Kitten Nutritional Needs

A kitten s weight may double or even triple during the first few weeks of life.

Kitten nutritional needs. Don t feed a kitten puppy or dog food. So the key is small and frequent amounts of food. Your cat should be fed a diet specially formulated for these life stages.

During this time they need a food that is formulated with the nutrients necessary for healthy growth and development. Cats vary greatly in the amount of food they need to consume to ensure they don t become over or underweight. When young cats are old enough around 8 weeks old they start to eat food on their own whilst simultaneously decreasing the amount of milk they suckle from their mother.

Of course it needs a clean accessible litter box and a safe place to call its own but your cat also needs you. That might not seem like such a big disparity but the extra calories are very important over the long haul. Unlike a dog a cat is an obligate carnivore and her body cannot obtain some of the essential nutrients from the vegetable based ingredients in dog foods.

Kittens little bellies can t hold very much food but they still need to eat a lot. In addition nutritional requirements and dietary preferences change over the course of the cat s lifetime. A kitten needs to eat a more calorie dense food than does your typical adult cat.

37491 cat p01 16 07 24 06 4 53 pm page 4. For example outdoor cats may need more calories than less active indoor cats. Some of those nutrients include.

Kittens are essentially baby carnivores with specialised needs. Cats less than one year of age are considered kittens. Obesity is the most common nutrition related problem in cats and makes cats susceptible to a number of health problems including arthritis and diabetes.