Wysong Epigen Canine/Feline Dry Diet - Dog/Cat Food- 5 Pound Bag (WDCFE5)

I'm so happy to have found such a high protein food for my cat! I used to feed her half kibble and half a homemade, raw, meat mixture, but I've recently decided to go vegan, so I am feeding her all kibble until I gain the knowledge/resources/guts to make her vegan too (so that I'm at least not directly buying the meat...). However, I was worried about how much less protein and how much more carbs she would be getting by eating all kibble, which is why I'm so glad that someone is finally making an appropriately high protein kibble for cats! It's crazy how many people will scream about cats being obligate carnivores when the subject of vegan cats comes up, all while feeding their own cats kibbles/cans that are 50% (or more) carbohydrates. I usually rotate my cat through 2-3 different kibble brands with 40-45% protein. I don't transition her from one to the other, I just switch her. When one bag is done, I open a new bag of a different brand. She never has any problem with this, because they all have similar macronutrient ratios. However, if she gets into my roommates' cat's food, which is only about 30% protein, she will get diarrhea. With this Wysong food being 15-20% more protein than she is used to, I am transitioning over to it very slowly. If your pets are used to around 30% protein in their food, you will need to transition to this very, VERY slowly - this is double the protein that they are used to! I'm not sure if my cat likes this food or not. She's not scarfing down her food like she usually does, but she's not picking around the Epigen kibbles, and she's also not acting like she's hungry, so maybe she is just feeling more satiated because of the high protein. I certainly like it though! This kibble is dark and rich smelling, like other higher quality (and expensive!) kibbles I have purchased. It has the best macronutrient ratio of any kibble on the market (by far), and at an amazing price for how high-quality it is. I'm not sure if the price is so low because of how poorly it's been reviewed or what, but I really hope Wysong continues to make this product and sell it at such an affordable price! My only small complaint is that the bag it comes in is made of a fairly thin plastic compared to other brands that I have bought. The food seems fresh enough though, so maybe it doesn't make a difference. For some reason, people have gotten it into their heads that "obligate carnivore" means that cats cannot digest or utilize carbohydrates, which is simply not true. What obligate carnivore really means, is that there are certain micronutrients that a cat needs to thrive/survive, which they cannot make in their own bodies. These are called "essential" nutrients. In nature, these essential nutrients are either not made by anything other than animals, or cats do not have access to enough of the non-animal organisms that do make them. So, in a cat's natural habitat, they can only gain these essential nutrients by eating other animals that do have the ability to make these nutrients in their own bodies. Therefore, in their natural habitat, they are "obligated" to eat the flesh of other animals. Similarly, humans cannot make vitamin C in our own bodies, even though it is necessary for survival, so we are obligated to eat things that can make vitamin C. However, vitamin C is made by both plants and other animals, making us omnivores. None of this has anything to do with carbohydrates. Cats DO have the ability to digest and utilize carbs (as evidenced by all the cats that have survived on crappy, high-carb, commercial cat foods), HOWEVER, because they have to eat so much meat to gain the essential nutrients they need (in their natural environment), their digestive systems are optimized for digesting and utilizing protein and fat, ultimately making protein and fat better for them. THIS is why a high protein and fat diet, like Wysong Epigen, is so good for them. In the modern world, the meat that is used to make cat food is lower in some of the essential nutrients cats need in the first place (because of how the meat animals are fed/raised), and much of the nutrients that are there (essential and otherwise), are destroyed during the processing of the meat into cat food, so the essential nutrients need to be added back into the cat food during production. These nutrients are typically obtained in a lab from microorganism (bacteria, fungi) that either naturally produce the nutrients or have been genetically modified to produce them. So, the commercial cat foods will all be fairly similar in regard to micronutrients. This leaves the macronutrient ratios (amounts of protein, fat, and carbohydrate) as the main important difference, and this is where Wysong Epigen wins.

longtime indoor/outdoor cat owner. Active hunters. Anyway, it sounds like Wysong had a rocky start based on the pretty old reviews. 60% protein content is hard to argue with. This is one of four of the options I always have available for my indoor/outdoor cats. Their go-to is "Purina Fancy Feast Dry Cat Food with Savory Farm-Raised Chicken and Turkey". I've tried maybe two dozen different products and brands over the years. Top notch blue buffalo and it's contenders and all. Some batches seem to be hit and miss where quality is good one batch, but not the next so I think it's important to offer a variety for our pets (they'll enjoy one bag, but 3 weeks later I order another and they want nothing to do with it). I've been told that's not good for them to switch up cat food but that simply sounds to be against common sense. Epigen is one of 3 on the list of 4 dry cat foods that I plan continue to stock. I'm not so sure about the 4th just yet (currently purina whitefish and egg). The 3rd is purina complete which is very inexpensive which I also put out for feral cats because it's so inexpensive, yet my cats still like it as more of a side dish. I used to only feed them friskies surf and turf and they would pick out the pieces they like and disregard about 1/2 of them (mostly the green colored ones that I think are the seaweed based ones and then random others as if they could sense they weren't up to par) so I'd have to dump or top off their dishes often. Anyway, they seem to appreciate the staples and occasional switch ups. I also tried Purina Beyond Grain Free White Meat Chicken and Egg Recipe Natural Cat Food High Protein Cat Food Dry Formula recently and they liked the first bag but not the 2nd (like I was saying about hit batch quality) which is why I tried the purina whitefish variety. They liked it the first dish but I guess they didn't like the aftermath or something and have shied away from it. It's less a side dish than the ultra cheap purina complete. I appreciate the Epigen so far. It's smelly like blue buffalo in the summer heat but good food should be, right? The purina whitefish does smell fishy which should be a good thing. Not too "byproducty" of a fishy smell but slightly so. They're not really eating it day 3 now so I'll probably scratch it and keep looking for another side dish for them. Epigen seems pretty decent. My 95% wild cat has been eating it more lately. I see her once a week-a month until it's below freezing outside and she camps in all winter waiting it out. They want fat content as the winter arrives. Despite Epigen listing a lower fat content, she goes for it pretty hard in late WI fall so I doubt it's as low as they claim. Even in the summer they want fat. They eat only the heads off of their prey sometimes because that's where most of small prey fat content is.

Raw diets are coming on strong as we start to realize that dogs (and cats) are getting too much carbohydrate in their food. But I'm not a big raw Diet proponent because it's a Wild West of de-regulated strange-meat in those diets. None of it is USDA inspected. I don't like that. But I wanted something that would give me a low carb benefit in the nutrient ratios that Raw Diets have. That's 60% protein, 30% fat and 10% carbohydrate and of course, water soluble vitamins. This diet is all that. I put Ajax on this and watched as he ate it ravenously, then his appetite faded as he "got past" the glucose starvation of this low carb diet. His weight pared down. I could feed less and he was more satisfied. And now he actually leaves food in his bowl. Just eating what his body needs. He DID have gas the first week. He DID regurgitate the food a few times if he gut-loaded heavily and did not drink enough water. Now we put water in the bowl with the food most of the time. Fixed the regurgitation. He DID have soft stools for a week. But he's doing GREAT on it. And I won't be likely to change. I believe a lot of dog's atopic / itching is from too much carbohydrate. You don't have to be "allergic" to milk to be intolerant of it. I think dogs are that way about carbohydrates, especially grain carbs.