When choosing the type of food for their cat or dog, owners often hesitate between canned and dry diets, considering which one to choose for the benefit of the animal.
In fact, the usefulness of a ready-made industrial ration does not depend on its type but on the product’s composition. However, other things being equal, dry and wet food have pros and cons – let’s try to figure them out.
- Water content This is the main difference between dry and wet diets;
- in the former, there is very little moisture - less than 10%;
- in the latter - close in its content to natural food, natural for animals, and about 70% consist of water.
Therefore, as a rule, dogs and cats eat wet food more readily than dry food – they are more accustomed to such food, but the moisture level does not affect the digestibility or intake of valuable nutrients.
The only caveat:
- if you have chosen dry food for your pet,
- you need to be careful that he drinks a lot,
- especially for cats.
However, if you have arranged for your pet to have constant access to clean, fresh water, you should not be afraid of the consequences associated with the intake of an insufficient amount of fluid in the body.
Completeness and balance For constant nutrition, the feed must contain all the nutrients it needs, macro-and microelements, vitamins and fiber.
Almost all dry food on the market is complete in its composition, but this cannot be said about wet food.
Among them, many foods are intended for dditional nutrition, such as treats, and they cannot provide a balanced diet. If we take, for comparison, dry and wet feed declared by the manufacturer as complete, then what we have already called the main criterion comes to the fore – the product’s composition.
And here, the requirements are the same: food for cats and dogs as carnivores must be created based on meat, and the higher the number of meat ingredients, the better.
In this sense, high-quality dry food, consisting of 75% –85% of animal protein sources, is healthier than some canned food, where there is practically no meat.
