i am writing to a pet store about suspected animal neglect. what do you think of it??
Question: i am writing to a pet store about suspected animal neglect. what do you think of it??
(i am leaving out the name of the pet store)
“Hello,
I have been a faithful buyer of ______ products for many years now.
I have mainly purchased items from the Equine, Rodents, And Canine Sections, and everything has been to my satisfaction. I have bought several pets from your stores, and have been pleased with their care they had been receiving from you.
However, just recently i have developed an interest in hermit crabs. I was very disappointed, though, when i saw the care they were (or rather, weren’t) receiving. On all of your ads and commercials you claim to give your pets the best of care. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case with your hermit crabs.
I read the care sheet that is listed on the ______ website, and there are several things that the care sheets say that is vital to a hermit crabs health. And in my opinion, ______ is not following the care sheets that they have on their website.
At one point in the care sheet, their is a checklist printed, asking whether or not “a hermit crab is right for you”. And through my observation, if ______ does not change the environment that the hermit crabs are currently in, to go along with what they are informing the public is the proper care of hermit crabs, then hermit crabs obviously “aren’t right” for _______.
There is also a supply list on the care sheet, and ______ is not giving the hermit crabs the supplies they need either. The aquarium in _______ that i have observed, has gravel, one food dish, and way too many hermit crabs for the small aquarium they are in. First of all, although you say in the care sheet that gravel is an appropriate substrate, i beg to differ. Hermit crabs are natural digging creatures. And when you have small crabs, they cannot dig through the gravel, depriving them of their natural digging needs.
Also, hermit crabs like to eat sand, and the special “calci-sand” that ______ sells, is actually healthy for them. Secondly, Hermit crabs need 3 dishes. 1 for food, 1 for drinking water (that needs to be conditioned with products that _____ also sells) and 1 for Soaking (with sea salt also sold by ____). The food that they have in the aquarium is pellets and what appears to be fish flakes. Hermit crabs are not fish, so why are there fish flakes in their bowl? And the smaller crabs cannot grasp the pellets, so those smaller crabs, are unfortunately, starving (____also sells ground up hermit crab food, which can easily be eaten by all sizes of hermit crabs). 4th and finally, _____ aquariums have many more crabs than they do extra shells. As they grow, hermit crabs need to be able to switch into shells that will accommodate them comfortably. The few extra shells that ____ DOES have in the aquarium, are either really small, or really big.
There is no variety in sizes, causing the medium-sized hermit crabs to have no other shell to go to.
All of this information is simply based on my observation alone. Now I will move on to my EXPERIENCE with them. I have purchased 10 hermit crabs from the same ____ store, within 3 weeks. 3 of them died within 5 days of my purchasing them. I know that I am doing everything needed to take care of them, and they still died. Which suggests lack of care from ___. ____ sells all the supplies needed to care for a hermit crab, why don’t they demonstrate what proper care looks like by actually using it on their own hermit crabs?
What ____ fails to realize, in my opinion, is that Hermit crabs are animals, with the right to a good life. Why should all of ____ other animals receive proper care, while the hermit crabs are suffering, and even dying, in an environment that is not what is needed for them to live a healthy life?
____ should not portray an image of superior pet care to the public, when behind their doors several lives will end soon because of lack of care.
(this isn’t part of the letter, this just me commenting more on it lol) yep. i’m 18, and standing up for animal’s who can’t speak for themselves is very important to me. this is just the first step. if they listen then great, my work is done for the time being. but if not, i’m not gonna give up. i’m gonna bring it up to the humane soceity and whoever else needs to know. 
Answer:
Answer by Dory the Fish
ya it sounds good to me. o and good for you about standing up for what you think and animals thaty cant say what they think.
can anyone tell me anything about “Lotus Kitten Food”?
Question: can anyone tell me anything about “Lotus Kitten Food”?
I just got a baby siamese mix kitten 2 days ago. We have started her off on Wellness Kitten formula but little Sidney is just not that thrilled with it. When I went into my natural pet store yesterday to look for some toys and organic cat nip they handed me a sample of this “Lotus” kitten formula. Sidney really likes it she is eating it like its going out of style. I just want to see if anyone has any info on this food. I don’t want to switch our little one over to this food if it is not as good or better than wellness. Also I am open to suggestion if anyone can sugest a better food. Thanks in advance everyone!
Answer:
Answer by E-Fox
I checked the ingredients and I don’t really like it, I see rice and grain on the ingredient list and that’s not something cats should eat. These are not a part of cat’s natural diet (it’s an obligate carnivore – it eats meat) and they are not designed to digest it. Grain/rice is carbohydrate which the cats can’t process and it turns into blood sugar and fat, causing diabetes and obesity. In the wild, where cats only hunt for meat, diabetes and obesity are unheard of. It’s us who cause these by feeding a species inappropriate food.
I looked at the guaranteed analysis and the ash content is through the roof! 7%!!! That’s way too much, should be about 2-3. Also calculating from the guaranteed analysis, the food has 24% carbs. Cats shouldn’t have any carbs, and would do fine with up to 5-10%, but best less than 5%. So I can’t recommend this food.
I wouldn‘t really recommend feeding any dry food. Cats are designed to get their water from food. That’s the way nature designed them, they have low thirst drive. When fed dry, they won’t drink enough to compensate for the lack of moisture. They will only consume about 50% of the water they should be having. This can lead to kidney disease, UTI, crystals, blockage, renal failure and more.
