How Do You Know How Much to Feed?

[Zoom-boing]

I feed my four Taste of the Wild.

Jake the BC bets 1/2 cup in AM and 1/2 cup in PM.

Same for Abbey my GSD mix.

Zip and Murph the two little terrier mixes get 1/4 cup each in AM and PM. I also feed a lot of raw things.

Don't ever follow whats written on the bag. Your dog will be an elephant.

Taste of the Wild is great food and you don't have to feed a lot of it for your dog to look good. Mine all look great.

How big is Jake? Penny is a BC mix and weighs 45 lbs. While not fat I do think she could lose 3 lbs or so. Dio is a BC/Pom mix and weighs around 18-20lbs and I'd like him to remain at this weight, although he is a bony dog. Not ribby . . but you can very easily feel his hip bones and his shoulder bones (across the front of his chest). He's got a bony adams apple too! lol Like there's not a lot of padding in certain places.

What kind of raw things do you feed?

I fed them both yesterday at 10am (I'm trying to stretch out their feeding times to 8 or more hours, so far it's not happening) and by 4pm Penny was mouthing (kind of a yowling bark . . like Tim Allen's character on Tool Time. Ruuhh, ruuhh, ruuhh).

 

[Claudette]

I feed my four Taste of the Wild.

Jake the BC bets 1/2 cup in AM and 1/2 cup in PM.

Same for Abbey my GSD mix.

Zip and Murph the two little terrier mixes get 1/4 cup each in AM and PM. I also feed a lot of raw things.

Don't ever follow whats written on the bag. Your dog will be an elephant.

Taste of the Wild is great food and you don't have to feed a lot of it for your dog to look good. Mine all look great.

How big is Jake? Penny is a BC mix and weighs 45 lbs. While not fat I do think she could lose 3 lbs or so. Dio is a BC/Pom mix and weighs around 18-20lbs and I'd like him to remain at this weight, although he is a bony dog. Not ribby . . but you can very easily feel his hip bones and his shoulder bones (across the front of his chest). He's got a bony adams apple too! lol Like there's not a lot of padding in certain places.

What kind of raw things do you feed?

I fed them both yesterday at 10am (I'm trying to stretch out their feeding times to 8 or more hours, so far it's not happening) and by 4pm Penny was mouthing (kind of a yowling bark . . like Tim Allen's character on Tool Time. Ruuhh, ruuhh, ruuhh).

Jake has always weighed between 50-55 pounds. Even in his hay day when he was herding sheep. He's 13 years old now and could still run the legs of a sheep. He's alway on the go. Not a big dog. He's slim and trim. One cup of TOTW keeps him in great shape.

Abbey gets one cup as well. She's a stockier dog than Jake and about 12 yrs younger.

Zip is a Border Terrier mix and he's a goer also. Murph is a Poodle/Schnauzer mix and he's a little fat guy. Exercise isn't on his agenda. LOL

I also buy the wet TOTW and mix a teaspoon, yes teaspoon, in with the dry about once every two weeks or so. Loads of calories in the wet food.

As for the raw I will get chicke livers and just drop em in the food. Don't cook em. Feed em raw. I also get calf liver once a while. Cube it up and drop it in. Again raw. I also will sprinkle a little parmesan cheese in their food as a sort of treat. They also get a dab of yogurt on their food in the AM. Great stuff. Full of enzymes.

I also buy pork neck bones. I freeze em and then let the dogs have em. Frozen they don't make a mess in the house. Again raw.

TOTW works for me as you don't have to feed a lot of it to keep your dog in good shape. You would have to experiment to see what works best. Its rather pricey at $49.00 per 30 pound bag. I like it because its totally grain free.

 

[Kooshdakhaa]

Something my vet told me recently...dry dog food has more calories than canned dog food! So, a cup of canned food has less calories than a cup of dry food. The dry food is more concentrated, the canned food has more water content. Surprised the hell out of me.

Anyway...

My dogs and cats always have kibble out. I free feed. The cats food is up higher where the dogs can't get it.

Then at dinner each dog gets a small serving of a homemade concoction of brown rice, boiled hamburger, scrambled eggs, no added sodium green beans, and low fat cottage cheese, all moistened with water that was used to boil the hamburger after the fat has been skimmed off. Oh, plus some cubed baked boneless, skinless chicken breast added at serving time.

At dinner, six cats share a can and a half of Fancy Feast, the rest goes on top of the dry food I put out for strays.

The results...I have six cats, one is overweight, the others are not. Oddly, the overweight cat doesn't even seem to be the most enthusiastic eater. Vet says let him be, he may get diabetes, but some fat cats do just fine.

I have five dogs. The two Dobermans are nice and trim (Bones, I can't believe 2 1/2 cups of food is enough for a 100 pound Doberman. Do you mean 2 1/2 cups at each meal?) The Chinese Sharpei is nice and slim. One minpin is fat, one tends toward chubby but his weight can be kept in check by encouraging exercise (throwing things for him to chase).

Now, in addition to the dry food and special dinner, the dogs get an Iams biscuit (appropriately sized) in the morning, and a treat of chicken jerky at lunch. My husband usually gives them a small treat from leftovers after dinner (small chunks of steak, fish or chicken, that sort of thing). Some of the cats also come around for these after-dinner treats, but surprisingly, the fat cat does not.

This might seem like a lot, but remember...out of eleven animals, only two have a weight problem, nine of them are fine. My vet suggests feeding the fat dog more canned food! I may give that a try. The cat...I really think he has some kind of thyroid problem. He really doesn't eat that much!

I feed the cats Iams dry cat food and Fancy Feast canned food. The strays outside get Purina Cat Chow and Fancy Feast. The dogs get Canine Caviar Lamb and Pearl Millet dry food and my homemade moist food.

Oh...on Saturdays the dogs get a Greenie. I can only afford them once a week.

Sorry...I have motor mouth when it comes to talking about my animals.