Should I feed my dog 3x a day

How Many Times a Day Should I Feed My Raw Fed Dog?

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This blog post was originally published in February 2015. It has been updated with new information and republished in September 2020.

When we brought home Rodrigo and Sydney, I didnt think about how often they needed to eat. Ive always fed pets in the morning and in the evening. I didn't know that puppies need to eat more often (three to four times a day). And when my dogs grew up, I didn't realize that it was an option to feed them once a day in fact, that sounded cruel. But today, I know better. I'm updating this blog post to share what I've learned over the past five years as a raw feeder.

How Many Times a Day to Feed a Raw Fed Puppy

We've had several puppies over the years, and all of them were fed twice daily without any obvious ramifications; however, I've learned that due to a puppy's fast metabolism, they need to eat more often. If we were to bring home a puppy today, I would feed the puppy at least three times daily until they were 10 to 12 weeks of age, making sure that I was balancing their diet daily and not over time as I do with our adult dogs.

Keep in mind that this is for medium to large dogs. Giant breed puppies may have different criteria.

How Many Times a Day to Feed an Adult Raw Fed Dog

We're currently raising four adult dogs, and they eat twice daily within a 8-hour period: 9 am and 5 pm. They get treats, but not a ton, and their treats are primarily single-ingredient protein treats with a few exceptions. Once a week, I fast our dogs; it's a modified fast that looks like:

• my dogs have raw goat's milk or kefir instead of their regular raw meal for the day
• my dogs have bone broth instead of their regular raw meal for the day
• my dogs eat one large meal at the end of the fasting day

I have alternated between a modified fast (with raw goat's milk, kefir, or bone broth) to avoid hunger pukes and a full fast once weekly, when I feed the dogs at 2 pm, allowing for a 21-hour fast. Digesting food takes a lot of energy, and feeding light meals or fasting gives the gut a break and allows a dog's system to focus on detox and healing.

The choice to fast a dog is a personal choice. While my dogs have benefited from fasting (healthy weight, stronger immune system, healthy gut), I understand that fasting isn't for everyone. So if you're not fasting your dog and don't yet feel comfortable doing so, please don't feel pressured to do this with your dog.

What the Veterinarian Says

I contacted Dr. Cathy Alinovi, DVM of Healthy Pawsibilities, to get her thoughts on this question. Dr. Alinovi was kind enough to get us started on a raw diet and consulted with us when we were lost. According to Dr. Alinovi, how often we feed our dogs depends on our dog's age and lifestyle.

Puppy and Toy Breeds (feed 2 3 times a day)

A young puppy or toy breed can be fragile and doesnt do well without being fed a few times a day. Puppies especially are known for being hypoglycemic, as they don't usually have a lot of fat reserves. Therefore, it's good to feed them two or three times a day.

Adult Dogs

Once the dogs are older, it's really a matter of convenience. Certainly, dogs in the wild would eat when they could get food. Some days that might be once a day if they were lucky. Most dogs can stand it. The choice of feeding an adult dog once, twice, or three times a day is largely driven by lifestyle and the dogs health.

Benefits of Feeding Once Daily

If youre raising a healthy dog, then feeding once a day will allow you to control when they go poop; its easier to develop a system. If your dog has access to an outside yard or you have a flexible work schedule (or work from home), feeding twice daily may make more sense.

If youre raising a dog with any health issues, Id recommend seeking the counsel of a veterinarian whom you trust.

Learn More About Fasting Dogs

Read More About Raw Feeding for Dogs

How Often Should Dogs Eat?

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Among the many questions new and experienced dog owners face is an especially important one. How often should dogs eat? Diet and nutrition are crucial components to keeping your dog a healthy member of the family for years to come.

Though theres no hard-and-fast rule to how often a dog should eat, twice a day is generally a good place to start. However, more important than feeding frequency is meal portion size. Portion size may vary based on breed, age, and health condition, and settling on the right amount can be tricky.

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What Affects How Often a Dog Should Eat?

Veterinarians recommend feeding a dog at least twice per day. Dogs with medical issues or dietary needs may require specialized feeding schedules or restrictions on what they eat. Talk to your veterinarian about your dogs eating habits to make sure youre meeting their nutritional needs and healthcare requirements.

Breed plays a large role when deciding how often to feed your dog. Common large breed dogs, for instance, will often require more feedings and more calories per day than medium and small breed dogs.Age is also another important consideration. The caloric requirements for a two-month-old Yorkshire Terrier varies greatly compared to a two-year-old Yorkie.

How Much Should Puppies Eat?

A fresh meal servicelike Ollie helps change your feeding approachas your dog changes ages from puppy to adult so you dont have to worry about portions during different life stages.

