Hi there an anyone let me know how to do the transition from 3 times a day feeding to two my pup is nearly 7 month's old and still on 3 times a day - he weighs approx 15 kg, is a red fox lab called gruff (pronounced griff; welsh version) Louise
Hi Louise, I've moved this to a new thread as it was liable to get lost in introductions If you'd like to swap to feeding twice a day then just go for it! Keep the daily quantity the same, but just give them it split between two meals rather than three. From 6 months most dogs are happy with just two meals a day. Though if you're reluctant to reduce the frequency yet it certainly won't hurt to feed him three times either. You can find out more about feeding Lab puppies here.
Hello I'm interested in this question too, my puppy is almost 8 months and we're still on three meals a day. I hadn't really thought about reducing it yet, not sure if I should? One of the reasons I haven't made the switch is that Cassie, like I'm sure most labs, loves her food A LOT and wolfs it down. She's got a slow feeder type bowl that really helps, but I guess my thinking has been that smaller quantities three times a day is better for her than increasing the quantity on the two times. I understand that it's perfectly normal and acceptable to reduce feeding times to twice a day from six months, but is there any evidence either way on whether 2 or 3 times a days is better/worse for the dog? Or is it a preference thing? Thanks (if I'm not hijacking the thread!)
The 'natural' state of affairs is for dogs to eat fairly infrequently. Once a day for example. But kibble isn't natural, and large meals of dry food have been associated with bloat (evidence for that in our bloat article), so from that point of view, twice rather than once a day is probably healthier for adult kibble fed dogs. The reason for feeding puppies three (or four) meals a day is simply because their digestive system cannot cope with lots of food at once and splitting meals is presumed to reduce the risk of diarrhea. I haven't seen any studies that prove this, but most experienced breeders agree that smaller meals can help resolve upset tummies. If your six month old (and over) dog can cope with his daily ration divided into two meals a day, and has healthy stools on this regime (I have a seven month old here that cannot cope at all with big meals but most dogs this age can), then feeding twice a day is fine. As Lucy says, three times a day won't do any harm if that's what suits you. And it's a good idea to aim to use up a substantial part of those portions in training sessions too.
Thanks Pippa, that's really helpful. And yes - we have training Saturday lunchtimes so no lunchtime feed on that day for sure !
