Many people ask how much dry and canned food their pets should be getting, thinking that the combo is something essential to raising their pet correctly. In reality, you can actually feed any combo you’d like, including zero-percent wet or dry. It really depends on your pet and your preference.
For starters, the only real difference between canned and dry food from a nutritional level is water content. Canned food is about 75% water. To make dry food, they essentially run that same formulation through a drying process that lowers this amount to about 10%. It lengthens the shelf life significantly and, with a lower weight than canned food, it makes it much cheaper per calorie when you start factoring in packaging, transportation, inventory and other factors that drive pet food costs. In addition to paying for water with canned food, you are also paying for the canning process. There is a lot of heat, metal, and machinery involved in making food sterile and safe to be canned for a long time. So, does that mean I don’t feed my pets canned food? Absolutely not. My pets love their canned food. There is definitely a flavor and texture difference over kibble that hits appetite sensors in pets the same way a well-cooked meal triggers our appetites. So long as your pets’ caloric needs are met, you can treat them to some nice pate-de-kibble. But, it certainly isn’t “necessary” in a healthy animal as dry food meets all of their nutritional needs so long as they have access to fresh water.
So what if your pet isn’t healthy? There are definitely cases where veterinarians will push for more canned food, sometimes exclusively. The most common is with a condition called crystalluria. This is a condition where the body excretes an access of certain minerals in the urine and crystals begin to form. Peeing out these crystals can be painful enough. But, they can eventually consolidate into bladder stones, many of which require surgical removal. While there are special diets that are deficient in those minerals, it sometimes isn’t enough to prevent those crystals from still forming. The solution to this is to try to get more water into the patient. Feeding canned food certainly helps with this.
So why not just feed only canned food? If cost is no issue, it does sound like an appealing option to give your pets can after can of tasty, squishy goodness. The issue is what this does to their teeth. Dogs and cats have evolved their current dentition around hunting prey. The process of ingesting their prey doesn’t leave a lot of food stuck behind on the teeth to cause tooth decay. Pasty canned food, however, will stick to the teeth and start the process of periodontal infection leading to tartar and loss of teeth. While dry food can stick to teeth a little, the abrasive action of chewing the hard kibble seems to keep this in check.
If you do decide you want to feed some canned food, be sure to check in with your veterinary office. The technicians can usually look up you pet’s food and give you a good balance of canned and dry to keep you pet healthy while not being overfed.