Switching to homemade for my 85lb dog: How much and what's best?

Hello and thank you for reaching out to PetCoach. When we calculate the daily caloric requirements for dogs, we use a calculation called RER, or resting energy requirement. For a 75 lb dog, this value is 985 kcal/day. Since he is young and active, we multiply this amount by a factor to account for this. In his case, his total calories that he should ingest per day is between 1200-1300. This should help him maintain the weight he is currently at. Here is a link to a reputable website that offers lots of nutritional information: http://vetnutrition.tufts.edu/pet-nutrition-basics/. I hope this is helpful!

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!

It depends entirely on what the caloric content and nutrient content of your food is, and that can vary so widely I can't give you an amount to feed. However, I would recommend that you visit this website for excellent guidance in formulating a homemade diet for you dog, including how much you should feed. Thank you for asking PetCoach! https://secure.balanceit.com/index.php?rotator=Front

If you are cooking for your dogs, the best place to help formulate a good homemade diet is ( www.balanceit.com ). This website was created by a veterinarian in nutrition and will help you formulate the best home cooked diet for your girls. The website is quite easy to use and you can purchase the vitamin / mineral supplement for the food directly from the website. I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns and I would be more than happy to help you further.

If you are looking to formulate your own homemade diet, check out www.balanceit.com to create your own diet for weight loss. This website is easy to use and I send my clients to this site quite often if they want to make a homemade diet. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. I am also available via consultation as sometimes it is much easier to talk over the phone about advice.

In my experience, home diets are very hard to do because it's very difficult to get the correct balance of nutrients a dog needs to stay healthy. That's why I never recommend them. That being said, however, I do have two websites to give to you that provide healthy and balanced diets for dogs. The recipes are created by veterinary nutritionists, so you know for sure that Calvin will be getting all the protein he needs to be healthy. Just so you are aware, at least 22% of his diet should be protein based. Be sure to check out these websites for recipes, and I hope this helps! https://secure.balanceit.com https://www.petdiets.com

I recommend a commercial diet as this is the most balanced diet. Homemade diets often lack some of the necessary nutrients for a balanced diet. If you decide to do a homemade diet, be sure to visit balanceit.com to ensure you are making a proper balanced diet.