Raw Gold Feeding Guide
Use our awesome raw feeding calculator to work out how much Raw Gold you should feed your pet. Select your furchild’s age and activity level, find their ideal weight, and leave the rest to our amazing calculator. Remember, no 2 dogs are identical with regards their specific nutritional requirements, so use this as a guideline only to get you started. This feeding guide is applicable to Raw Gold’s minced dog food only.
The normal ‘rule of thumb’ for feeding an adult dog Raw Gold is to feed between 2% – 3.5% (active dogs would need about 4% – 5%, or in some cases even more) of the desired body weight per day. Initially you would need to play around with amounts until you find the percentage that is right for your particular dog. Some breeds tend to have a very high energy requirement (e.g. some Boxers, and most Border Collies) and they may eat well over 5% of their body weight per day – even up to 7% for some of the really active ones! You need to find the right percentage for your own dog to maintain them in lean, muscular condition. Depending on their age and size, puppies are fed approximately 5% – 10% of their current puppy body weight per day, broken into 3 meals.
It must be remembered that, just like humans, dogs have different metabolisms from each other.
Some need quite a bit of food to keep up with their energy requirements and others need very little to maintain them in sleek condition. You also need to take into account the age of the dog and whether they have been spayed or neutered. Generally, the older the dog, the less they need. And the same is true of a spayed or neutered dog. There really is no excuse to have a fat dog just because they have been sterilised. As long as you watch their food intake and tweak it as necessary, your dog should remain in hard muscular condition no matter what their age is. With most dog breeds, you want to be able to feel their ribs underneath their skin, you want to see a definite waistline when looking down on them, and you do not want to be able to see (or feel) their spines and hip bones, unless this is a breed-specific trait as with the Saluki, Azawakh, Afghan etc.
With deep chested breeds, like the Boxer, Rottweiler, Dobermann and German Shepherd (plus other large breeds) it is best to feed twice a day to limit the chances of gastric torsion, or bloat. However, feeding a raw natural diet goes a long way to reducing the incidence of bloat as there is not the same risk you may have with a dried dog pellet that swells in the dog’s stomach. Most dogs that are eating a raw natural diet tend not to ‘inhale’ their food like a dog eating commercial pellets does.
If you have a dog that is overweight, you need to determine what the dog’s IDEAL body weight should be and then feed 2% – 3.5% of that ideal weight per day until the dog has shed its extra kilos and is at its goal weight. If the amount that you should be feeding is a lot less than what you are currently feeding, do not starve your dog, but rather slowly reduce their intake until they are eating the correct amount.
With deep chested breeds, like the Boxer, Rottweiler, Dobermann and German Shepherd (plus other large breeds) it is best to feed twice a day to limit the chances of gastric torsion, or bloat. However, feeding a raw natural diet goes a long way to reducing the incidence of bloat as there is not the same risk you may have with a dried dog pellet that swells in the dog’s stomach. Most dogs that are eating a raw natural diet tend not to ‘inhale’ their food like a dog eating commercial pellets does.
If you have a dog that is overweight, you need to determine what the dog’s IDEAL body weight should be and then feed 2% – 3.5% of that ideal weight per day until the dog has shed its extra kilos and is at its goal weight. If the amount that you should be feeding is a lot less than what you are currently feeding, do not starve your dog, but rather slowly reduce their intake until they are eating the correct amount.
If your dog is underweight, you need to do the same thing – determine what the IDEAL body weight should be, and feed 2% – 3.5% (or the applicable percentage depending on your pet’s activity level) of that weight per day until the dog has put on the weight required to reach the ideal.
Once the ideal weight has been reached, the maintenance amount of 2% – 3.5% (or the applicable percentage depending on your pet’s activity level) of the ideal body weight is then fed, split over the number of meals you are feeding per day.