How do you know when to increase amount of food per portion?

I really have no idea when food levels get increased as puppies grow, is there a guide I can access for large breed puppies that anyone knows about?

Thanks

On the back of the bags is a guide and also your vet and the breeder should give you adice on feeding.

Besides from that, use your own judgement
Watch if he empty the bowl straight away (seems hungry), feel his skin/body, when you do more training you should also take that in consideration when feeding him.
You can do it by watching your boy Ingrid. No prob

well I know it's only for a guide but I generally just kept weighing them when they were pups and looking on the feeding chart to see with what they correspond with regarding age and weight.

Sometimes the food will only have the projected adult weight on though so regular weighing doesn't help in this instance, in this case I picked what I thought would be their end weight and I would just increase the amount as it went up by the age category. Although I guessed Takoda would be at least 10 / 15 lbs lighter than he is...lol

Then just go by how Fern looks, about right? getting a bit to lean??...a bit plump??

Not sure you can always go by how much they want to eat??...Keena sometimes doesn't want her kibble at all and I have to watch her to make sure she is eating and Takoda is a doggy dustbin that I swear would eat as many bowls of food as you put down, each bowl full being eaten like it was first in several days! He really would eat till he made himself sick...So it does help me to go by look and feel of the dog as well as use the feeding guide on the food.

The other thing is both of mine are quite lean, I don't actually think they are capable of getting to plump?! So sometimes I don't think that even if I was over feeding them I could physically see it...but one indicator is what comes out the other end...alot of diarreoah can be caused by over feeding...So i'm sure you already do but check that now and again...lol

Obviously for anyone reading you would want to check that there is nothing else wrong first.

Thanks AM

Hi Mys, his rear is pretty good He does look a bit slim, and OH believes we should be increasing his meals, but we don't have a feeding chart.

I will pop downstairs as AM suggested to see if it is on the back of his Hills packet - but we order it from Germany as it is cheaper to get it from there than the UK so I'm hoping there's an english translation

I might just bump his meals up by 25mls and see how he looks

Thank you!

you could ask here if anyone feeds the same food and they will have a guide on the pack...

or look for sites that sell the food online and they may show the feeding requirements.

I know they are only a guide but I wouldn't like to not know what they reccomend as the average amount.

Pups of Ferns age do tend to have times where they look a bit skinny though as they as they shed their puppy fat and are all legs paws and ears especially in dogs GSD and N.I.D shape!

I usually get Finn weighed once a month and increase his food accordingly It keeps me right and gets him used to the vet

mine get weighed at the vets sometimes...But can you believe I still pick up Kody and weigh him our scales at home...lol...I can only just still do that now with the 90lb or so hefalump...lol...It's quite hard balancing on the small scales

It's in English YAY!!! I should have looked there in the first place

Thank you for your replies

Hi MC In the days when dogs ate whole food the rule of thumb was; an ounce per lb of bodyweight for a puppy, and half to threequarters of an ounce per lb body weight for an adult dog depending on their lifestyle.That can't of course be applied to concentrated complete food.

The amount you feed depends on the lifestyle of the puppy as well as the food you feed, some of the complete foods are full of cheap rubbish fillers making it necessary for dogs to eat more of it to get their nutritional requirement, that is why if I have to feed a complete food I prefer to feed one without unnecessary additives and to suppliment it with veg and some fish/meat.

Remember you are not so much increasing the food levels for each meal as the puppy grows, you are decreasing the number of meals the puppy eats, that means splitting the daily intake between fewer meals so those meals become larger . A rough guide to the number of meals is...
Age 4-12weeks = 7am / noon / 5pm/ 10pm
Age 3-6 months = 7am/ noon / 5pm
Age 6-12months = 7am/5pm
1 year onwards = One main meal and a snack or two main meals in the winter.