How to successfully change your pet’s diet

Veterinarian Birgit Steindl gives tips on changing your pet’s diet:

Changing your pet’s diet can require a sensitive approach. While many pets tolerate a sudden change of food, the number of animals that are sensitive to such a change is increasing.

These animals can suffer from severe digestive disorders if the pet’s diet is changed abruptly. This complicates the work of us vets enormously, as the sudden change in feed and the resulting digestive irritations make it difficult to determine whether a slower change in feed could solve a possible allergy problem.

For this reason, experts like me always advise against abruptly changing a pet’s diet. Instead, we recommend the following approach:

Replace the previous fodder with the new fodder step by step. Start with small amounts of the new food, about a quarter of the known amount. After 1-3 feedings with this mixture, replace another quarter. For particularly sensitive animals, this process of changing the pet’s food can even take over 3 weeks.