Trying GOAT MILK for Cats by The Honest Kitchen

About two weeks ago I started giving our cats a dehydrated goat milk from The Honest Kitchen, and I wanted to share with you all how it went, what we liked or didn’t like, and our overall impressions.

If you prefer watching vs reading, here’s my YouTube video on this topic:

I divided my review on 5 parts:

1. Benefits stated by The Honest Kitchen

2. Palatability

3. Quality

4. Convenience

5. Effectiveness: on coat, appetite, stool, behavior and mood

I want to mention that this article is not sponsored by The Honest Kitchen and I’m not an affiliate with them. This is just me trying their product as a conscious cat parent and sharing my impressions.

Another thing that I want to mention before we start, is that there are two goat milk supplements from The Honest Kitchen: one if for cats and dogs, and the second is just for cats.

Usually I prefer to buy supplements made for cats only, but this time I was at my local pet store and they only had this goat milk for dogs and cats, and I thought: “Well, let’s give it a try!”. And that was a mistake!

When you look at the ingredient list of both of these goat milks, you see that the dog + cat one has an added ingredient - bromelain, while the goat milk for cats only doesn’t have it.

What is Bromelain?

Bromelain is an enzyme mixture present in the pineapple. It has various potential health benefits, including reducing inflammation and improving digestion. But if bromelain is so awesome, why isn’t it included in the cat’s goat milk? I started digging around and found out that some studies have found that bromelain doesn't provide significant anti-inflammatory or analgesic benefits for cats. And, one article mentioned that bromelain can cause allergic reactions in some cats, resulting in swelling, bleeding, or digestive upset. I couldn’t find a solid study confirming that, the article I found was written by a biologist, so there should be some scientific background to back it up. I was like wow – definitely live and learn!

This is why I’m so committed to making my YouTube videos and writing these articles, to help cat parents know all these little things and be knowledgeable about it.

I started giving our cats this dog + cat goat milk before I did this research, and this goat milk with bromelain did give our cat a digestive upset, so that made me thinking! Anyway, stay with me, and we’ll talk more about it in detail.

#1: Benefits stated by The Honest Kitchen

As stated on The Honest Kitchen website, this milk is 100% human grade highly-digestible goat’s milk that is blended with over 1.25 billion active probiotics and digestive enzymes. It helps support digestion, immune systems, and well-being of cats and dogs. It can be served it on its own as a tasty drink or over the food.

By the way, the goat milk for cats has a different set of probiotics, uniquely formulated for cats.

#2: Palatability

Now, let’s talk about palatability, because if your cat doesn’t like it, everything else doesn’t matter!

I offered this goat milk mixed with water to our 2 kitties – one who eats everything and anything, and the other is a very picky eater. The first cat loved it mixed with his food, and the second kitty only ate a tiny amount. If I added more, she wouldn’t want it. They both didn’t want to drink it on its own, only mixed with food.

#3: Quality

Let’s look at the ingredients: its dehydrated goat milk, various probiotics, and bromelain.

There’s no GMO in this goat milk, no fillers, no added flavors, colors or other unnecessary ingredients. No grain, soy, wheat or meat by-products. Ingredients are very straightforward and clean, so it should be safe to use for a cat with sensitive stomach or food sensitivities.

The powder is white, clean, without clumps.

I really like The Honest Kitchen as a company because they’re transparent and have very high standards. They only use human-grade wholesome foods you recognize from your own kitchen. Their suppliers must provide proof of food origins, screening, handling, cleaning and more and they only source from farms they know and trust. They have a whole page on their website dedicated to quality assurance, their standards and even a sourcing map. You can tell that the company really cares and really doing their best to provide the healthiest food for cats and dog

#4: Convenience

This is a dehydrated powdered product that can be used as needed. There’s no mention that the food expires quickly once opened, so that’s a plus. You can mix a desired amount as needed, and store the rest safely, I really like it. With raw goat milk (that I usually buy frozen from a local pet store), once you open a jug, you need to use it within 7-10 days.

