How to calculate dog food portions by calories when switching brands?

I think cutting the food in half may be a bit drastic at first. You don't want the weight loss to happen too quickly. I suggest you start by cutting the food by 25%. So, give her 3/4 cup twice a day and then weigh her after 4-6 weeks to see if you are making any progress. Keep in mind that any treats will increase her caloric intake so be careful and don't give her too much (if any). This is where I would start. Hope this helps. Best wishes!

Without knowing her breed of dog, I can't say if 17 pounds is a good weight or not for her. Some dogs do need to eat less based on their activity level, as they may be less active than others. With on a 17 pound dog, 2/3 cup of food per day is fine, especially if it's within her daily caloric range. I feed my Chow, who is 50.6 pounds, 1.5 cups of food per day, and she's a healthy weight. If she needs to lose weight, it sounds like you are doing it in a healthy and safe way, and I would keep going. Typically, dogs are affected by hypothyroidism, so if there was a problem with her thyroid, she would be gaining weight, not losing it.

The general rule of thumb for a maintenance diet is 1 cup of food per 30lbs body weight divided into two meals. This would mean Benji needs about 1/3 cup daily (small dogs don't need as many calories as bigger ones). Different foods will require different amounts as will each dog. More active dogs require more food. You can start with half a cup of food twice daily and see how Benji does with this amount. If he seems hungry after, increase the amount. If he doesn't finish meals, decrease the amount. Monitor his weight and body condition and adjust food as needed to prevent obesity.

Yes! You can certainly do that! Good question! For her weight she would need about 390 calories per day. If you cut her food to 1/2 cup that would equal approximately 220.5 calories. Then you would have about 170 calories left over for the veggies and pumpkin. Be sure to count in any other treats/food you give her. It doesn't take much to add on a lot of extra calories to a 17# dog! The other option is to switch her to a "light" or "senior" formula dog food that has less calories per cup. Then she can eat more :) I hope this helps! Best wishes to you and Chloe. She is beautiful!

An average, active 100 pound dab has an energy requirement of about 2,200 calories per day. It depends on your exact dog food but average is about 375 calories per cup, so about 5.5-6 cups per day. If you have 3 dogs at 100 pounds that is 18 cups per day, which is definitely a lot of food! Has your veterinarian mentioned that your dog’s are overweight at all? If so then I would start decreasing the food intake by 10 percent or so. Best of luck and thank you for using Pet Coach.

Although its a little hard to tell from the photo both of your pups look to be lean with good muscle mass. To assess body condition what you want to look for are a waist behind the ribs when viewed from above, and that you can feel but not see the spine and ribs. Young active dogs are certainly apt to be a bit leaner. You could certainly consider a diet for active large breed dogs, especially for the Dane mix. To figure out how much to feed you need to know two things. First, you need to find out how many calories are in a cup of your current food. This is sometimes written on the bag or you can go online to the foods website and typically find it. It would be written kcal/cup for dry or kcal/can for canned. Second, you need to figure out what the energy requirements for your dogs are. This will be different for different weights of dogs and for dogs with different lifestyles. A good website to go to to help you with this is the Ohio State University Pet calorie calculator. If you Google OSU dog calorie calculator it should pop up. This will show you how to calculate the energy requirement for your dogs based on their weights, and let you know what factor to multiply by for their lifestyle. Then basically when you know how many calories they should be taking in per day you can figure out how much to feed. Keep in mind if you do this and change the amount you are feeding, if you are seeing weight loss or excessive weight gain you will have to adjust the plan as it's not a perfect system. I hope this helps and thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach!

Hello, the calorie per cup measurement in any dog food means that if your dog needs to eat 500 calories per day then you'll be giving overall less amount of food to meet his caloric demand with the food that has more calories per cup. With either food, you will have to meet his daily caloric demand. What this means for you, is that you'll likely go through the dog food with less calories per-cup much quicker than the dog food that is more dense in calories per cup. Hope this helps and best of luck.