Bc Puppy Weight

[Leela and PJ]

I'm trying to figure out if my 11 week male BC is a healthy weight.

At 10 weeks he weighed 5.25kg. Is it normal to be able to feel my puppies ribs? At the moment he is fed 3/4 cup of supercoat in the morning and at dinner 100g of chicken mince with 1/2 cup supercoat. Is this a normal amount to be feeding?

I do want to eventually put him on a better quality kibble I feel I'm feeding him 2x more than what I would on say proplan. I also want to cut back on the kibble and feed more raw meat.

I'm so confused by the amount of information on the net. I don't know if I'm doing the right or wrong thing for my pup as everyone has many different opinions on feeding.

[Sandra777]

IMO you shouldn't be able to easily feel a pup's ribs at this age, but yes you should be able to feel them under a light layer of fat.

Don't know the breed's requirements but mine are about this weight when they're 2-3 weeks older than yours and they would usually get three meals a day including bones (edible ones) for lunch & breakfast and dinner of a cup of food and an amount of meat about the size of a baseball, no idea of the weight sorry.

[BCNut]

Hi

We had a similar discussion the other day: LINK

I'm guessing he's not interested in lunch too? Ideally its good to keep them at 3 meals a day until 6mths. My almost 14wk girl is on 2 and 5/8ths of a cup a day of royal canin jnr. Which works out to be about 7/8ths cup per meal, 3 times a day. Also gets probably half a cup worth of treats over the course of a day for training (homemade liver cake, fritz, cheese, ham, tiny pieces of beef).

She weighed 8.3kg last night but she is a very food oriented BC. My 18mth boy is very anti-food and only weighs 15kg now but is a small, short fella - he could probably only gain a kilo or 2 before he started actually getting fat. It depends on how tall they are as well as to whats going to be a nice weight for them.

Just had a look at some vet papers, this should help with comparison:

My boy @ 14wks : 7kg

Girl @ 13wks : 8kg

Hope this helps :)

[Pretty Miss Emma]

I'll throw something else in to the mix, my Hamish at 8 weeks old was just over 6kg. He gained close to 1kg per week until he was about 15kg. They are all different so there is no "right weight" for a BC puppy of this age. You have to go by how they look and feel. You should be able to feel the ribs, but they shouldn't be poking out and be able to be seen. If you have a small BC then they're going to weigh less and be smaller. Hamish is now 13 months old and he weighs around 23kg, and he is at perfect weight (even though lots of people think he is skinny, but they have fat dogs!).

On the other hand, my girl, Kenzie, she weighed 3.5kg when I brought her home and didn't get to 6kg til she was 12 weeks. She's now 3.5yrs and just under 20kg and she is a bit fat.

There are no hard and fast rules you just have to go with how they look and if you can feel their ribs. If you're concerned then take him to the vet for a weigh in and ask them. But he's probably due for another vaccination soon so you'll probably chat about that then.

[DeltaCharlie]

IMO you shouldn't be able to easily feel a pup's ribs at this age, but yes you should be able to feel them under a light layer of fat.

I have to disagree with this. You should be able to easily feel their ribs and they should not be carrying even a small layer of fat. BC puppies are notoriously active and the last thing their growing joints need is to be carrying any additional weight at all. I would rather a pup be too lean than carry any weight. You are just asking for problems down the track. Take it from someone who has learned this the hard way.

Our current litter is just under 4kgs and they will be 8 weeks old on Sunday. They are heavily built working pups, I suspect yours would be a lighter build. Their ribs are very easily felt and they are nicely tucked in at the waist. I don't want to be able to feel spine, but a tiny bit of hips isn't a bad thing (don't want to see hips or easily feel them however).

A good guide no matter how old your dog is, is to make a fist and run your other hand lightly over the big knuckles. Ideally, that is how their ribs should feel when you lightly rub over them. That is for a regular dog at any rate, certainly an active or performance dog. I think the show ring requires them to be fatter than that for some reason.

As for the number of meals it depends on what you are feeding them and how much they are requiring in a meal. Delta was on 2 meals a day from 8 weeks pretty much. But she was on entirely raw (so smaller meals as she used everything she got). Given that the meals were smaller she didn't need them spread any further as the size was fine for her stomach to handle. Whip had some puppy biscuits too so he was on 3 meals for the first few months. By 5 or 6 months he was definitely down to 2 meals though.

[Leela and PJ]

Ok I feel a bit of relief. I can't see his ribs but when I touch him I can feel his ribs. He is booked in next weekend for vaccine so will be able to discuss with the vet. Thanks for the help guys :)

[dancinbcs]

I usually allow my puppies to eat as much as they want to at each meal and take the food up as soon as they walk away from the plate. Of course it depends on the puppy as a few will eat until they throw up but most BCs just eat what they need. They are usually not a very food orientated breed so rarely overeat as puppies. They also eat different amounts on different days because they don't grow at a steady rate each day. On days when they are growing more they will be much hungrier than on days when their growth has slowed. I prefer them with a thin layer of fat over the ribs because they hit a growth spurt at about 16 weeks when they all go tall, lanky and skinny. If they are too lean before the growth spurt it can be impossible to keep any weight on them at all during that 4-8 month peak growing period.

As I said in the other post, the weight they are born at determines how fast they grow. My last litter of just 3 whoppers born around 500gms, had doubled their weight to 1kg at one week and were already about 2.5kgs at 3 weeks before I even started to wean them. At 6 weeks they were 5-6kgs and by 8 weeks they were 7-8kgs. At 4 months, as per usual they where all legs and skinny just like my smaller ones had been. That litter gained about 100gms a day from the second week on but smaller, more usual size puppies will only gain about 50-70gms a day. My male was 17kgs before 6 months and matured at 23kgs. On the other hand I have bought in 2 puppies that only weighed 3kgs at 8 weeks. All grew to be normal size adults. One thing you can never predict in puppies is final size and substance. Some stop growing at 6 months, others grow to 18 months, regardless of the size they start at.