My visit to the Natural & Organic Products Show 2009 (1)

I made my annual pilgrimage to the Natural & Organic Products Show 2009 today.  (You can read last year’s visit in the post here).

It’s a trade-only show, which means that its a showcase for what’s new and cutting-edge in the health and food industry. 

I find it very useful because it’s a one-stop shop to chat to the market-leaders and experts in their fields.  Yes, ultimately it’s a commercial show, but I’ve always met a lot of people who are passionate about making a difference in providing healthier alternatives to the way we eat and live.  And the exhibitors are generous in sharing their knowledge and samples which means I can write based on personal experience!

In most years, a three-hour visit has been plenty.  This year I found myself running out of time and frantically running round even after the show had been declared over, because there was so many new products to investigate.

I’ll cover my findings in the following categories as separate posts:  pet foods, pet-related products, (human) food products and personal care products.

PET FOODS

1.  My find this year was Lily’s Kitchen Proper Pet Food.   Henrietta, the founder, named the company after her Border Terrier, Lily.  She wanted to give Lily a diet that wouldn’t contain any of the preservatives and chemicals that commercial pet food contains.  

Every ingredient in the range is human-grade and organic.  Just as importantly, there is no soya or grains, artificial colourings, preservatives or flavourings or animal derivatives (e.g. cow hooves).  Even the chicken used is NOT chicken meal (i.e. powdered chicken) but from whole chicken.

It’s the only pet food in the UK to be certified both Holistic and Organic.  Lily’s Kitchen was awarded “UK’s Best Pet Food Company 2008-2009″.  And apparently holistic vets like Richard Allport are recommending the food in their practice.

The cat food range has a higher meat content of 60%.  It’s still not as high as I’d like it to be, but for people who can’t feed raw, or are transitioning to raw, this is definitely a big step in the right direction.  The US has traditionally always led where holistic pet food is concerned, but it’s been impossible for US companies to import wet pet food into the UK because of EU regulations.  So it’s exciting that finally, such choice is available to pet lovers in this country.

Lily’s Kitchen for cats is available in Organic Dinner with Chicken and Organic Dinner with Lamb.

2.  Another pet food company new to the exhibition was Forza10.  I couldn’t work out why the name was so familiar, until I remembered seeing it on the zooplus web-site.

The company is Italian, and what is of note is that the President of the company, Dr. Sergio Canello is a Homeopath and Vet.  Again, the impetus for the company was to create pet foods that would not result in food intolerances or cause allergies in pets. 

The ingredients are apparently the result of years of clinical and scientifc research (see website) and are unique to Forza10.  They claim to be effective in helping to resolve food-related allergies such as dry and dull coat, fur loss, paw licking, dermatitis, localised itching, eczema, pyoderma, vomiting and diarrhoea.

There are two Forza10 ranges – Forza10 and Forza10 Bio.  The latter is based on organic-certified meat and fish for cats and dogs.  Furthermore, no meat comes from intensely-farmed animals.

Looking at the list of ingredients for Forza10 Bio wet food (which is available in rich in Beef or rich in Chicken variants), the meat content is an impressive 97.4%, but this is made up of both the meat (min 30-40%) and meat by-products.

(At the risk of sounding facetious, the term “meat by-products” always reminds me of that menu in Terry Pratchet’s Mort, where Mort is faced with a choice of a “curry with named meat” and a “curry with an unnamed meat”!)

Again, it’s nice to know that there is a better choice out there for our pets.  Anything that moves away from pet food that contains artificial preservatives, flavourings, colours and poor-quality meats is a good one.

3.  Rattle and Reward cat treats.  Yes, this is kibble.  But the ingredients are natural (meat and fish), hypoallergenic with no carbs, and rich in salmon.  No artificial preservatives are used.  They come in a little embossed tin, and it’s amazing just how quickly cats will work out what that rattling sound means!  The cat treats are appropriately-named “Cat Cravings”.

Thank you to Lily’s Kitchen, Forza 10 and Rattle and Reward who kindly gave me samples of cat food to try.