The powder is very easy to mix: I added warm water, stirred it with a fork until all powder dissolves and there was no clumping.

One little complain I have is that there’s no specific instruction on how long you can store the rehydrated milk in a refrigerator, I only kept our for 2 days after adding water.

#5: Effectiveness: on coat, appetite, stool, mood and behavior

I was feeding this milk to our cats in rehydrated from, meaning I added water to it, and I gave about 1-2 tbsp a day. As I said before, one cat ate it daily, the other one didn’t get it everyday and had very little quantities.

I must say that there are many things that can affect how the cat feels and behaves. It could be the weather (it got much colder here), their main food, trying out new treats or toys, their emotional state and emotional state of the household, etc. So it’s hard to judge the effectiveness of this one supplement when other things around them are not consistent, but I did my best, and I think we saw some definite changes in certain areas, let’s take a look!

Coat

I didn’t see much of a difference on our cats’ coats, but it’s only been 2 weeks, so I don’t think it’s enough time for that.

Appetite

It stayed the same mostly, maybe slightly increased.

Stool

This is where it got interesting. One of our kitties, Puddles, he gets hard poop sometimes, that’s why I started giving him goat milk in the first place. After I started giving him this goat milk, his stool got softer and I could tell it’s more comfortable for him to go to the bathroom. But after maybe 10 days or so, he started having loose stool, which I think is a result of too much goat milk. OR, it could be because it contains bromelain, which we talked about in the beginning of the video. As I stopped goat milk and switched him to a plain diet of lean boiled chicken and pumpkin puree, he improved. Since each cat is one of a kind, we might need to tweak how we give this goat milk, I mean the amounts, how often we give it to them, etc.

I would definitely recommend getting a goat milk for cats specifically, do not repeat my mistake please! I’m not sure if I’m going to continue with this milk or not, I might just get the one for cats, or go back to raw goat milk from Green Juju.

Overall, I think this goat milk is good for kitties who have hard poop or struggle with constipation, but we should pay attention to how they’re doing and adjust the dosage as we go.

Mood/ Behavior

Not much change here, maybe a bit more excitement and more energy for one of our cats (definitely more zoomies – which means they’re in a good mood! 😼)

Overall, I think this is a great supplement to introduce to your cat and see if they like it. If you decide to go with The Honest Kitchen goat milk, please get the one for cats specifically, it has a cat face on the packaging.

You don’t have to give goat milk all the time, it could just be used as a little boost and to add some variety to your cat’s diet. It could be especially beneficial in a liquid form because I think that most cats don’t get enough hydration most of the time, and that goes mostly to those cats who eat dry food which is a very unnatural diet for a cat. So if your cat eats dry food as a main diet, please make sure to give them as many opportunities to add hydration – it could be water fountains, goat milk, bone broths, etc. You can even add water to their dry food! Anything to add more hydration to their bodies.

You can also use this goat milk powder to sprinkle on their food for added nutrition and probiotic benefits.

As with any supplement, I always recommend taking notes (written or mental) to see how they’re doing on it, and adjust as we go. If your cat is having some health challenges, I always suggest talking to your vet first to see if goat milk could be a good thing for them.

So our overall score for this dog + cat dehydrated goat milk from The Honest Kitchen will be 4.5 stars.

One thing is that I would really like for The Honest Kitchen to change their labeling and make this milk for dogs only. I feel like I’m overly vigilant as it is when it comes to cat food and products, but this one time I let my guard down thinking that the companies who make supplements know what their doing, and it sure gave me a lesson! We always need to check and double-check information based on our own knowledge and again, this is why I’m making these reviews, to make it easier for cat parents to make the right choices.

This is all I wanted to share with you today. Thank you for spending this time with me, I wish you and your kitties a wonderful day! 🫶

~ Vani 🐚