What To Feed 4 Week Old Kittens Without Mother
When your kitten is around 6 or 7 weeks of age you can switch her to a dry diet.
What to feed 4 week old kittens without mother. Then start the shift to an adult diet by mixing canned or dry cat food with warmed formula. Raising an abandoned or orphaned 4 week old kitten may feel like an exhausting full time job more so in the beginning when they must be frequently fed throughout the day. Four week old kittens are not ready for solid food. By six weeks of age a kitten should be eating the gruel four times a day and nursing less.
You should gradually reduce the amount of water or milk in the gruel once your kitten has accepted to eat the gruel willingly without any forceful measures. You can do it but you ll want to know some tricks so you don t hurt them. Weigh the kittens daily to calculate the amount of formula they need using a kitchen scale or small postal scale. Instead they should have kitten milk replacer which comes in both liquid and powdered forms.
Once the kitten is four and a half weeks old you can start weaning by gradually introducing moist food. If it s your first time bottle feeding don t panic. Note that it s not until adulthood that two meals a day for a cat is acceptable. After three weeks old and until they are weaned kittens should be fed every 6 8 hours.
At two weeks old they can be fed every 4 6 hours. Never give kittens cow s milk since it doesn t have the nutrients they need and can cause diarrhea. At the end of week six decrease meal times to only three times a day. Kittens under one week old should be fed every 2 3 hours.
The feeder can easily encourage your 4 week old kitty to eat the gruel by smearing some of the gruels on the kitten s lips being careful not to get any in the nose. You can do this by beginning to mix small amounts of wet cat food into their formula and feeding the slurry in a bottle to help them get a taste for meat. Begin by offering formula in a shallow bowl that s easy for her to drink from. Watch my youtube video on how to bottle feed a kitten for tips on proper preparation and feeding posture.
Not only do they not need to be fed as often as in the first two weeks they have. Instead you will. And please never feed cow s milk to a kitten as this is extremely dangerous to their health and can lead to death. A kitten aged between six to 10 weeks old needs to be fed six to eight meals a day while a kitten aged 10 weeks to six or seven months needs four meals a day and a kitten up to nine months needs three meals a day.
However as the day goes by and now that they are in the fourth week of their lives things may finally start to feel a tad bit easier for you.