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10 April 2009 – Additional findings

I opened the Lily’s Kitchen.  It is a pate-type cat food, set in jelly.  It is not as pureered as most pate-type foods (e.g. Friskies Gourmet Gold), there are small bits of meat and veg in it, but it’s not as evident as say, in a product like Almo Nature where the meat is instantly recognisable.

The Rattle and Reward has been a resounding success.  Ananda, who is usually the gentle soul, actually cries out for it when she hears the rattle of the tin.

Raw feeding recipe using Woldsway Rabbit

Raw Rabbit Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 x 0.5kg pack of boneless wild rabbit chunks

1 x 0.5kg pack of mixed rabbit offal (heart, liver, kidney, lungs)

1 x 0.5kg pack of minced wild rabbit (bone-in – VERY IMPORTANT for the calcium content)

2 x raw egg yolks (preferably organic or free-range)

2000mg taurine (very important if using frozen meat, or will be freezing the meat)

400IU Vitamin E

100mg Vitamin B

2000mg salmon oil

1 tsp kelp

1 tsp psyllium husk

Preparation

Cut rabbit chunks into smaller chunks if feeding kittens.  Puree offal in meat grinder.  Mix with mince.  Place in large bowl.  Add approx. 200-300ml of water.  Add egg yolks (not the egg whites).  Open supplement capsules and sprinkle over mix.  Mix with spoon or if feeling bloodthirsy, hands.  Spoon mix into small freezer bags.  Approx. 3 dessertspoons per bag will feed 5 kittens (at 7 weeks’ old) per meal.  Will make approx. 10 bags x 3 spoons per bag.  This is approx. 3 days’ worth of food.

Rabbit from http://www.woldsway.co.uk/acatalog/Pet_Meat.html

Supplements from various sources (mostly dry, powder version for ease of mixing)

Kittens 2008 – their first meal

Here is a photo of the first meal I gave the kittens.  As mentioned in my previous post, even though the kittens were just 4 weeks’ old, Mum Cat kept bringing them chicks to eat.  Of course they were too small to even attempt to eat them, but I felt they might be old enough to attempt solids.

I wean kittens onto raw meat.  In this photo, they are tucking into wild rabbit mince gound with the bone, mixed with pureed offal (lungs, heart and liver) and little kitten-mouth-sized chunks of rabbit.  I got it all from Woldsway Rabbit who this year have started doing offal packs – many thanks!  Into this mix I add egg yolks, taurine, Vitamin E, Vitamin B-complex, kelp and psyllium husk.

It is a labour of love – it is more time-consuming to have to put together a home-prepared diet rather than just open a bag of cat biscuits and pour into a bowl.  From reading other breeders’ experiences, I do believe that kittens take more readily to raw food.  Certainly, as you can see from the photo they seem to recognise what food is. 

Not all the kittens ate the raw meat in that first encounter.  In the photo are Mum Cat who’s setting them an example – she frequently calls them to their food – the two boy kittens and one of the creams.  I don’t try to force the kittens to wean if they’re not ready.  All of them are still suckling from Mum.  And the littlest cream kitten isn’t eating as much raw.  However, to date all the kittens are now eating some raw.

The Supreme, Shopping and a Sphynx

The Supreme (which was held on Saturday 17th November this year), is the largest cat show in the UK and is run by the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy (GCCF).  To qualify for entry to the Supreme Show a cat must first win at a GCCF Championship Show.   So as you can expect the standard is very high.It’s also one of the best shows if you want to see any breed of cat, meet cat breeders or go shopping for cat products.

It’s held at the NEC in Birmingham, and last year I went by train, which meant I couldn’t get as much cat goodies as I wanted to because I couldn’t see myself lugging bags of cat litter back on the train.  It was a shame because cat shows are the best places to see what was new on the market, buy in bulk, receive discounts, or to get free samples of cat products.

