Imagine a world where you ate the exact same food every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even if that food was one of your favorites, it would quickly become boring! This is what life is like for pets who are fed the same food day after day. Which is why many pet parents are now adopting a method called “rotation feeding”! If you’re feeding your pet the same food all the time, you should hear about The Benefits of Rotation Feeding for Your Pets!
The Benefits of Rotation Feeding for Your Pets
What is Rotation Feeding?
Rotation feeding is a pretty simple concept. It’s simply a feeding technique where you strategically change up (“rotate”) what you feed your pet. So maybe one week your pet gets lamb flavored dry food, and the next they get chicken flavored or wet food added in. You change up the flavor and the form to provide your pet with an interesting variety of meals. That’s a lot more fun for them than the same old food every day of their life!
The Benefits of Rotation Feeding
Along with an added aspect of fun at your pet’s meal times, there are many other benefits of rotation feeding.
First of all, rotation feeding ensures your pet is getting a completely balanced diet. What if the food you’re currently feeding your pet doesn’t have enough vitamin A? If they’re never fed any other food, they could potentially become vitamin A deficient! But if you rotated their diet and included other foods, those other foods could fill in that vitamin A gap!
Another one of the benefits of rotation feeding is that by varying what your pet eats, you make it less likely that they’ll develop a food allergy. This can sometimes happen if a pet is consistently exposed to an ingredient like chicken or corn. The less often your pet eats the same food, the less they’ll be exposed to some ingredients that could become allergens.
Lastly, by feeding your pet foods in different forms, they get the benefits of each of those forms. For example, dry food can be helpful at keeping your pet’s teeth clean. But wet and raw foods are great sources of water. By feeding your pet all the different forms of food, they get all the different benefits!
How to Rotation Feed Your Pets
If you like the benefits of rotation feeding and would like to rotation feed your pet, you shouldn’t just start right now. Here’s what you need to do:
First, it’d probably be best to discuss rotation feeding with your vet. They may know of some brand combinations that do/don’t work well together, and they can help you make the best choices for your pet’s individual needs. They’ll probably suggest that you stick with foods at the same level of quality for the least chance of your pet having digestive issues. For example, you wouldn’t want to keep skipping between grain-free, high protein dog foods and filler-full dog foods.
After picking your foods, you’ll need to slowly introduce them into the rotation, especially if your pet is older and has been eating the same food for years. Add a little bit of their new food to their current food and increase the amount over time, so they can adjust to the differences.
Once they’re eating a good amount of the new food daily with no side effects, you can switch them into a full rotation. Start with a monthly rotation, and then slowly work your way into a weekly or even daily rotation, if you want.
Do you use rotation feeding?