Alfie is now seven months old and I'm wondering when I need to feed him twice a day instead of three. He is always happy to eat everything put in front of him(and whats put in front of everyone else if he could!!)but I know at some point this is what happens,any advice welcome. Thank-you.
The reason people split puppy food up into 4 or 3 meals is because when they are young their tums are tiny, and for some pups tums are easily upset and too much food all at once just whizzes through and appears at the other end as runny poo. Not good. I don't tend to feed a lot of food at mealtimes in a bowl because I use a lot of it for training and for kongs. Since my puppy had no problem at all with the volume of food I was feeding, I switched her onto 2 meals a day at about 10 or 12 weeks. So it just depends on the pup, the volume of food you feed at mealtimes and so on. You can give it a go, just swap a meal for a kong, then put less in the kong, and see how he does with the larger other meals.
We move ours from three meals to two at six months old. I do it gradually, a couple of grams at a time.
I just did it when they were 6 months old, they adapted with no problem. Of course I increased their breakfast and evening meal to allow for the absence of the lunch.
Pongo has always been on two meals a day, since we got him at ten weeks. He's a big lad with a big tummy, so he never seemed to have any problems!
By the way, if you want to keep him on 3 meals a day, you can. I use 'lunch' very flexibly. If I'm at home, I tend to use it in training. If I'm going out, they get extra kongs. So they sort of often still get lunch.
Lucan is 7yrs old now and still has 3 meals a day, mainly because my Pointer couldn't cope with large meals, and, if one had 3 meals the other did too. Don't think I'd get away with changing it now even though my Pointer's gone! Lol.
My two are 2 and still have three meals a day, as it suits us all. It helps break the day up. It's either a raw meal - a turkey drumstick or chicken thigh, for example, or a couple of kongs stuffed with raw mince and frozen. It keeps them occupied for a few minutes and I feel enriches their day.
Thank-you so much for these replies,its so good to have advice from so many different people.I didn't realise that carrying on with 3 meals was an option,Im sure Alfie will be over the moon!
Some people have said that their dogs started to go off their lunch and so they decided at that point to go over to two meals a day. I would challenge them to have DNA tests to make sure their dogs are, in fact, Labradors
Saba has one meal a day, and sometimes, he doesn't eat that! I must have the only Labrador on the planet with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to food!
