Calculate Feeding Amount for Dogs

Not afraid of numbers? OK, then I’ll proceed and teach you how to calculate feeding amount for dogs.

Feeding Amount for Dogs – Step 1: Basic Metabolic Rate

Suppose you lie in your bed the whole day. You’re not ill but you’re just doing nothing at all. How much energy would you need?

Nothing?

Wrong! You need energy all the time to support your basic body functions. All those processes you’re usually not even aware of need to continue. So whenever someone asks you ‘What are you doing?’, the correct answer can never be ‘nothing’.

A minimal amount of energy – the basal metabolic rate – is required each day to maintain homeostasis in any dog that is just lying down in a room where room temperature is thermo neutral and doing nothing at all, not eating, not walking… except for keeping his heart beat, his breathing, just staying alive.

For this basic metabolic rate (BMR) we calculate 275 kJ per kg of metabolic weight (which is not the same as the body weight that you can just measure) a day.

Your dog’s metabolic weight is calculated as follows:

Weigh your dog (this is his body weight)
The body weight in kg^0.75 is his metabolic weight (for this you need a calculator… unless you’re a number wizard).
For example: when your dog’s body weight is 30 kg (66 lbs), then his metabolic weight is 30^0.75 = 12.8 kg (28 lbs).

Feeding Amount for Dogs – Step 2: Maintenance Level

Of course the BMR is a theoretical concept, as even the most lazy couch potato dog does more than just stay alive. He’ll at least walk to his food bowl, produce saliva, eat his breakfast and diner, digest the ingredients, yawns and goes out for a pee a bit later. Now we’re not going to take that dog as a role model.

A role model dog, that gets about one hour exercise a day would need twice the basal metabolic rate.

A dog will eat the required amount of energy, but he’ll overeat when he just really likes the dog food.

The maintenance level generally equals twice the Basic Metabolic Rate. Of course this is lower for inactive dogs and higher for active ones. For a dog that needs to loose fat tissue, the energy intake can be reduced to 50% (back at the BMR level).

Your dog’s average energy requirement is calculated as follows:

Take his metabolic weight and multiply this with 275 to get to his BMR.
Multiply the BMR with 2 to get to his maintenance energy requirements.
For example: when your dog’s body weight is 30 kg (66 lbs), then his metabolic weight is 12.8 kg (28 lbs). His maintenance energy requirement is 12.8 * 275 * 2 = 7051 kJ per day (1692 kCal).

Now… was this complicated? I hate to tell you but this was just very rough as well. Not for every dog you would multiply the BMR by a factor 2. This is applicable only to healthy mature dogs that are not inactive, not involved in performance activities either, not pregnant, not lactating and have an ideal body weight.

So now you have a number… this is the amount of dog food to feed in terms of kiloJoules. But I bet you think in cups, cans or grams. Now I’m adhering to the International Standard of units or the metric system, but I’ll sometimes mention the other units for your convenience.

The next step is getting the amount of grams.

Go from ' Feeding Amount for Dogs ' up to 'Energy Requirements for Dogs'