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So for the past nine years my brother owned a lab x collie. He was on a very poor diet (grocery store brand kibble) then my brother decided he didn’t want the dog, so I decided to adopt him. Yesterday I took him to the vet for his shots and the vet said he was underweight. This is because he wasn’t being fed enough by my brother.
Now I have the task of helping him put on weight. His current weight is 43.5 lbs. ribs, spine and hips can be seen and felt. I switched his food over to holistic blend. (We tried acana, Orijen and blue buffalo but he would constantly have diarreah. But he’s tolerating the holistic blend very well.
The food feeding guidelines for his weight is 1 1/3 cup daily. The Kcal is 390 per cup. My dog is very active and gets a lot of excercise daily.
How much should I feed him to gain weight?
Are you using his goal weight in the calculator? You can add some high calorie additions like oils – fish oil, coconut oil. Have you looked up “satin balls”? It is a high calorie food to help with weight gain. There is also a commercial product called Abady Granular which has over 800 calories per cup that you could add to his kibble. I was feeding 2 cups a day of kibble to one of my emaciated fosters and he is at a good weight now after 6 weeks. He might have started at 16 lbs, can’t remember.
I feed a higher calorie food than that and my dogs weigh less and I feed 2 cups. You could definitely go higher, just add more food slowly so his body gets a chance to get used to the additional calories, otherwise you’ll be back to the diarrhea. Give him just a quarter cup more for a few days, then a quarter cup more for a few more days, until you are feeding the desired amount. Some dogs are just naturally lean so don’t be surprised if there is only so much and no more that he is willing to eat.
Satin Balls work for some dogs – just google “satin ball recipes for dogs.”
One of my dogs has difficulty keeping weight on, I never really got her to a healthy weight until I switched her to a high fat (30% – 40%) raw diet. You have to increase fat levels slowly though or else the dog will probably get diarrhea.
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