This year I was lucky.  My new kitten owners were curious to see what a cat show was like, plus they wanted to do some cat shopping.  They were going to drive there, so I cheekily asked if I could have a lift there – no problem, they said!  So this year, I did the journey there and back in an extremely comfortable car.  As an added bonus, the said car had a lot of boot space so we could really stock up.

And my, these new kitten owners were smart shoppers.  They came prepared with trolleys on wheels so we wouldn’t have to carry everything by hand.  Definitely a good idea, those trolleys – in fact, we probably could have set up a stand selling them as we saw loads of people struggling with bags while we sauntered by.

So what did we buy?

Cat food:  Applaws Cat food by the box because there was a case discount.  Applaws is the UK-equivalent of Almo Nature Cat food – very very high quality, human-quality, in fact food.  Real bits of chicken, or fish.  No preservatives, soya, filler, carbs, apart from a little rice or pumpkin.  You could make a sandwich with the tinned chicken – it’s that good.   Bozita cat food by the case as well.  Bozita is a Swedish brand, it comes in nifty tetra-packs which fold over at the top so you can store them easily.  They were giving away kitten packs with every case – the box containing the kitten pack had a house printed on it, and the windows and door of the house were perforated so you could take them out and the kittens could play in the house!  Interesting flavours – crayfish, for one.  Bozita has an 88-95% meat content.  Unlike Applaws, it’s meat that’s reconstituted into chunks, not real pieces of meat, but without any soya or grains which is good because you want to avoid feeding carbs to cats.  Some of the ingredients seemed expensive to me, like crayfish, but maybe crayfish in Sweden is not an expensive food?  We got some free samples of a new brand of canned cat food from the US – Evangers – premium ingredients again, like organic chicken, or pheasant, and high in protein.  I went home and opened the can, and it was pate-type cat food which unfortunately aren’t to my cats’ tastes – pity.   Royal Canin had a large stand there – they make dried cat food and are priced at the higher end of the market.  I was curious about their breeder scheme, and was told that breeders received 30% discount (or thereabouts) or RC cat food.  However, you couldn’t just fill in a form to join, but you had to buy a 20kg bag from the stand, and then one of their sales reps would sit you down and talk to you.  What about I asked, but they wouldn’t tell me.  I didn’t have the time nor the inclination, so I declined.

Cat Litter:  There were a few new-ish brands of cat litter on the market.  It seems the trend is moving towards biodegradable cat litter in a bid to capture the eco-conscious cat lover.  Which is all very well, but how good is the odour control and is it easy to clean?  I bought some Cat’s Best Nature’s Gold – it’s pellets made from fir and spruce wood.  I was interested in it because I’d used Cat’s Best OKO Plus previously which is more granular.  Nature’s Gold is supposed to track less, and not stick to the furry bottoms of long-haired cats.  There was a special offer on:  a 20kg bag for £12, 2 bags for £11 each etc.  World’s Best Cat Litter had a stand and I mentioned that my kitten packs never arrived, and they promised to send them to my kitten owners, so fingers crossed.

Cat toys:  we were hoping that Da Bird cat toys would be available, but the person who has the sole distributorship in the UK wasn’t there.  We got some catnip toys – an El Gato catnip Cigar and a Yeoww!  Catnip Banana.  So far I haven’t found a more potent catnip toy, and one which lasts and lasts.  Some of the catnip toys on the market look large, but the catnip doesn’t fill the whole toy.  With an El Gato the whole of the catnip toy is packed with catnip.  And it seems to stay potent for a long time.  I still have a catnip cigar that’s a year old and still gets revisted by my cats.  These catnip toys are more pricey (RRP is £5.50), but we bought ours from a cat club table for £4.  I also bought two spiders made from pipe cleaners from another club table.  My Bengal loves these pipe cleaner spiders – it seems to trigger something in her predator brain and she will pounce and kill them over and over.

Which brings me to the cats, just in case you thought we were only there for the shopping.  Did we look at the Maine Coons?  Of course we did.  We saw some really huge fellas – the largest weighed in at 25 lbs!!!  My new kitten owner was a walking endorsement for me – she showed off her kitten photos, and I was really chuffed.  I’ve been hoping for a red stud boy for Ananda next year, and someone who saw the kitten photos was a breeder with just such a stud, so watch this space!

