some raw food to arrive in the post. The wet food (Feringa pure meat duck - 97.8% duck (50% neck, 20% hearts, 20% liver, 10% stomach), 1.75% cottage cheese, 0.25% valerian, 0.1% spirulina, 0.1% minerals) also did not agree with him, which I assume is either because of the cottage cheese (why that is in there I do not know) or because of feeding him it too quickly without slowly introducing it even though he had been on it before.
His delivery of frozen premade raw rabbit/duck food finally arrived earlier this week and I tried him on the duck. Within a few hours, he did a normal poo!! He also has far less ear wax and eye gunk already and is now only pooing 2 times a day. However, after two days on the food (two days ago) and then again this morning at around 6am he has been throwing up small pieces of bone in liquid. This morning some of it was more jelly-like as though it had been partially digested. Does he just need time to adjust to digesting bone or should I take him off the food ASAP? Or is it because his stomach is empty in the morning and he needs feeding in the middle of the night – I'm currently feeding him at around 7.30am, 12.30, 5pm and 10pm and he wakes me up in the morning asking for food. He has not thrown up directly after eating, only in the morning as far as I am aware. I tried grinding the food up finer yesterday using my blender to make the bone pieces even smaller, although they were not huge to begin with. I also tried to pick some of the bone pieces out by hand to reduce the amount of bone but it is impossible to get it all out.
I'm at a bit of a loss of what to do as it is not like I have an alternative food to put him back on that doesn't cause him problems. I don't want to take him off raw as it is the first thing I have found that works for him and he also loves eating it, but obviously it cannot be good for him if he continues to throw up. It's also very difficult to get duck/rabbit without bone in the UK without spending an extortionate amount of money. I can't take him to the vet at the moment as they are only seeing emergency patients – I have rung them up several times and they do not think he needs to be seen urgently as he otherwise seems okay, they just told me to see if it continues.