Comparison of feed preference and digestion of three different commercial diets for cats and ferrets.

ABSTRACT

Diet preference and digestibility experiments were conducted using a total of 10 cats and 10 ferrets. The composition of the three different kinds of dry cat feed was as follows (each data are given in dry matter, DM) (i) normal diet (N) 95.3% DM, 33.7% crude protein (CP), 20.4% ether extract (EE), 37.6% nitrogen-free extract (NFE); (ii) 'light diet' (L) 94.2% DM, 31.6% CP, 10.7% EE, 52.2% NFE; (iii) 'veterinary diet' (D) 94.57% DM, 38.7% CP, 9.6% EE, 47.2% NFE. During the period of the preference test, the average daily dry matter intake (calculated with the mean of the three diets 94.7% DM) was 98.0, 15.0 and 16.7 g DM in cats and 25.0, 7.3 and 8.1 g DM in ferrets. The preference rates of the three different diets, expressed in percentage of their total consumption, were as follows 60.4% N (54.4 g DM), 12.4% L (12.1 g DM) and 27.2% D (26.6 g DM) in cats, and 46.2% N (11.6 g DM), 29.9% L (7.5 g DM) and 23.9% D (6.0 g DM) in ferrets. This indicates that cats and ferrets have a clear preference for diets of higher fat content. In all three diets, the digestibility of CP was significantly (p < 0.05) lower (70.1 +/- 5.4 vs. 75.9 +/- 5.8) while that of EE was significantly (p < 0.05) higher (95.6 +/- 1.5 vs. 89.4 +/- 5.3) in ferrets than in cats. The average digestible/metabolizable energy (DE/ME) ratio of feeds turned to be 95.6% for cats and 90.6% for the ferrets. From the data one can conclude that the ferret cannot be used as a model animal for cats either for preference or digestibility studies.