When I was asked to review this 90 Day pet feeder my first thought was “Why would anybody leave their pet(s) alone for 90 days?” My second thought when it arrived was, “It’s huge!” Well, I guess it has to be if it’s going to last a whole 90 days.
The parts were very easy to assemble though the lid locking mechanism takes a little effort to get right. Batteries are inserted in the base – biggest batteries I’ve ever bought. Will be interesting to see how long they last.
Once assembled, it was time to turn to the setting of the feeder. This has to be started within 90 seconds of the feeder being switched on. Don’t do what I did and think you can just wing it. It’s more complicated than it looks and those 90 seconds slip away pretty quickly when you are randomly pushing buttons in the hope of striking it lucky. After reading the clear instructions, I managed to set the current time very easily. Moving on to actually setting up feeds, I had to think about how much and how often. We usually feed our cats wet food in the morning with dry food in the evening. So I decided to set up one feed for 7pm. Again, the instructions were very clear and I quickly set this up. There is an option to make up to 4 feeds per 24 hour period. The instructions say that the portion sizes go in increments of ¼ cup so setting 1 is ¼, 2 is ½ and so on. As we usually give our cats a cup of dry food between them I set it the portion to 4. I didn’t realise until reading the instructions that you can record a message to be played at feeding time. A quick check in the instructions and I’d set up a call to dinner for the kitties.
When the set time arrived, there was a little bit of a buzzing sound as the machine vibrated (to assist food dispensing). I was a bit worried when I read about the vibration as I thought it might be too noisy, especially on a solid floor. As it turned out, it wasn’t noisy at all. In fact the vibration is what the cats started to associate food with and would head to the feeder even before the message played. Since the feeding tray is quite large, there was room for both cats to help themselves without having to fight.
I was a bit shocked by the amount of food actually dispensed but the cats were happy to see an avalanche of chrunchies heading their way. I later worked out that a ¼ size was equivalent to a ½ cup measurement using the cat food cup I usually use for small kibble food, so I reset the feeder to 2. This is something you’ll need to check with the particular dry food that you use. Obviously, the portion size and feeding frequency will have an impact on how often you need to fill the machine with food.
Below you can see and hear the feeder in action:
It’s now been 5 days and the cats seem very happy when it reaches 7 o’clock and, without fail, they get their dinner. So much more reliable than me. So I realised, I can now rely on the feeder to do this for the next 90 days or so. It’s great knowing that if you get waylaid on your way home your cats won’t be left hungry. When we’re away and have friends come in to care for our cats that if any goes wrong at least they’ll get some food.
So to summarise, the setup of the feeder is pretty straightforward but read the instructions first. Work out the portions sizes of the food you use. Fill up the feeder and forget about having to sort out your kitties’ meals for the next 3 months. And at less than £40, its better value for money than other comparable feeders.
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Thanks,
Iain
It is surprising how quickly they associate a noise with food – we had a two day feeder and you would first hear the feeder door open next the thump of a cat hitting the floor running to the feeder.
The look on Oliver’s face in the first picture says one of two things ….
“Really? 90 days? You’re planning to be away for 90 days!” or “Okay, silly machine….give me food now!”
Great idea!
I do like the idea of getting to sleep later than 3 AM…! I’d be hesitant to leave it as a way to feed my cats while I took off on vacation because mechanical and electrical failure is possible. Batteries wear out…! Anyway, it also would be ideal for weight control so long as one cat didn’t hog the bounty.
It is a huge apparatus to have in your house. I’d be leery about having 90 days’ worth of dry food hanging around for that length of time. I loved the cats’ reactions.
My cat weighs just over 4Kg and I feed him 65-70g of good quality kibble per day, split between 2 feeds. I read this review before bought this 90day feeder, and noted that the reviewer found feeding 2 cats on volume level 2 was good. Therefore to try it I set volume level 2. /this was nowhere near what I would feed my cat, who is average size not big not small.
I have set the feeder on the maximum available of volume 10, and it still does not dispense as much as I would normally feed, (it in fact dispensed 25g) so twice a day my cat is only going to receive 50g.
This means that I am going to have to set 3 feeds per day at a lower level, which is not the feeding regime that he is used to.
This feeder is supposed to be for all pets, but it would not be suitable in my opinion for a larger cat or a dog.
Hey Gilly,
What dry food are you feeding him?
At 10 our feeder would have poured out enough kibbles to keep them going for days! We feed wet food in the morning and approx 60 gram of dry food in the evening (through the feeder)
Try resetting the feeder and if it still doesn’t work properly I would contact the manufacturer / shop you bought it from as it shouldn’t release that little on setting 10.
Thanks,
Marc
My cat prefers lots of small feeds so setting 4 feeds per day 90 feeds will last just over 3 weeks. Even at the smallest size it still gives out too much so found an old credit card and taped it over one of the two feed scoop entry holes – perfect so now get 1/8th cup portions 4 times a day. We now have one happy and not overweight kitty!
That’s a very good tip on those!