Running Out Of Pet Food During The MCO? Here’s What You Can Do
Pet shops are not classified as essential businesses, which is why they are closed during the movement control order. During these two weeks, pet owners will need to ration their pet’s food or find a way to scavenge for it.
Pets who require a strict diet or specialty pet food could try their luck at their veterinarian, but otherwise the only other kinds of pet food available would be at the grocery store or with online delivery.
Dogs & cats
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It’s relatively easy to buy pet food for dogs and cats as packaged dry kibbles and canned wet food are still relatively available in grocery stores.
If you don’t feel like stepping out of the house, you can consider starting your pet on a diet of biologically appropriate raw meat (also known as ‘BARF’) which is more nutritious for your pet.
Malaysia has quite a few different brands of BARF, and while they are not available at grocery stores, they do online delivery to your house instead.
We’ve listed a few here which are still maintaining their delivery services during the MCO:
Rabbits, hamsters, other small pets
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Unfortunately, food availability for these smaller pets are not often sold at grocery stores. If you have enough pellets left to be rationed out, you can carefully supplement their diet with human snacks such as fruits, nuts, or vegetables which you can still buy.
If you have run out of their main pellet food, your best bet is to order online. Online shopping services are still running as well, so you can buy your pet’s favourite dry food off Lazada or Shopee.
Spiders, snakes, other reptiles
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The pet food for reptilian pets are unconventional and often not sold online either. The only way to buy food for them would be to find local specialty sellers. It may take a while of searching to find the appropriate foods for them.
Your other best bet would be to find alternative foods that you can find easily in grocery stores, such as eggs, strips of chicken, or even fish.
Whether or not they accept the change of food would depend on your pet’s diet and species (and temperament!).
Ultimately, these animals all used to eat a wide variety of food in the wild and would eat whatever was available at the time. So even if you can’t get your pet’s favourite food for now, there’s no need to panic.
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