[“Blue”]

I have bought both Darwin’s and Natures Variety Instinct Raw frozen foods and am having difficulty reconciling their recommended feeding amounts. (Disclosure, sometime in the past 2 months I replied to a similar dry kibble post and suggested the OP use the feeding guides on the package as a starting point but to watch the dog’s body shape using the healthy dog image silhouettes available for that purpose. In other words, if your dog looks fat, feed less, if he looks thin, feed more.)

According to the Dog Food Calculator my 55 lb. dog needs 1230 Calories. For now, forget about differences in one dog’s metabolism, daily exercise, etc. “1230 Cal.” This request to help me understand is about the math, not the individual dog.

NV says my dog needs 1250 Cal. per day (close enough) and that I should feed him 19.5 oz. per day. Their nutrition info says their chicken patties have 49 Cal. per oz. which means 955 Cal. to be fed. Why tell me he needs 1250 and then tell me to only feed 955? That’s a Cal. shortage of about 25%.

Darwins says to feed my dog 9 lbs. per week. Their nutrition info says the chicken recipe is 36 Cal. per oz. That gives 5184 Cal. per week, /7 is 740 Cal. per day. That’s a Cal. shortage of about 60%.

Guess what I’ve been seeing in my dog for the past few weeks. Yep, he’s lost weight.

Can anybody explain why these (or any) companies are so conservative in their recommendations? Am I doing the math wrong? (even if I am, he’s lost considerable weight.) Is there some bit of knowledge I’m missing about feeding raw as relates to weight gain/loss?

Please don’t tell me to follow my own previous advice. Evidently I’ll surely go broke trying to feed him commercial raw.

Thanks,
Steve

[InkedMarie]

I can’t do math to save my life so I use the dog food calculator here on DFA. I looked up Darwin’s Zoologics chicken which is 592 calories. I used that, your 55 pound dog, typical activity level and it says a little over 2cups which is pounds of food a day.

[GizmoMom]

I never follow the feeding guidelines on the bag. I always calculate how much to feed by calories.

[“Blue”]

InkedMarie, You got my curiosity up so I went back to their site. I haven’t seen their recommendation for Cups at all. But it looks like you’re seeing a pound of their food is equivalent to a cup. I’ll check that this evening.

On this page http://www.darwinspet.com/resources/how-to-feed-raw/ I found 2 references to amounts fed. First says large dogs may eat 2% of their body weight and small dogs up to 4% per day. Second is a bullet list, which includes 8 lbs. per week for 50 lb. dog, which is pretty much inline with the 9 lb. they gave me when ordering on the phone. (You get this same 9 lb. when going thru the web ordering steps too.)

If I calc 4% of body weight, 55 x .04 = 2.2 x 7 days = 15.4 lbs. per week.
15.4 x 16 oz. x 36 Cal. = 8870 Cal. per week
8870 / 7 = 1260 Cal. per day.
Wow, there’s the magic number to keep his weight up.

I’m sure they are a good company with quality products, but I’m starting to think they recommend low feeding quantity numbers on purpose.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by "Blue".

[“Blue”]

GizmoMom, that’s how I got here and discovered they are recommending only about half of what a 55 lb. dog needs. It’s very disappointing to think I’ve been misled about the cost of feeding their product to my pet.

[InkedMarie]

Blue: up above, in the red line, click on reviews. Once there, on the left, click dog food calculator. It will say cups which equals pounds (when using the calculator).

Don’t get so held up on this. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, get one. Feed food that you’ve weighed and go by how your dogs look. Too thin, up the feed. Too bi, cut back.

All dogs are different. Feeding amounts are rarely correct, it depends on the dog.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by InkedMarie.

[“Blue”]

Inked, I did check the Darwin’s this evening. An 8 oz. (1/2 pound) pack of Darwin’s is right on a full cup.

I’m not hung up on having to feed him 1230 cal./day. I am hung up on Darwin’s telling me to feed my dog about half the calories he needs. I can only presume in order to mask the truth of how expensive it is to feed my pet their food.

BTW, you weren’t supposed to remind me to watch my dog. 🙂

[DogFoodie]

I wish I could recall his name, but there was a guy who posted briefly on the review side at least a year ago who mentioned that he fed his dog about three times what I fed mine when I feed mine Darwin’s. Our dogs were similarly sized. I remember being shocked at the amount he fed, but thought it was so different from what I feed mine, because his dogs were more active than mine; and, if memory serves, he fasted his dogs one day a week so it averaged out to be somewhat less over the course of the week. I rotate so often and use a variety of foods, so I don’t use any one food long enough to notice a weight loss when I am feeding Darwin’s, but I can imagine that might be the case.

My Cavalier needs to drop some weight. Maybe I’ll pull out the Darwin’s and feed it exclusively to her for a while and see what happens.

[Hound Dog Mom]

I’ve noticed that Darwin’s feeding recommendations are way off as well. I can’t think of any reason other than to make the food appear cheaper to feed than it actually is.

[Melissaandcrew]

Things like that bother me. I want to know the cost right up front so that I can made a decision as to feed or not. Sigh..

[Sherri D]

I received this reply from Darwin’s regarding the calories for their Chicken and Turkey formulas.

Our Chicken Meals for dogs are 40 Kcals per ounce (320 Kcals, 1/2 pound) 1.5 lbs equals around 1000 calories
Our Turkey Meals for dogs are 36 Kcals per ounce (288 Kcals, 1/2 pound) 1.7 lbs equals 1000 Kcals

[Author]

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