Free feeding also contributes to obesity. And the fact that dry food is over-processed means, that most of it’s little nutrition has been already destroyed, leaving almost no nutrients for your cat. It needs to eat more to meet it’s needs, and in the process consumes more calories from the fillers.
Btw wetting the dry food will not help. There’s bacteria on the kibble and the water would just allow it to grow.
The only way to give the cat it’s natural hydration is to feed it wet food only.
We usually read labels on our food, but rarely on the food for our cats. Learn to read the label and understand the ingredients. The healthiest food to feed apart from raw feeding is grain-free wet food with no by-product. Some good brands are Wellness CORE, EVO, Merrick, Nature’s Variety, Blue Buffalo Wilderness and more. These will give your cat the proper hydration and nutrition it’s designed to get and it will be strong and healthy. You don’t need to feed kitten food since in the nature it would eat the same thing as the mother. But you can try Wellness CORE which has a combined kitten/cat formula.
If you switch it’s diet, do it gradually, by mixing the current food with the new one over couple of weeks until there’s only the new. This will prevent diarrhea and upset stomach.
You will probably get a lot of different answers, so google feline nutrition or look at the links below, and do the research for yourself. I personally wasn’t able to find one reliable source (besides the pet food industry) that would say grain is beneficial for cats or that dry is beneficial for them.
More on cat nutrition below,
Good luck!
If you know a lot about quality dog food and/or feed a grain free diet, I’d like to hear your opinion?
Question: If you know a lot about quality dog food and/or feed a grain free diet, I’d like to hear your opinion?
Okay, I work at a pet store that sells high quality and grain free foods such as taste of the wild, merrick, wellness, eagle holistic, evolve, nature’s variety, wysong, halo, etc. Well, today at work, I was reading an article about a new line of food we will be carrying from wysong called “Wysong Epigen” (it’s a dry dog and cat food), and the article is titled “Starch free vs. Grain free”. Here is the article: (ps – in your response to the article, I don’t want to hear you advocating raw food, I don’t care, all I want opinions on is the commercial dry foods, thanks)
“Starch is the fundamental problem is all kibble pet foods. “Epigen” is the first kibble pet food absent of this unnatural (to carnivorous pets) sugar source (starch is simply a polysugar). Grain free products have merely replaced grain with other, less healthy starches such as potatoes, peas, and tapioca. This solves nothing. It only creates a perception of benefit that, according to scientific studies, is not true. Starch is starch, whether it’s from potatoes and tapioca, or corn and wheat.
Starch-free Epigen represents a true first, and is an honest, natural, and healthy product. Grain free diets are marketed as “new”, “more natural” “more wild”, “just like raw” and “more meat”. All such claims are false and misleading.
Starch-free Epigen replaces the starch ingredients with proteins (the carnivore’s main requirement) and a wide spectrum of essential nutrients. Grain free products are not only laden with starches, they are nutritionally inferior. Moreover, studies have shown that by replacing grain starches with other forms. beneficial probiotics are decreased and pathogenic bacteria are increased.
Grain free products have only been falsely promoted as more akin to what dogs and cats would eat in the wild. Grain free diets have no science behind them and solve no health problems because they contain the same problematic starch that has been in all pet foods since the beginning. They do, however, create an illusion of benefit and uniqueness, but that only justifies an inflated price. What has driven grain free is marketing industry trending, hype, and profiteering.”
I am not a fan of this article. I have switched many people’s dogs with skin issues to grain free foods and have had GREAT feedback from most, and my dog is on Taste of the Wild, and his mild dry skin has disappeared. Do you agree with this article, or do you think it’s just marketing on Wysong’s part? thanks for reading.
we are not about marketing. We care about the foods for the pet. This is simply something that was faxed to us by Wysong company. I DO NOT like what they are saying, and I promote grain free feeding, and I feel as though this article does nothing buy bash it..
Answer:
Answer by Katie
We feed our dog ChoiceOne Meijer brand food and and water!!
Trilby Kitty as Seven Scary Things You Didn’t Know about Your Pet’s Food
Read the article for this video, “7 Scary Things You Didn’t Know about Your Pet’s Food” at Maggie A’s Meanderings: members.cox.net or from here: members.cox.net Trilby Kitty was a lost cat who adopted me. I describe his personality as “97% Mellow — 3% Spawn of Satan.” Fortunately, he was a mellow fellow for most of these shots, even if he didn’t understand what was going on. If you want to know more about Trilby Kitty you can read about him here “In the Mind of a Sleeping Cat”: members.cox.net “The Devotion of a Cat”: members.cox.net “The Suburban Wilds”: members.cox.net “10 Reasons Why the Best “Boyfriend” I’ve Ever Had Is My Cat”: members.cox.net No animals (real or stuffed) were harmed during the making of this video. Music: Frédéric Chopin, Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35, Third Movement the Funeral March
So what do you all think about Purina being a sponser of Yahoo Answers now?
Question: So what do you all think about Purina being a sponser of Yahoo Answers now?
I think it’s very sad because many seeking answers on healthy food for their pets will be fooled into thinking brands like Purina are healthy but really are very unhealthy and junk food. To see what really is in pet food, and know about pet nutrition, don’t trust a company that makes millions off it’s cheap processed stuff and has much to gain in misleading people, rather look up: “The Truth About Pet Food” and “What’s Really in Pet Food”.
Answer:
Answer by Bri
Agreed, but what can we do, but inform them.