Raw Diet Dog Food Preparation Tips - How Much To Feed Your Dog

When you put your dog on a raw food diet, one of the things you need to determine is how much of what to feed your dog. Unlike commercial dog diets where you just follow the label and measure out an appropriate amount to feed your dog, a raw diet dog food regimen requires a bit more decision making on your part.

Aside from identifying the different food groups or food types that you need to feed your dog, you also need to identify exactly how much your dog needs in order to satisfy his appetite and his nutritional needs. Fortunately, there are tools that we can use. The first one is the raw dog food pyramid, and the second one is a formula for computing how much your dog needs to eat based on his size.

The important thing to keep in mind when feeding raw is that your goal is to simulate what a dog would naturally eat in the wild. And this is what the canine food pyramid shows us. At the bottom of the triangle, you have bones and muscle meats taking up 60% to 75% of your dog’s diet. Next up on the ladder would be vegetables and fruit, making up 35% to 40% of your dog’s diet. Finally, up on top, you’ll find dairy, offal, and other foods taking up 10% to 20% of your dogs diet.

What does this pyramid tell us? Does it mean that for each and every meal, we should have all these ingredients in this proportion?

Not at all. The percentages are meant to illustrate what a dog needs to achieve a balanced diet over a period of time - and not for each meal. This gives pet owners a lot of leeway and a lot of opportunity to add variety to their dog’s diet. This means you can serve meaty bones on most days. Once a week, serve meaty bones with some offal or dairy in it. Twice a week, serve meaty bones with pureed fruits and vegetables.

When it comes to bones and muscle meat, you also have a lot of different types of meats to choose from. There’s pork and beef, chicken, turkey, and even fish (this should be eaten in moderation though; about 1 whole fish a week but not more).

Now that you have an idea of how much of each food type to serve, the next thing to determine is how much to actually serve whether you have a big dog or a small dog. To determine this, here is a simple formula that you can use:

  1. Find out how much your dog weighs in pounds.
  2. To get the daily recommended portion size, multiply your dog’s weight by 0.02 or 0.04 (the recommended daily portion sizes is 2% to 4% of a dog’s body weight).

This will give you how much your dog needs to eat each day, in pounds. To find out how much of each type of food you need to serve, continue further with these instructions:

  1. bones and muscle meats: daily portion size x 0.60 or 0.75
  2. fruits and vegetables: daily portion size x 0.35 or 0.40
  3. dairy, offal and others: daily portion size x 0.10 or 0.20

These should give you a good estimate of how much your dog needs for optimal nutrition. When on a raw diet dog food regimen, keep in mind that it’s not about feeding the exact portion sizes all the time. It’s about achieving a balanced and nutritionally optimal diet over a period of time.