Dr. Elsey'scleanprotein Chicken Cat Kibble 2-lb. Bag

First, anyone complaining about diarrhea, really needs to introduce this food incredibly slowly over one to two weeks. It absolutely will cause diarrhea in many cats if you just straight out, feed it full force.The amazing thing about this food, at least for my cat, is the quality of the ingredients, and incredibly low carbohydrate content. My cat, Devon Rex, develops skin issues with most dry foods. It’s because most dry foods even hypoallergenic, have tons of carbs. Even if they are grain free.

I have tried many different dry foods over the years and Dr. Elsey's Chicken formula is the one that they seem to do better on. I first tried the Salmon Formula they offer but there was some vomiting issues, I chalked it up to the chickpeas in the food. While cats can have them, they shouldn't have them often. I switched the to this Chicken formula and they seemed to do much better on it than the salmon formula. Unfortunately the chicken formula isn't always in stock, so I had to change them back to the salmon and the vomiting returned. I am thankful that at least now the chicken is in stock more regularly than it had been before because the local pet stores do not carry this brand for some reason.I saw some comments about the formula of this changing to add PORK PLASMA in the ingredients, and I did a lot of research on it and it seems like it is used because of it's binding nature and it also has health benefits as well as it is supposed to help support digestive health. My cats have been back on the chicken formula for several months now and I have not had any digestive issues in any of them. My largest, Muninn, he is the one that seems to be very sensitive to foods and he has done quite well on this new formula, which I am thankful for as I had them on the Ziwi dried food, and while it is great food it is VERY expensive. My suggestion to those who have issues with this brand maybe give Ziwi a try, but be warned it is not cheap by any means. Which is another great thing about the Dr. Elsey's, you get a great product at a reasonable price point, and while it also isn't a cheap food, it is more affordable than some and you still feel good about the quality of food you are getting.

My cats weren't thrilled with the pork flavor. They do love the chicken though! 12 paws up!

I have two cats, an eight-year-old and one who's about a year and a half old. I free-feed Blue Buffalo kibble, which I have been pleased with for many years now, and continue to be. But I bought a 6.6 lb. bag of Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein Chicken Recipe because I like to give them a treat every now and then, not that it's necessarily better than the food they always have available, but because it's something different and, despite what some of the professionals say, my experience with cats has been that they like to try something different from time to time. Normally, I rotate between the various Blue Buffalo recipes but, every now and then, I'll buy another premium cat food.As a result, they fought over it. That says something when you consider that they always have kibble available.I won't list all of the ingredients here because the list is relatively long, but there's nothing that looks scary to me. The first six ingredients are chicken, dried egg product, gelatin, chicken fat, natural flavor, and salmon oil. Then you get into a long list of vitamins and minerals, for the most part.The only thing that I would question there, and which I always question when I see it in an ingredient list, is natural flavor. What is natural flavor? Shouldn't the kibble have the natural flavor of the natural foods that it consists of? "Natural flavor" doesn't tell me anything, so I wonder about that.However, there is no gluten, byproducts, corn, soy, wheat, fillers, or other ingredients that cats sometimes have trouble with. It's 89% protein, and it seems clear that the taste is something that my cats love. It also has a clean smell, which might seem like an odd thing to say but I've tried some kibble that doesn't. Given that I free-feed, that's important to me, although we all know that cats often enjoy some pretty rancid-smelling stuff.Besides the uncertainty of "natural flavors," my only concern is that I don't think I could afford to feed them this as a regular staple. They like Blue Buffalo well enough too, and it has great ingredients, as well as a price that's more reasonable. Had I been regularly feeding them another food, and given them Blue Buffalo as a treat, they might fight over that too.If I had reason to believe that Dr. Elsey's was better for my cats than Blue Buffalo, I would eat the cost and let them eat the better food, but I've raised four cats into their mid-20s on Blue Buffalo, one nearly making it to 29 years of age, so I'll stick with the Blue as a staple.However, I will certainly buy it again as a treat or to mix with the Blue Buffalo kibble.