How to budget dog food for multiple dogs and know when to buy more?

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!

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Benji. Being over weight is one of the most common problems that I see in pets. So great job on recognizing this and wanting to be pro-active! If you need to feed your dogs together, supervise them at meal times so they can only eat their allotted portions. Measure each dog's food with a measuring cup so you know exactly what is being fed. The next big thing is adequate exercise. I would recommend at least one walk per day increasing as he is comfortable. A good goal is several miles per day depending on his current fitness level. If you are not making progress there are prescription weight loss diets that are very effective. I hope this information helps!

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.

Hello. I agree, leaving the food out to be soiled by birds & insects is nasty & wasteful. I would start with whatever you feed the dogs using the recommendations on the bag as a guide. Take the total daily amount recommended per dog & divide into 3 meals, 1 bowl per dog ( you may have to initially separate the dogs at feeding time ). Put the bowls down & leave for about 15 minutes. Whatever is not eaten in this period of time should be picked up & offered at the next feeding. Repeat at the evening meal. You may have to do this for several days, but pretty soon they will get the idea & you can go to twice daily feedings. Most dogs are very adaptable & I am sure they will pick up on the new schedule quickly. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

Depending on how big the Chiweenie is as an adult, you could likely use the same food for both dogs after they are each 1 year old. Since Sara is only 35lbs, you don’t need to give her a large breed dog food. The other pup is likely not extra small (under 10lbs) so it would be fine to eat a regular food as well. Stick with any of the high quality brands who do not have recall issues frequently. Brands who have frequent recalls are concerning for quality issues. I recommend Royal Canin, Iams, Purina Pro Plan, and Nutro. Just get the normal, adult dog food. Remember to transition to the new diet over 5-7 days. I hope this is helpful and please feel free to post any additional questions!

Yes .5 is half a cup. It is less than the 2/3cup you are currently feeding Tasha (plus the one cup), but based on the calorie amount you provided for one cup and her daily calorie requirement, she should be fed one and a half cups twice a day. As for changing her food, I can't say if she should be fed the same amount with the large breed food because each cup may be a different amount of calories. To figure it out, you divide 1,100 by the the calorie amount of each cup to get the number of cups she should be eating per day. Then divide it into two equal portions per day. I will type out the example for her current food: 1100 calories required by day / 364 calories per cup = 3 cups per day 3 cups per day / 2 meals in a day = 1.5 cups twice a day If you do change her food, it needs to be done slowly to avoid GI upset.

Adding water to her meals is fine. If you observe that she is drinking more than usual or urinating more than usual, she may need to have her urine checked. The only way to measure water intake is to separate her and measure the amount of water offered subtracted from the amount she consumes in 24 hours. Most healthy pets will consume enough if made available.