Since puppies are growing rapidly, they need more food than adult dogs. Puppy nutrition is crucial for developing a foundation for future growth, as well as their bone and organ development. Puppies must have a specific amount of calcium in their diet, otherwise, they can develop metabolic bone disease or orthopedic conditions like early-onset arthritis. Toy-breed puppies, in particular, are prone to hypoglycemia.

Puppies need small, frequent feedings. For the first few months of a puppys life, they will need small meals of food throughout the day as they transition from their mothers milk to solid food. Starting around four months, puppies can begin eating about three times a day, and after that, puppies will quickly graduate to twice-a-day feedings.

Feeding them three or four times per day makes it easier for puppies to digest and help keep energy levels consistent. However, its important to not overfeed them, since overweight puppies are more likely to become overweight adult dogs.

Toy-breed puppies will need 4 to 6 meals per day for the first three months of their lives. Medium-breed puppies will require three meals per day, and large-breed puppies typically need 3 to 4 meals per day. Though the breed is an important consideration, metabolism and energy levels can vary by up to 30 percent. Therefore, youll need to proportion meals accordingly.

Even though puppies grow quickly, its important to keep caloric intake and food amount consistent from four to twelve months of age. Puppies use fewer calories for growth as they become older. This comprehensive puppy feeding chart has vet-recommended guidelines on how much and how often to feed your puppy.

How Much Should Adult Dogs Eat?

Dont let your dog trick you into more mealtimes with adorable puppy dog eyes. Most dogs only require two meals a day, but if you catch your dog begging, an occasional healthy treat can help.

The trick is to make sure youre not feeding your dog more than is recommended. Food labels can be misleading or confusing. Generic feeding charts may over-calculate how much to feed a dog, or use outdated information.

To determine how much food to feed your dog, you should start by knowing your dogs estimated adult weight. Most large breed dogs will weigh between 50 to 150 pounds, while small breeds weigh under 20 pounds. Knowing the weight of your dogs same-sex parent can also be an excellent guide.

From there, you can use the estimated weight to determine how many calories dogs need per day.

What Sort of Feeding Schedule Works?

Free-feeding, or leaving food available to dogs at all times, is often not recommended by veterinarians. For multi-species or multiple-dog households, free-feeding makes it difficult to account for different diets and to track each dogs intake. Additionally, free feeding can lead to obesity when dogs overeat.

Sticking to a schedule can help your canine companion avoid grazing, feel like part of the family, and can encourage good mealtime behavior. You should plan a feeding schedule by consulting with your veterinarian.

Why Ollie?

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• Ingredients: Ollies food is made only with whole, human-grade ingredients sourced from reputable farms and approved by vets. They never use fillers, by-products, artificial flavors, or preservatives in any of their recipes. Each recipe is cooked by hand at low temperatures in small batches in a USDA-regulated kitchen so you know your pup is getting the best.
• Easy Schedule:All of Ollies recipes are pre-portioned and stored in the freezer plus you will receive a puptainer to keep your pups food fresh in case you feed your dog before your morning coffee. Ollie also takes care of us humans, Ollie is delivered directly to your door in as little as 2 days, on your schedule.
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Ollies freshly cooked food is the simplest way to keep your dog happy and healthy at any age. Our five delicious recipes were formulated with vet nutritionists and ensure mealtime stays fresh and exciting for your pup. Visit Ollie.com, tell us all about your pup, and well create a custom meal plan just for them.

Dog Feeding Schedule: Why Its Important and How to Do It

Much like human children, domesticated dogs rely and depend on their human-owners that take care for them to create and maintain a feeding schedule that allows the animal to eat at the same time each day. If you the dog owner do not adopt and keep a schedule for your pooch, the pet can be negatively impacted in quite a few ways.

Below, I will list reasons why following a dog feeding schedule is important for a pet's health and overall well-being. Following the list is information about a few must-know facts related to dog feeding schedules and several resources that can be read for further information about this topic (which I highly recommend).

9 Reasons Dog Feeding Schedule is Important

1. To Prevent Obesity

Feeding a dog on a schedule allows pet owners to control the number of calories that their dog is taking in each day. If a dog is allowed to free-feed, it greatly increases the risk of he or she overeating and becoming obese, which is a very serious threat to the dogs health.

2. To Regulate and Monitor the Dogs Appetite

It is important to know if your dog has lost his or her appetite, as this can be an indication of a number of serious health problems. If a dog is free fed, it is much more challenging to monitor their appetite, and know if, or when it changes. Scheduled feedings allow an owner to know immediately, if their dog is skipping a meal, which could save the dogs life because the sooner a dog is seen by a veterinarian, the better their chance of getting better will be.

