If you need to cook the meat, remove all bones. A few companies now make fresher pet foods available, the kind with a relatively short shelf-life. There are also just now some lines of fresh, frozen or freeze-dried pet foods emerging to fill the gap in the marketplace, but few stores, as yet, carry them. As consumers become more demanding, we may well see more of those types of foods. Whenever you switch brands of foods, do so over at least a week's time, gradually increasing the ratio of new to old food.
Sudden changes can cause digestive upsets.
For any change in diet you also need to allow at least three to four months before evaluating the results. Natural supplements particularly will take a while to develop visible signs of improvement in the animal, although a decrease in stool output is commonly seen within a couple of weeks or so. 1997 by Brigitte M. Botnick.