Does anyone here bother with Kcals and how much to feed?

[cyphix333]

Hey guys, just trying to understand how Kcals work and how much your dog should get etc...

We've never really bothered in the past about how much Kcals are in the food, we just usually focus on how many grams we are giving them, but recently have started to wonder about the Kcals as some foods are a lot higher in Kcals compared to others and if this is the case it wouldn't be as much of a concern if we fed our dog (who is on a moderate fat diet) less of a food that has more fat I assume as long as it was meeting their required Kcals?

So, using a few different Kcals calculators on the net I found I got varied results for how many Kcals they should be having, for example, our Shitzu x Maltese who is 6.2kg I got values between 334 - 375 Kcals per day, but the median seemed to be about 350.

Now, calculating this out based on different foods they have it varied from the lowest at 750Kcals/1kg stating she should have 230g/meal! I found this amount unusually high, in the past we had been feeding her 125g/meal (have recently upped it to 150g of this one) of whatever food she had and her current weight is fine; our 5kg poodle states to give her 195g/meal, and I really don't see her eating this much, her weight is fine as well and she sometimes even leaves some left over when we feed her just 100g of this.

Then we move into a higher calorie food that has 1325Kcals and it works out to 130g/meal for our Shitzu and 110g for our Poodle; so pretty close to what we have been feeding them.

Now, getting to the crux of my question, is feeding my Kcals the correct way? Like, I'm confused, like, with the two examples above, the first one advises feeding almost twice as much as the higher Kcal one, and considering that BOTH foods are balanced, wouldn't they be getting far less nutrients with the higher kcal food since you are feeding far less of a balanced meal?

So for example, for humans, if we ate based on Kcals, there is a LOT of calories in a chocolate cake, but we wouldn't be getting the nutrients we needed just by eating a chocolate cake simply because it met our required calorie intake - so same thing applies with dog food? Don't they need a certain amount in grams of a balanced meal to get the required nutrients despite of the Kcals?

So, the primary point of this post as explained was wanting to feed our dog that is on a moderate fat diet other foods that are a bit higher in fat than we would usually give her as long as they are higher in calories and hence we wouldn't need to feed her as much and thus she would be getting around the same fat in total as her other meals.

Thanks!

[Rebanne]

I think you are over thinking! If your dogs are doing well on their current food and amounts why change?

Why do you want to go to a higher fat food but feed less of it? Is your dog lacking something, do you think they would do better on a different diet? 

I've never fed by kcal. I feed by look and feel of each dog and adjust food if needed, up or down 1/2 cup or less or more of their raw. Sometimes they get more or less at a meal because I might have suitable left overs or I forgot to defrost some meat. 

[Dogsfevr]

We never feed by calculations ,we feed based on the dog,the seasons,the work load , and it’s body condition.

If your rotating your meats there shouldn’t be a need to make it too hard .

If I feed based on the calculations all my dogs would starve to death 

[cyphix333]

10 hours ago, Rebanne said:

I think you are over thinking! If your dogs are doing well on their current food and amounts why change?

Why do you want to go to a higher fat food but feed less of it? Is your dog lacking something, do you think they would do better on a different diet? 

I've never fed by kcal. I feed by look and feel of each dog and adjust food if needed, up or down 1/2 cup or less or more of their raw. Sometimes they get more or less at a meal because I might have suitable left overs or I forgot to defrost some meat. 

 

Yes, by the sound of my post I agree

 

But, as I said, the primary reason for looking into this was because of wanting to feed some food with a higher fat content and hence seeing if I could cut down on the amount fed.

 

Why do I want to feed higher fat foods? Well it's not that I want to feed higher fat foods specifically, it's that there are certain products I want to feed her, but they are a bit higher in fat than I would usually like to see and hence the issue of seeing if I could feed less; and the other benefit of feeding a variety of foods.

[Rebanne]

6 hours ago, cyphix333 said:

 

Why do I want to feed higher fat foods? Well it's not that I want to feed higher fat foods specifically, it's that there are certain products I want to feed her, but they are a bit higher in fat than I would usually like to see and hence the issue of seeing if I could feed less; and the other benefit of feeding a variety of foods.

Ok so just swap over to the food you want to feed and give your dog a little bit less in volume. If she drops weight then up it again. As I said I never look at the kcal and rarely even look at the amount to feed. When feeding dry food it's a standard two cups per dog unless I see a need to alter that amount. My dogs are a tad bigger then yours

[cyphix333]

2 hours ago, Rebanne said:

Ok so just swap over to the food you want to feed and give your dog a little bit less in volume. If she drops weight then up it again. As I said I never look at the kcal and rarely even look at the amount to feed. When feeding dry food it's a standard two cups per dog unless I see a need to alter that amount. My dogs are a tad bigger then yours

 

I guess we could try that, just didn't wanna underfeed her haha. Probably wouldn't be able to up it though because it would be too much fat I'd say.

[persephone]

Wouldn't have a clue about kcals! if they are looking lean - up the food ... too broad, lessen the food .....