How Much to Feed Your Dog

Start With Calories, Not With Cups

Almost every feeding mistake starts with the scoop. Bags print their guides in cups because a cup is what people own, but a cup measures volume and food is bought by energy. Real dry foods run from about 300 calories per cup for a light formula to over 500 for a performance one, so the same two-cup ration can be 600 calories or 1,000 depending on the bag, a difference of more than a third before the dog has eaten anything. Over a year, that error is the gap between a lean dog and an overweight one.

The fix is a single calculation, done once per food. Work out the dog's daily calories, find the kcal per kilogram figure that every complete food declares, divide to get the grams, and weigh that amount into your usual scoop. Mark the level, and the scoop is calibrated for the rest of the bag. From then on portioning is a two-second job and the number is right, which is more than can be said for any amount of careful eyeballing.

The calorie figure itself comes from the resting energy requirement equation used in veterinary nutrition. The exponent in it, 0.75 rather than 1, is the part worth understanding: energy needs rise with body weight but not proportionally, because the metabolically expensive organs make up a smaller share of a bigger body. A dog twice as heavy eats about seventy per cent more, not twice as much. That is why a small-breed formula is more calorie-dense than a large-breed one, and why halving a Labrador's ration does not produce the right meal for a spaniel.

Then Let the Dog Correct the Number

No formula knows your dog. Individual requirements vary by twenty to thirty per cent around the calculated figure, depending on metabolism, neutering, coat, housing, temperament and how digestible the particular food is. Treat the calculated ration as a starting point with a review date rather than an answer, and the system works; treat it as a prescription and it will be wrong for a substantial minority of dogs.

The review is a body condition check, and it takes fifteen seconds. Run both hands along the ribs: you should feel them easily under a thin layer of cover, the way the back of your hand feels over the knuckles, without pressing. Look down at the dog from above: there should be a visible waist behind the ribs. Look from the side: the belly should tuck up rather than run straight. Nine-point body condition scoring charts, published by the WSAVA and used in practices everywhere, put that judgement on a scale, and four or five out of nine is where you want a dog.

Pair it with the scales. Weigh the dog every two weeks while you are settling a ration, then monthly, always on the same scales, and write the figure down. A change of more than about two per cent while the ration has been constant means the number needs adjusting by ten per cent in the appropriate direction, with another review a fortnight later. A dog that keeps losing weight on a ration it should hold on, or that fails to lose on a genuinely restricted one, is telling you something the arithmetic cannot: dental pain, thyroid disease and Cushing's syndrome all present exactly that way, and the next step is a vet rather than another adjustment.

Life Stage Changes the Answer More Than Breed Does

A puppy needs roughly twice the calories per pound of the adult it will become, and it needs them spread across more meals because its stomach is small: four a day to four months, three to six months, then two. The amount falls steadily as growth slows, which is why a puppy's ration has to be revisited every few weeks rather than set once. In breeds that will exceed about 25 kg, the calcium level matters as much as the calories, and a food formulated for the growth of large-size dogs, fed in measured meals, with nothing added on top, is the single most consequential choice of the first year.

An adult at a stable weight is the easy case: a fixed ration, two meals, and a monthly weigh-in. Neutering lowers the requirement measurably, by something like ten to twenty per cent, and it is the commonest reason a ration that used to be right quietly stops being right. So is a change of routine, a new job, an injury, a move, the end of the summer, each of which is worth a weigh-in and a ten per cent adjustment rather than a shrug.

A senior dog needs ten to twenty per cent fewer calories as activity and resting metabolism decline, but not less protein: older dogs lose muscle before fat, and restricting protein in a dog with healthy kidneys makes that worse. Two or three smaller meals suit a slower digestion. The figure to watch is weight loss rather than gain, a drop of more than five per cent in a month is a reason to see a vet, because dental disease, kidney disease and cancer all present first as a dog eating a little less and weighing a little less.

