Dog Food Calculator
How much should your dog actually eat? Enter their weight and life stage for a daily calorie and portion estimate, based on the formula vets use.
Enter your dog's weight and life stage to see the daily amount.
The calorie figure above comes from the formula vets use, and it is a starting point rather than a prescription. Two dogs of the same weight and age can differ by three hundred calories a day depending on how much they actually move.
Where the formula comes from
Resting Energy Requirement is 70 multiplied by body weight in kilograms raised to the power of 0.75. The exponent is the part that matters. Energy use does not scale in a straight line with weight, so a 40 kg Labrador does not need four times what a 10 kg Beagle needs. It needs about 2.8 times as much. Anyone dividing food by weight alone overfeeds small dogs and underfeeds large ones.
That resting figure is then multiplied for life stage. A puppy under four months runs at three times resting because they are building a body. A neutered adult sits around 1.6, an intact adult a little higher, a genuinely athletic dog up to 2.5, and a dog on a weight loss plan at 1.0. Those multipliers are the biggest lever in the whole calculation, which is why choosing the honest one matters more than getting the weight exactly right.
A flat dog burns less than the bag assumes
Feeding charts printed on pet food bags are written for an active dog, by the company selling the food. A dog living in a two bedroom flat with two twenty minute walks, most of it spent stopping to sniff, is not active by that definition. Through a monsoon week when the walks shrink to five minutes under an umbrella, they are barely moving at all.
If your dog is neutered, lives indoors and gets moderate walks, the 1.6 multiplier is usually right and the bag is usually generous. Start ten percent below what the bag says and let your hands on the ribs decide the rest. Overweight is the most common nutritional problem in Indian pet dogs and the easiest one to prevent.
Home cooked food, roti and curd
Plenty of Indian dogs eat home food and there is nothing wrong with it as long as somebody has done the arithmetic. The first difference is water. Rice, dal, chicken and curd are mostly water by weight, so the same calories fill a much bigger bowl than kibble does. A dog switching from kibble to home food should get a bowl that looks alarmingly large, and that is correct.
The gap that catches people out is calcium. A meat and rice diet with nothing added runs badly short, and in a growing large breed puppy that is a serious problem. Balancing a home diet properly is worth one paid consult with a vet or a qualified pet nutritionist, after which you have a recipe you can repeat for years. Keep masala and salt out, along with onion, garlic, chocolate, grapes and raisins, xylitol, and cooked bones of any kind.
The most common feeding mistakes
- Following the bag's chart without adjusting for a dog who lives indoors and walks twice a day.
- Measuring in cups without ever checking what a cup of your particular kibble weighs.
- Losing track of treats. One Marie biscuit is roughly twenty calories and a chapati off the family plate is seventy to a hundred, which for a 5 kg Pomeranian is a quarter of the day's food handed over uncounted. Keep treats under a tenth of the total and take them out of the measured portion.
- Free feeding, which leaves food out all day. It makes weight impossible to control and hides the most useful early warning sign there is, a dog going off their food.
- Switching food overnight instead of across seven days, and adding milk, which most adult dogs handle poorly.
When feeding becomes a vet question
Appetite is one of the most useful signals a dog gives you, which is why a change in it is worth attention even when the dog seems otherwise fine.
- Losing weight while eating normally, or gaining weight while eating less
- Going off food for more than a day, or two skipped meals in a row in a puppy under four months
- Eating well but with persistent loose stools, or stools with mucus or blood
- Retching without producing anything, a swollen or hard belly and restlessness, which in a deep chested breed such as a Great Dane, Labrador or German Shepherd needs a vet immediately rather than in the morning
- A dog on a weight loss plan who has lost nothing after six weeks of accurate weighing
Questions people ask
How much should I feed my dog per day?
Start from Resting Energy Requirement, which is 70 times body weight in kg to the power of 0.75, then multiply for life stage. A neutered adult sits around 1.6 times resting, a puppy under four months at three times, a senior nearer 1.4. For a typical 20 kg adult that lands near 1,050 calories a day, roughly 300 grams of average dry kibble.
How many cups of food should a dog eat?
Cups are unreliable, because a 240 ml cup of kibble weighs anywhere from 90 to 120 grams and calorie density runs from 300 to 400 kcal per 100 grams. Read the kcal figure on your bag, convert your dog's daily calories into grams, and weigh that amount once on a kitchen scale.
Is my dog overweight?
Run a flat palm along the ribs. You should feel them easily under a thin covering, similar to the backs of your knuckles. Check for a waist from above and a tuck from the side. If you have to press to find ribs, cut food by about ten percent and recheck in two weeks.
Is home cooked food better than kibble for Indian dogs?
Either works when it is balanced. Home cooked food is fine provided somebody has accounted for calcium and overall nutrient balance, which meat and rice alone do not provide. That is worth one consultation with a vet or a qualified pet nutritionist. Keep masala, salt, onion, garlic, chocolate, grapes and cooked bones out entirely.
These tools give averages. Averages are a starting point and not a verdict on your dog. Anything here that touches health is written to help you decide whether something is worth a vet's time, never to tell you what is wrong.