Three Steps To Find Out How Much Food To Feed Your Puppy

To find out the amount you should feed your puppy as he is growing, you can implement the following steps below:

Step 1: You need to find a puppy-feeding chart; this is so you can determine the right amount of calories, per each pound of body weight that your puppy should consume for his age. One example to go by, you have an 8-week-old puppy that weighs five pounds it needs about 400 calories per day.

Step 2: You should split the amount of calories incorporated in a pound of the food you're going to be feeding your puppy, into the amount of calories your pup actually needs each day, to find the exact amount of food you can give the pup to start with. For example, if your 6-week-old puppy is eating a food containing 600 calories per lb, he requires about 400/600 cal per lb. or.66 pounds of food every day.

Step 3: Split up the quantity of food required every day into the suitable amount of day by day feedings, according to the following formula: whenever the pup is from 6 weeks to about four months old, you should feed it four times every day. If he is from four months to twelve months, you should feed him three times per day. Once the puppy is over twelve months, you can start to feed him twice per day for the rest of its life.

Contrary to belief, a puppy should not be fed more than 4 times per day, some people think it is better to feed a puppy 6 to 8 times per day. Such frequent feedings could improve the efficiency at which the pup eats his food; it is at such a little degree, that all the additional time spent in making and feeding this many meals to the puppy, is not worth the effort it takes. Puppies have been brought up successfully on only two or three meals per day, from the time they are weaned, but four appears to be the amount that provides the most beneficial growth for the minimum effort by the owner. If your puppy eats every bit of food you provide him for at least three days, add five percent more food to his daily feeding. If it continues to eat all the food he is given for three more days, add five percent more food.

You should continue at this rate until he leaves a tiny bit of food at each meal. Most growing puppies wont leave much food in their bowl, until they become adults, this shouldn't concern you as long as he is continuing to have the same exact amount of growth each week. The average rate at which your puppy should start to slow down in growth is ten to twelve months. This is also when his appetite starts to drop.

Some people may take the loss of appetite and activeness as a sign that the dog is sick, this is just a natural reaction, and should be overlooked.