Choosing Between Kibble, Wet, Raw and Home-Cooked

Format matters less than most marketing suggests, and the practical differences are worth knowing before the nutritional ones. Dry kibble is the cheapest per calorie, keeps for months unopened, and is easy to weigh; it holds 8 to 10 per cent moisture, so dogs on it drink noticeably more. Wet food is 70 to 80 per cent water, which is its real advantage for a dog prone to urinary stones or one that drinks too little, and it costs several times as much per calorie, which is why it is usually a small-dog or a topper solution.

Raw and home-cooked diets both work when they are complete and fail quietly when they are not. Analyses of home-prepared recipes have repeatedly found them short of calcium, zinc, iodine or vitamin D, and a dog looks well on an incomplete diet for months before anything shows. A commercially prepared complete raw diet from a company employing a qualified nutritionist, or a home recipe formulated by a board-certified veterinary nutritionist and followed by weight, answers that; a recipe from a forum does not. Raw feeding also brings a hygiene question that concerns the household as much as the dog, and it is not recommended in homes with an infant, an elderly relative or anyone immunosuppressed.

Whatever the format, the label statement is what separates a diet from a snack. A food carrying an AAFCO or FEDIAF statement of nutritional adequacy for the relevant life stage has been formulated to a published nutrient profile; a product without one may be excellent as a topper and is not a diet. Beyond that, two questions distinguish manufacturers more reliably than any ingredient list: whether they employ a qualified nutritionist, and whether they will tell you the calcium, phosphorus and calorie content when you ring and ask.

The Ten Per Cent That Undoes Everything

Treats should stay under ten per cent of the daily calories, and that share comes out of the ration rather than on top of it. The arithmetic is unforgiving in small dogs: a 5 kg terrier's entire allowance is about 30 calories, which is one small dental chew or two thirds of a biscuit. A dental chew can be 70 to 200 calories; a dried pig's ear can exceed 200. In a household of four people each giving one biscuit, a small dog has eaten most of a day's energy before its bowl is filled, and nobody involved believes they have overfed it.

Two habits solve it. Keep the day's treats in a jar by the door, counted out of the measured ration, so that generosity costs nothing; and break treats into quarters, since dogs respond to the event rather than the size. For training-heavy weeks, take the rewards from the dog's own kibble. For a dog on a diet, green beans, cucumber, carrot and courgette are a few calories each and most dogs will take them.

Keep the genuinely dangerous foods out of reach rather than out of the recipe: xylitol, now in many peanut butters and baked goods, drops blood sugar within minutes; grapes and raisins cause kidney failure at doses nobody has managed to predict; onion and garlic in any form damage red blood cells; chocolate, macadamia nuts and alcohol are all well documented. Cooked bones splinter. A fed dog that never meets any of those is in better shape than one on the most carefully chosen food in the shop.

How to Use This Site

Each breed has three pages: an adult feeding guide with daily calories and portions for kibble, wet food and raw; a puppy schedule with the amount at each stage of growth and the number of meals; and a senior page with the reduced ration and the changes that come with age. The figures on them are built from the breed's adult weight range and the standard energy equations, then expressed in the units people actually use, cups, cans, ounces and grams.

Around those, the nutrition pages cover the nutrients owners ask about most: protein, fat, fibre, calcium, phosphorus, omega-3, vitamins and water. The food type pages compare kibble, wet, raw, home-cooked and freeze-dried on cost, moisture, storage and handling. The calculator does the arithmetic for a dog whose breed is not listed, or for a crossbreed, from weight and activity alone. And the blog covers the situations that cut across all of them, from switching foods without a stomach upset to running a weight-loss plan that survives past week three.

One caveat applies to all of it. These pages are general guidance built from published nutritional research, not veterinary advice, and they describe healthy dogs. A dog with a diagnosed condition, kidney disease, pancreatitis, diabetes, a food allergy, follows the diet its vet prescribes, and that prescription replaces anything here. Where a figure on this site and the label of your food disagree, the label is what the manufacturer stands behind.

Sources

• AAFCO, Dog and Cat Food Nutrient Profiles
• FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, Pet food regulation and recalls
• WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee, Body condition score and diet selection
• FEDIAF, Nutritional Guidelines for Complete and Complementary Pet Food