Hi all I would guess this might be difficult to answer as all puppies are different and are on different diets. ...... However, Bella is eating a Royal Canin maxi junior kibble and although we started with 4 meals a day she soon became disinterested with the fourth meal so I just feed her 3 times a day ( around 7.30, 11.30 ish and 5 -6 ish). I followed the breeders advice on the amount and weigh her food out , she told me to increase her food by 10 grams every week. So every Sunday I've added on 10 grams to every meal. I'm just wondering when I should stop... The breeders said Bella will let me know, but she's a lab after all she always eats the lot and I'm sure she would keep going! She's currently on 95 grams, 3 meals a day ( although I use a lot of this in training, and she also gets filled Kongs) . She's just over 11 weeks. Does this seem about right, should I keep increasing her food allowance or stop now? Her weight is fine ( 7.6kg at last weigh in). Thanks!
Re: Feeding amounts..... It's difficult to tell, really. I don't weigh anything, I just do what feels right and go on the condition of my puppies. They've never looked tubby, but Shadow does go through skinny phases so he gets a bit more then, until he's nicely covered again. It's tricky while they're growing and constantly changing shape, but I like to make sure mine have a well-defined waist when looking from the side and from the top, and that they have enough, but not too much, cover over their ribs. Someone (sorry, I can't remember who) commented on this the other day with a great way of describing it - you shouldn't be able to see their ribs (in a normal position - sometimes when they twist in weird ways, the ends stick out and look a bit grim!), but you should be able to feel them, as if they were covered by a blanket. Not a sheet and not a duvet. If you look at the "how much does your puppy weigh?" thread, you'll see that they come in all sorts of different weights, so that's not enough to go on. Obviously, a bigger pup will need more food than a smaller one.
Re: Feeding amounts..... I generally weigh Inca's food to make sure boyfriend and I are consistent in our amount. But rather than adding more every week I took a similar approach to Fiona and just added 5-10g/meal if I thought Inca was starting to look light. I found her growth spurts to be quite random. Sometimes we could be feeding the exact same amount for weeks on end, other times we had to increase it every week.
Re: Feeding amounts..... You should start from the feeding guidelines, every food is different. The guidelines for the food you are feeding are here: http://about.royalcanin.co.uk/catalogue/size-health-nutrition/maxi-junior23599/#demoTab2 Although RC maxi is for puppies expected to weigh 26 to 44 kgs as adults, so people often feed labradors medium food. Although the make up is not hugely different for RC. I feed no more than 60% of the recommended kibble amount, so do think about cutting down the recommended amounts but the proportion you feed should follow the increasing volumes by puppy age. For the food you are feeding, the volume peaks at 6 months (for a dog expected to be 26kg when an adult).
Re: Feeding amounts..... [quote author=JulieT link=topic=9386.msg134879#msg134879 date=1420469938] You should start from the feeding guidelines, every food is different. The guidelines for the food you are feeding are here: http://about.royalcanin.co.uk/catalogue/size-health-nutrition/maxi-junior23599/#demoTab2 Although RC maxi is for puppies expected to weigh 26 to 44 kgs as adults, so people often feed labradors medium food. Although the make up is not hugely different for RC. I feed no more than 60% of the recommended kibble amount, so do think about cutting down the recommended amounts but the proportion you feed should follow the increasing volumes by puppy age. For the food you are feeding, the volume peaks at 6 months (for a dog expected to be 26kg when an adult). [/quote] Thanks for this Julie, interesting. How would you know 'expected' adult weight though re guidelines?! Am I being thick?! The breeder obviously went off 26kg initially as she told me to start on 4x65g.
Re: Feeding amounts..... I asked the breeder for the weights of Charlie's mum, dad, uncle and what she expected Charlie to weigh. She said between 30kg and 35kg - but she shows her dogs, and Charlie has turned out to be "on the slim side of normal" at 28kgs. My vet told me to aim for a dog of 25kgs, on the basis that if that led to him being under fed a bit, that was fine, I could always up the food if he started looking skinny. As it turned out, I did nothing but cut back on his food, and worried constantly about his weight as he always looked a bit podgy!