Which brings me to the final topic in this post: the Sphynx cat.  I wrote briefly about the Sphynx in my post last year on the Supreme.  They are an extreme-looking type of cat, and not to everyone’s taste, but there’s something so alien,  yet noble about their looks that I love them.  Despite their strangeness, they are cats through and through, and love a cuddle and are very friendly.  My new kitten owner hadn’t seen a Sphynx, so I dragged her to the exotic cat section.  She wasn’t disappointed.  In most cat shows, the owners don’t allow their cats to be handled by the public in case of germs.  The Sphynx owners were more obliging than most others – we got to touch and hold two Sphynx cats.

This is Infurno Kismet owned by Sara Allwright.  When I held him, he just lay in my arms, purring.  I put my cheek to his flank and it was warm and felt just like a peach.  Sphynx cats aren’t totally bald – they have little bits of fur at the base of their ears, and a few hairs on their tails.

See you next year at the Supreme!

(with many thanks to the Zealands for a fantastic day out, and without whom this post wouldn’t have been written)

Moth

Mum cat, Ananda, helpfully brought in a LARGE moth last night. 

She let it go and the kittens pounced.  Moments later, Loki, the brown tabby kitten, was wearing a cute fluttery moustache.  A gulp later, moth was no more and Loki was looking very pleased with himself.

(urggh – rather him than me).

There is a stain on the kitchen floor where the moth’s wings have left their powdery imprint.  Elli, the little black kitten, keeps darting toward that spot and sniffing it.

I suppose this could be construed as raw feeding for cats?  What sort of nutritional values does a moth have?  Is there a market for canned moths for cats?  Are you going to report me to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Moths?

[if you suffer from Mottephobia (fear of moths) as I do, cats are a great way of avoiding it.  I grew up in a country which had Atlas Moths - please be kind - Atlas Moths have a wingspan of 10-12 inches!!!   Imagine, a moth the size of a blackbird!!!! I haven't seen many moths around this summer.  Now I know why.

Ananda, the mummy cat, understands what I mean when I say "flappy flappy?" in an enquiring tone, and she looks around for the moth.  You know you're a cat breeder/crazy cat person when you talk baby talk to your cat!]

Raw feeding – UK sources for meat and supplements

Many raw-feeding web-sites are of US origin, with suppliers based in the US.  Here is a list of UK suppliers and stockists of raw pet meat and supplements:

MEAT GRINDER

There are many meat grinders on the market, but not all of them are equal! And don’t even consider a hand-driven meat grinder unless you are an arm wrestler! There is only one meat grinder I use – it’s the one that’s also recommended by many raw-feeding forums. About £85 (excluding delivery). There are cheaper brands on the market, but they can’t grind bone. This workhorse is made from aluminium and will last.

Electric Meat Grinder from Northern Tools (Item No.: 168620E)

http://www.northerntooluk.com/products.asp?partno=168620

MEAT

Rabbit meat

I’m currently using the pet mince made from wild rabbit from Woldsway Rabbit. It’s ground with the bone-in for that important calcium content. It’s a richer red than the farmed rabbit mince. However, the quality of all Woldsway rabbit is always good. But go for the wild rabbit mince – your cat will thank you. I buy the mince and the farmed rabbit chunks, thaw slightly then mix with supplements and offal, and refreeze.

Woldsway Rabbit – http://www.woldsway.co.uk/

0800 298 5000. The meat is delivered frozen with ice packs.

General pet meat

Graig Farm Organics. http://www.graigfarm.co.uk/catalog/cat_11.htm

This is an award-winning organic-meat company. The pet mince is mainly from offcuts and offal and is of human quality. The mince is a dark paste, you cut a corner off the packet and squeeze it out. The meat is delivered frozen. They also sell chicken heart and liver.

