my cat is allergic to wheat..so is she allergic to barley too?

Question

hi, i have a year old female cat that is very allergic to wheat. She immidiately starts scratching when she eats any food that contains wheat (including wheat flour, wheat gluten, wheat powder, etc..)

So i just ran out of her original food, so i purchased hill's science diet Nature's Best ocean fish flavor dry cat food for her. Before i purchased this product, i checked to see if there are any wheat in it, and there wasn't.

So immidiently after i fed her some food, she's been scratching around her neck again, which is her symptom of food allergy...

So i read through the ingridients again, and saw that there were cracked pearled barley in the food. i wasn't quite sure what that was, so i searched for the image on google and it looked exactly like wheat.

So what really is barley? is it same thing as wheat or some sort of wheat? if my cat is allergic to wheat, is she most likely to be allergic to barley too...?

thank you for all your help!

cat lover · Accepted Answer

Barley and wheat are both members of the grass family (Poaceae).  So they belong to the same taxonomic family, and are both considered cereal grains.  But they are different species.

If the problem is the gluten, then wheat and barley share a gluten protein containing a prolamin, while different, usually causes the same problems.  While gluten usually applies to wheat, the similar prolamins will cause the same problem.

MJF · Answer

She could be allergic to both, or just to wheat. Depends on what it is in the wheat that she's allergic to. Wheat is one of the most common things that dogs and cats are allergic to as it's not a natural food for them in the amounts we feed them. Your cat doesnt' need any grains in it's diet to be healthy. Finding a dry food without something it's allergic to will probably be difficult. Why don't you try some good quality tinned food with no wheat additives, and fresh meat? These are better for your cat anyway as dry food is a very unnatural food for a cat.

snelling · Answer

uncertain... yet a canines I lived next to years in the past replace into allergic to itself........it had to placed on a t-shirt all of the time... So i assume its achievable for a canines to be allergic to a cat.

woody · Answer

there's only one way to find out......

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my cat is allergic to wheat..so is she allergic to barley too?

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