Re: Feeding amounts..... [quote author=JulieT link=topic=9386.msg134895#msg134895 date=1420474883] I asked the breeder for the weights of Charlie's mum, dad, uncle and what she expected Charlie to weigh. She said between 30kg and 35kg - but she shows her dogs, and Charlie has turned out to be "on the slim side of normal" at 28kgs. My vet told me to aim for a dog of 25kgs, on the basis that if that led to him being under fed a bit, that was fine, I could always up the food if he started looking skinny. As it turned out, I did nothing but cut back on his food, and worried constantly about his weight as he always looked a bit podgy! [/quote] I see, very helpful thanks, I probably should have asked that myself!!
Re: Feeding amounts..... [quote author=JulieT link=topic=9386.msg134903#msg134903 date=1420476346] Just drop her an email, perhaps? The breeder should have a good idea. [/quote] Just have done, thanks ;D
Re: Feeding amounts..... [quote author=CDM link=topic=9386.msg134892#msg134892 date=1420474499] Thanks for this Julie, interesting. How would you know 'expected' adult weight though re guidelines?! Am I being thick?! The breeder obviously went off 26kg initially as she told me to start on 4x65g. [/quote] There is a site I found which might help with this.... http://www.puppychart.com It estimates your puppies adult weight, obviously I'm not sure who accurate it is but it may be helpful for you as a guide line. We struggled a lot with feeding amounts on royal canine as the guide isn't great as you can't really guess the adult weight, but the website we used seems to have worked out Ozzie pretty well as he hasn't diverted much on the line he was on, and is in the middle, but again he is a working line labrador, and you some people have commented on him looking skinny but he isn't he is nearly 30kg and only 9 months old. RC also made Ozzie unwell, which we didn't know if it was from overfeeding as this can made your pup ill, but it turned out that RC just wasn't very good for him, as some other labs, so he now has canagan which I can honestly say is amazing! and he loves it As you know labs will eat anything and everything but ours is a bit fussy if he doesn't like it, he will leave it & go without I hope this helps a little. Katie
Re: Feeding amounts..... Thanks Katie. Interesting that chart says she'll way 22kg as an adult .... but I think she'll be a lot more. Breeder just replied saying mum weighs 27.5 and dad 38!!! I might look at changing her food as the bag goes down, she's still a few weeks left it's a massive bag!!!( good job as it's not cheap!) I'll certainly take a look at canagan and someone else mentioned Skinners.
Re: Feeding amounts..... Just to confound...... Molly came to me at 8 weeks on 240 grams of RC per day. Now, at 15 months and 25kg, she gets 225 grams of James Wellbeloved a day. She is a lively, healthy, muscular dog.
Re: Feeding amounts..... Trust me I feel like an font of knowledge on dry dog food now, as Ozzie is now on his 8th-10th different type of food but the Canagan Scottish Salmon is the best for us, as he has a Wheat/grain allergy so we went with Canagan as it is Grain free. Remember if you do change food you need to transition it over so do it before you run out of RC, so you can transition over a 7 day period we did. Day 1 & 2 - 75% current food 25% new food Day 3 & 4 - 50% Current Food 50% new food Day 5 & 6 - 25% current Food 75% new food Day 7 onwards - 0% current Food 100% new food We found that the 7 day period worked best for us and Ozzie, but some people do 4 or 5 days, it all depends on your pup and what is easier for you I hope this helps There is a great site that shows you the whole break down of dog food types: http://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/the-dog-food-directory We found it really useful and helps explain a lot about the actual contents of the food and gives you a link to click if you don't know what certain things are and between our breeder and trainer helping us out with food suggestions, and our local pet store, not a massive branch which I found more useful. Again hope this helps, sorry to give you website after website to look at, but I found this one really useful. Good luck!
Re: Feeding amounts..... All of this information is very useful thanks Katie!! Yes I'll definitely transition if I do change, to be fair she's having no issues on RC, so if the prices aren't much different I'll prob stick with it, I'll know once I've compared and I'll look at the site too!