Yeoman’s Meat Company: 01773712226. I’ve never used this company as they’re based in Nottingham and don’t deliver this far South. Some breeders have used them and like the quality. They do ox cheek, rabbit and general pet mince.  [please see one of the comments left below - Yeoman's has been taken over by http://www.back-2-nature.co.uk - I haven't tried their products yet as I haven't see it being sold in the London area]

Prize Choice from Anglian Meat Products: http://www.prizechoice.co.uk/.

Set up by some vets who were interested in bones and raw food (BARF). Some of their meat has the bone ground in. I haven’t really tried their meat. You will find them in large pet stores.

Chicken

You can get this from any supermarket or poultry butcher. My favourite butcher is in a farmer’s market. I trust the quality of his free-range chickens, and he gives me free giblets because of the amount of chicken I buy.  Please try to use free-range chickens because they don’t stand all day in their shit and therefore the risk of contamination from salmonella is lower.

Lamb/Beef: look in your supermarket and buy casserole chunks. Don’t buy the mince because (1) you don’t know how long it’s been sitting on the shelves (2) mince gets contaminated more easily with bacteria because of there is more surface area with mince. Don’t feed pork to cats – it can contain a parasite that is fatal to cats.

Offal

Often, many raw-feeding recipes call for offal to be added, namely chicken heart and liver. Now, chicken liver you can get from any supermarket or poultry butcher. However, the only places I’ve been able to source fresh chicken heart are ethnic butchers or Chinese supermarkets. As for kidney, try a supermarket or a butcher. If you make friends with your local butcher he may give you giblets (i.e. a pack made up of a chicken neck, liver and heart) for free.

Whole prey

You may like to give your little tiger a taste of a small chick or mouse. Livefoods supplies frozen food for people who keep reptiles as pets. Postage can be quite expensive as they use a courier. I usually order in bulk – if I order 400 chicks, then even with postage, it works out to about 4p a chick.

SUPPLEMENTS

If you have friends or family visiting the US, beg them to buy vitamins and supplements and bring them back for you. Fact: Supplements are cheaper in the US: you’ll pay $ for what they charge £s for in this country. And you can’t get certain supplements, like glandulars (extracts from glands) in the UK due to EU regulations.

If you want supplements that are pre-mixed, then either Feline Future or Feline Instincts from the US are your only sources. These supplements often come with dried egg yolk in them. Note: not only will you have to pay shipping (i.e. postage costs), but also import Tax when it comes into the UK – anything over £18 is charged tax plus VAT. The costs can be prohibitive.

It might be more cost-effective to get each individual supplement itself. The supplements you will need to get are: Taurine, Vitamin A, Vitamin B complex, Vitamin E, kelp and dulse powder, fish oil capsules. I use Google to try to find the discounts. However, some of the sites I have used are:

Nutrisun for Taurine (Solgar) 500mg capsules, Vitamin A (Solgar) capsules, Vitamin B Complex (Solgar) capsules, Vitamin E (Solgar) 268mg capsules. Be careful when you buy Vitamin B – often manufacturers add herbs like alfalfa which they claim is synergistic in action. Maybe that’s so for humans, but not for cats.

Hellenia Health Foods has a Vet’s Choice section with good value kelp powder.

Another online source of supplements is Nutricentre.

Psyllium husk – this is usually ridiculously expensive, and sold in teeny packets, I’m not sure why. However, the best value so far is a brand called Maxicol. It comes in a large tin which contains psyllium husks together with pre-biotics and digestive bacteria.

I have not been able to find a source of reasonably-priced dulse powder in the UK.

Worming (again)

Just a short update:  I took the plunge and wormed the kittens.

 I ended up using Panacur because my vet was adamant that it had the gentlest effect on the digestive system of kittens.

I did have a discussion about using tablets, but he wasn’t convinced that they were easily digested.  I asked about wormers you could add to food, but with this method there is no guarantee that each kitten will get the dose they require.  (I’d been warned off a wormer starting with “M” because of rumours of a kitten allegedly suffering an intussusception after taking this wormer).

