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I’m confused. I need to figure out about how many calories my pup needs per day. She eats raw (frozen commercial). According to Primal’s website she needs 340 kcal to maintain. But according to Instinct’s calculator, she needs 518 kcal. And, this site’s calculator says she needs 510 kcal a day. I’m guessing the 500 kcal is the correct ones and the Primal calculator is just off?
I’ve been feeding Primal since she was 2 months (she’s 1 year now) and it’s always seemed like she has eating a lot more than what their calculators said she needed. Maybe this is why?! I dunno, but I do need an accurate calculator so I can calculate costs and insure I’m not overfeeding.
TIA!
Now I’m even more confused.
Looking at Instinct’s calculator it shows that to maintain my dogs weight I need to feed 518 kcal a day and recommends 8 ounces of the food I selected.
Thing is, it shows this for both the Venison and the Lamb and each are listed as 384kcal and 368 kcal, per patty, respectively. So, I’m not a math genius but this doesn’t add up.
I’m I missing something or just having horrible luck with these calculators??
When feeding raw, feed 2-3%. If you go to Hare Today Gone Tomorrow (google for the website, under raw education, there’s a feeding calculator.
Hi Lovemypuppy,
There are various ways to calculate calorie needs and none of them are particularly accurate in regards to any one dog. After arriving at the number nutritionists will say that any individual dog can deviate 50% in either direction from that number. So if I calculate 500 kcals a day that means some dogs may require only 250 kcals a day and others 750 kcals.
Feed to body condition, calculate the calories that your dog requires and then if switching between foods feed on a caloric basis.
I have found that feeding calculators for raw diets are usually on the low end. I think that is so it makes the diet look more affordable than it actually is.
I took a look at Natures Variety calculator and plugged in some info and I agree the number of ounces they recommend didn’t add up to the number of kcals recommended. You may want to contact the company about that. The calculator told me to feed 9.5 ounces and 590 calories but 9.5 ounces fell far short of 590 calories using their caloric data.
Inked Marie.. It never made sense to me to say feed 2-3% body weight as the number of calories/ kg vary greatly. For example for Primal pork they report 35 kcals/ounce. Using the 2-3% rule i would feed between 6-9 oz a day for my dog or ~210-315 kcals. But if i used 6-9 ounces of their beef formula 384-576 kcals. Nearly a 2 fold difference.
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