Home / Cat food / Instinct / FreshDried Raw Meals for Kittens Chicken Recipe

product photo
coming soon
no verified photo yet — never a mockup

Instinct · brand facts & recall history →

Instinct FreshDried Raw Meals for Kittens Chicken Recipe

Freeze-dried food · kitten cats

A chicken-first freeze-dried food from Instinct. Cat-food pricing isn't in our corpus for this SKU yet, so cost-per-day isn't shown — the composition numbers below are fully verified.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference cat 10 lb · updated 2026-07-12

Your catupdates every number on this page
10 lb

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

The evidence

The Verified Label

Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Corpus dot-anchors currently cover wet and dry cat food only — this is a freeze-dried food, so anchors are omitted below as the corpus grows.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № INSTIN
verified 2026-07-12

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Dry food is ~5-10% water, wet food ~75-82%, so as-fed numbers are on two different scales. As-fed values shown small. How the conversion works →
Protein 41.5%label: 39% min anchor coming as corpus grows
Fat 29.8%label: 28% min no corpus anchor for fat yet
Fiber 4.3%label: 4% max anchor coming as corpus grows
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈16%diabetic-check target <10% anchor coming as corpus grows
Magnesium as fed: not yet verified
why 0.12% DM
A commonly cited veterinary target for helping manage struvite-crystal (urinary) risk in cats is magnesium under roughly 0.12% on a dry-matter basis. This is a general, label-checkable guideline — not a diagnosis, and not a substitute for your vet, especially for cats with a history of urinary issues.
 Not yet verifiedmagnesium no threshold to check — magnesium not in our verified record
Ash 8% assumed — not disclosed on label 8%as used in carb estimate no corpus anchor for ash yet

Calories & cost — for your 10-lb adult cat

Calorie density Not yet verifiedkcal/kg anchor coming as corpus grows
Daily serving—
Cost per day—
Bag lasts—

Cost per 1,000 kcal not available yet — this cat food isn't price-matched to a retail listing in our corpus yet. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two claims exist: formulated to meet a profile, or fed to real cats in an AAFCO trial. Which is stronger, and how rare it is →
 Not yet verified from label
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Chicken (including Ground Chicken Bone) · Beef Liver · Beef Spleen · Beef Kidney · Cod
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)None
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
A preservative added by a fish-meal supplier need not appear on the finished label, so no label can prove its absence. Why we show gaps →
 None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Instinct, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 8 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (official) · anchors: coming as our fresh/freeze-dried corpus grows · how to read this label

The fit

For your cat, specifically

Checked for a 10-lb adult cat with urinary health + a low-carb goal — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your cat above and these update.

·
Life-stage coverage not disclosedNo AAFCO nutrient-adequacy statement was found on the label for this SKU, so we cannot confirm adult-maintenance coverage.
·
Urinary fit — can't assessMagnesium is not disclosed on this label, so the urinary/struvite check cannot be run — most cat food labels omit it entirely (only a small share of the cat foods we've verified disclose magnesium at all).
·
Fiber 4.3% DMNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
·
Sensitive stomachNot selected for your cat — but shown here for reference.
·
Contains chickenNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
✕
Too many estimated carbs for a low-carb target≈16% carbohydrate (dry-matter, estimated) is over the ~10% DM target some vets use for diabetic/low-carb cats. Estimate only — not a lab measurement. See lower-carb options →

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag above is computed from this list. Why order is by pre-cooking weight, and how splitting bends it →

Chicken (including Ground Chicken Bone), Beef Liver, Beef Spleen, Beef Kidney, Cod, Ground Miscanthus Grass, Montmorillonite Clay, Ground Flaxseed, Salmon Oil, Tricalcium Phosphate, Carrots, Apples, Butternut Squash, Vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Chicory Root, Salt, Taurine, Yeast Culture, Potassium Chloride, DL-Methionine, Choline Chloride, Mixed Tocopherols (for freshness), Blueberries, Spinach, Minerals (Zinc Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Calcium Iodate), Rosemary Extract

6 ingredients in this list are ones we hold sourced evidence on , and none of them is contested in the veterinary literature.

  • Fish oil (EPA + DHA omega-3) · ingredient 9Well supportedMarine-source omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) from fish oil. A randomized, double-blinded controlled trial (Roush 2010) found improved weight-bearing in dogs with osteoarthritis, and a 2022 meta-analysis identified clear clinical analgesic efficacy for omega-3-enriched diets and supplements.
  • Mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E) · ingredient 24Well supportedA blend of vitamin E forms (alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-tocopherol) used as a natural-source antioxidant to slow fat rancidity, commonly chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. EFSA concluded that tocopherol-rich extracts are safe for all animal species and the consumer and are efficacious antioxidants in feed.
  • Rosemary extract · ingredient 31Well supportedA plant-derived natural antioxidant (active compounds carnosic acid and carnosol) used to slow fat oxidation, frequently chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. It is an authorized food antioxidant in the EU (E 392); JECFA established a temporary acceptable daily intake for rosemary extract expressed as carnosic acid plus carnosol.
  • Flaxseed (ALA omega-3) · ingredient 8NeutralA plant source of the short-chain omega-3 ALA. Dogs convert ALA to the long-chain omega-3s inefficiently: a controlled feeding study (Dunbar 2010) found flaxseed raised serum EPA but produced no measurable DHA.
  • Prebiotics (chicory root / inulin, FOS) · ingredient 17NeutralFermentable fibers (chicory-derived inulin and fructooligosaccharides) that feed colonic bacteria and are readily fermented to short-chain fatty acids in dogs. Feeding studies show they shift fecal microbiota composition and are well tolerated at typical inclusion levels, but clear health benefits beyond compositional change are not yet established.
  • Taurine (supplemental) · ingredient 19NeutralA sulfur amino acid that dogs can normally synthesize from methionine and cysteine, so it is not classically essential for them. However, some breeds (e.g., golden retrievers) and some diets are linked to low taurine status and dilated cardiomyopathy: an observational study (Ontiveros 2020) associated non-traditional, largely grain-free diets with taurine deficiency and DCM-consistent echocardiographic changes in golden retrievers, though causation and mechanism remain under investigation.

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The four questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.

Owns its manufacturing Owns its plants

Site states Instinct makes food in 'our own facilities' (company-operated plants in Lincoln, Nebraska). Source language specifically covers raw production and does not address whether any dry/canned lines use co-packers, so not classified 'mixed.'

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Yes — sourced

Vets page names Dr. Susan Wynn, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition) — a board-certified veterinary nutritionist — and refers to 'our on staff Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionist.' DACVIM (Nutrition) is the ACVN-equivalent board certification.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 46 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.

Peer-reviewed research Unmeasurable

Count of PubMed-indexed records with the entity in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered). A reproducible FLOOR, not a total: affiliation strings vary and some research is published under institute names. research_entity_affiliation is recorded only for manufacturers with a dedicated pet-nutrition research arm; brand_affiliation.count is null where the brand name is an ambiguous homonym.

Parent company Agrolimen ↗ Founded 2002 ↗ Headquarters / plant St. Louis, Missouri, USA ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Instinct brand page →