It did have to be done 3-days’ consecutively.  Because I used a 10% suspension, the dose was 0.7ml per kitten, once a day. 

It wasn’t as messy as the previous time.  There was a bit of foaming at the mouth, but on the whole most of it went down the kittens.

One tip that was given to me by an experienced breeder is to put a teat on the syringe so that you can reach further back in the mouth so the kitten will swallow the liquid more easily.

Squirming Worming

It’s that time when I hum and ha about deworming kittens.

Some vets recommend a protocol of deworming kittens from as young as 2 weeks of age and to repeat every 2 weeks until 3 months’ old. One argument is that worms, such as roundworms can affect the digestion and well-being of kittens, causing failure to thrive.

Another argument is that prior to vaccinating a kitten, you want to get rid of parasites, otherwise the toxic overload from dying parasites can affect the kitten’s ability to cope with the vaccination.

Then of course there’s the possibility of a kitten passing on parasites to whoever handles it.

I really don’t like the idea of having to stuff chemicals down perfectly-healthy kittens. And of these three above reasons, the second is the only one that might convince me deworming is necessary.

I don’t think you can really prevent a cat from acquiring parasites, especially if they go outdoors. Worming an adult cat every 6 months probably only keeps the parasites under control.

And if the cat is raw-fed and has a healthy immune system, it should be able to cope with parasites.

Last year I used Panacur in its liquid form for the litter of 7 kittens.  The liquid formula had to be administered by mouth for 3 days running, in order to ensure that all the parasites were killed.  It is a mixture that has the texture and consistency of white paint.  Smells like it too.

Oh my, what fun.
For 3 days I ran round the house armed with a syringe full of Panacur, chasing kittens who seemed to sense that something nasty was up.  It was like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  And once I’d got hold of them, they squirmed like worms to escape and spat out the mixture. The carpet and floors resembled a Jackson Pollock painting executed in spatters of white.

There must be a better and easier way to do this.

Perhaps a better solution would be to get a faecal test done to see if there are any parasites. And then dose if necessary.  More later.

Kittens – raw feeding – importance of fibre

This follows on from my post on the kitten with the sticky bum.

Turns out the pumpkin did the trick and Roly produced a beautiful one.  It was firm, solid and everything that sites on raw feeding claim raw-fed cat poo should be.

Unfortunately, he did it on the front door mat.  But hey, at least he didn’t wipe his bum clean on the carpet.

The thing is, I almost didn’t find it either because it was relatively smell-less.  A lack of smell is not something you normally associate cat poo with, but it’s true with raw fed cats/kittens.  It’s something that was mentioned in the Winn Feline Foundation Report on diet and cats too.

Fibre is something that raw feeders may or may not have to add to the raw food.  It helps to ease the passage of food along the bowels.  Some cats don’t need additional fibre.  Some do.  It all depends on the cat.

If you think about one of the natural food sources of a cat in the wild, it’s a mouse, which would have a stomach full of digested grain (or  bird, with its fibrous feathers).  That would be a source of fibre for the cat.  How to duplicate this source of fibre for our domesticated cats?

I used pumpkin in this instance with Roly.  Some experts advocate adding psyllium husk instead, but some (e.g. rawpaws) don’t.  It’s something you’ll want to investigate and try out for yourself.

Mr. Sticky Bum

Good news: Roly (the male tabby kitten) has finally got the hang of using the litter tray for the Big Ones.

Bad news: Roly’s poo is still sticking to his bum and to get it off he drags his bum on the floor. This morning was a frenzy of cleaning as the floor was smeared. I had a look at his offering in the litter tray, and it was quite well-formed, so I’m not sure why it’s sticking to his bum.

Bad news: Roly’s not cleaning his bum properly, and mum hasn’t bothered either. So I had to do it. Yum – just what I needed before breakfast.

So I’m off to find some pureed pumpkin which is supposed to be very good at firming up the poo. I think maybe the raw food I’m giving the kittens needs some fibre in it.  In the meantime, Roly has a new nickname: Mr. Sticky Bum.