Information Sheet
Nutritional recommendations for shelter animals

Table of Contents

Introduction
Quantity of food
Feeding frequency
Monitoring success of feeding program
Assessing body condition
Quality of food
Other Links: Starvation and Re-Feeding Animals

Introduction

Feeding an appropriate quantity and good quality diet is an important part of shelter animal care:

• Adequate nutrients help animals ward off disease.
• A consistent, readily digestible diet fed in appropriate quantity will reduce the incidence of diarrhea and gastrointestinal upset.
• This is important because diet-induced diarrhea can be confused with diarrhea caused by infectious disease, leading to un-necessary treatment, isolation or even euthanasia.
• Feeding appropriate amounts prevents obesity.
• Modeling responsible feeding practices provides a good example for the public.

Quantity of food

The two most common nutritional problems in shelter animals are:

1. Inadequate intake
2. Excessive intake

Both conditions have potentially serious consequences. Inadequate intake over time results in a reduced ability to respond to vaccination and fight off disease. Inadequate intake may be due to stress or a poor-tasting or unfamiliar diet; rarely it may be due to simple underfeeding. Excessive intake can lead to diarrhea in the short term, caused by the body taking in more nutrients than it can absorb. The leftover nutrients draw water into the bowels, resulting in diarrhea. In addition to confusing diagnosis of infectious diarrhea, this is uncomfortable for the animal and discourages adopters. In the long term, of course, excessive intake leads to obesity, which carries with it numerous serious negative health consequences, including:

• Arthritis
• Diabetes
• Liver disease (hepatic lipidosis)
• Urinary blockage

These conditions are difficult enough to manage in a pet animal; in a shelter animal, such conditions may well prove fatal. Severe obesity also leads to difficulty grooming for cats. This is uncomfortable, predisposes to skin conditions, and potentially reduces adoptability. Adopters understandably hesitate to take home a kitty covered with greasy, unkempt clumps of hair, or with turds clinging to an unwashed bottom.

Excessive intake and shelter animal obesity is entirely within our power to prevent. In order to maintain appropriate intake, feed a pre-measured amount of food appropriate to the body size and age of the animal. This allows shelter staff to monitor intake and adjust as necessary. Because a decrease in appetite is often an early warning sign of disease, feeding a pre-measured quantity of food also facilitates monitoring animal health.

As a starting point, it is acceptable to feed the high end of the suggested range provided by the food manufacturer for an animal of a given size (usually available on the food bag). In shelters that house animals short term (less than 2 weeks), this will likely prove acceptable. However, when animals are housed longer term, it will be necessary to tailor the amount of food to the individual animal. Animals, like people, differ widely in their metabolic rate and activity level. Caloric requirements may differ by as much as 200% between animals.

Feeding frequency

Severely underweight animals should follow a careful re-feeding program as described in the information sheet under “starvation and re-feeding”. These animals may require feeding up to 6 times per day initially. Mildly underweight animals, puppies and kittens should be fed 3 times a day (more frequently for those under eight weeks of age). Adult animals in good to obese body condition may be fed either once or twice daily; this is more of a logistical than a nutritional decision. Some shelters prefer to feed late in the day to reduce defecation in cages during adoption hours. Others prefer to coordinate feeding with morning cleaning. If rodents are a problem, food should not be left in runs overnight.

Monitoring success of feeding program

Shelters in which animals are routinely housed longer than 2 weeks should weigh animals on intake, then assess body condition and re-weigh the animal every two weeks. If weight is lost or gained, food quantity should be adjusted accordingly. If chronic weight loss or gain continues in spite of apparently appropriate feeding, further medical evaluation should be pursued. Bi-monthly assessment of long term shelter residents should continue even in the face of stable weight over time, as it is sometimes possible to miss changes in condition of a shelter animal that would be more easily noticed in a pet animal with a consistent caretaker. This is especially important when animals are group-housed, in which case individual intake is impossible to monitor.

 

Assessing body condition

Weighing animals is useful to follow trends in weight. Weight loss may be an early sign of serious disease, while steady weight gain is undesirable for the reasons detailed above. Body weight, however, does not in itself tell you whether an animal is under- or over-weight. To determine this, a body condition scoring system should be used. The appropriate weight for a given animal should be determined by the body condition score, rather than an arbitrary breed standard. The Purina body condition scoring system can be found at:

Dogs:
http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/news/newsletters/download_attachment.php?id=24

Cats:
http://www.cathelp-online.com/bscore.html

Alternately, Google “Purina body condition score”.

Quality of food

It is most important that shelter animals be fed a consistent diet. Constantly switching diets predisposes to diarrhea. Cats in particular adapt poorly to constant switching of food, especially when stressed, and may not eat enough if diet often changes. All animals should be fed the best quality diet the shelter can afford, appropriate to the life stage of the animal. Good quality diets are generally more costly, but are more readily digestible. This gives animals a better chance of getting adequate nutrients even if intake is reduced by stress or disease. A good quality diet also tends to produce less stool volume and better consistency, making clean-up easier and the environment more pleasant for visitors. However, it should be kept in mind that high quality diets, unless specifically designed for weight loss, tend to be quite dense in energy. Therefore, a smaller amount may need to fed in order to prevent obesity. Special diets, such as those for control of urinary tract infections, diarrhea, or allergic skin disease should be available and used under direction of a veterinarian.