3. To Regulate the Dogs Potty Times

Feeding schedules are especially helpful when potty training a new puppy, but also for dogs that are left in their kennels for any extended period of time because owners can better regulate when the dog needs to use the bathroom, because most dogs will go potty within a certain amount of time after eating.

4. Dogs Are Creatures of Habit

Wild dogs prefer to eat at the same time every day. So, scheduled feedings more closely match the ways in which a dog would eat in the wild. However, unlike a wild dog, a domesticated pet is completely dependent on their owner for when they are fed.

If a dog is fed at the same, scheduled time each day, they will become less anxious due to not having to wonder when their next meal is coming. This will also cause a dog to trust their owner more, and form a stronger bond with them, because they know they can depend on that person to consistently take care of them.

5. For the Dogs Emotional Well-being

Feeding a dog on a schedule will help the dog to see their owner as a fair and stable leader of the pack that can be trusted and respected. This will lessen, or completely eliminate any anxiety the dog might have, and also cause the pet to feel more secure and bonded with their owner, which promotes a better overall emotional well-being in the dog.

Additionally, if a dog suffers from separation anxiety, having the owner feed the dog before they leave the house will give the dog something to look forward to, and allows the pet to positively associate the happy feelings that come with getting food with their owner leaving, instead of being anxious and worried about it.

6. To Create Meal Manners

This is especially important in households that have multiple dogs, and for dogs that are often fed in the presence of other dogs. If meal manners are not established, a multitude of negative things can occur, such as a dog becoming possessive over meals and aggressive about food, in general.

Furthermore, if there is more than one dog in the household, the most aggressive and/or largest dog will often eat all of the food, leaving the other animals in the home hungry, and potentially making themselves sick due to overeating. Also, if you have pets on a special diet, and free-feed, there is no way to make sure that each pet eats only the food that they are supposed to eat.

7. Scheduled Meals are Valuable Training Opportunities

Meal times are a perfect opportunity to train, and teach a dog that only good behaviors are rewarded. Because the dog is hungry, and relies on their pack leader (their owner) to get fed, the dogs owner can easily teach and reinforce positive behaviors at meal times by making their dog sit patiently and wait for their food.

Meal times also provide an opportunity for dog owners to teach their pet self-control by allowing the pet to be present as the meal is made, but making he or she sit patiently and wait to be fed.

8. Allows the Dog to Have More Variety in Their Diet

If you free-feed your dog, you can only feed them dry food because any other variety of food will become rotten and dangerous for the dog to eat if it sits out for an extended period of time, not to mention having to deal with all of the unwanted critters dog food attracts when it is left sitting out.

9. To Maintain Clean House Habits

As mentioned directly above, leaving dog food out in order to let pets free-feed will attract a multitude of unwanted and potentially dangerous critters and pests, such as ants, flies, cockroaches, mice, and many more creatures that you do not want lurking around your home, and in your dogs food.

RELATED: 9 Tips on Feeding Dogs With Sensitive Stomachs

5 Tips About Your Dog's Feeding Schedule

1. Recommended Feeding Schedule for a Puppy

Puppies are only able to eat fairly small amounts of food at a time, therefore they become hungry more often, and should be fed accordingly. Puppies can commonly be fed up to four times a day, and feedings should be spaced evenly throughout the day. If the puppy is especially small, he or she may need fed more often.

2. Recommended Feeding Schedule for an Adult Dog

Adult dogs should be fed only twice a day. Feeding should be spread out evenly throughout the day, and be at the same time each day. Canine experts often recommend feeding an adult dog twice a day, 12 hours apart. For instance, feed the dog at 6 a.m. (before you leave for work) and at 6 p.m. (after you return home from work).

But scheduled feedings will work at any time in the day, as long as they are spread out enough to make sure that the dog has time to work up their appetite, and remain consistent.

3. How Much Should a Dog be Fed?

How much a dog should be fed each day is based on the weight of the dog. Toy breeds that weigh less than 10 pounds only need 1/4 to 3/4 of a cup of food a day, on average. If the dog is very active, he or she could require up to 1 cup of food per day.

Small breeds weighing 10 to 25 pounds need 3/4 to 1 cup of food per day. Medium breed dogs that weigh 25 to 50 pounds require 1 to 2 cups of food per day. Large breeds need up to 2 1/2 cups of food each day. And extra-large breeds require 2 to 4 cups of food per day.

For any size dog you can replace 1/2 of their required daily volume of food with the same volume of wet food, if youd like to incorporate wet food into their diet. When feeding a dog twice a day, give half of the daily required volume of food to the dog at each scheduled meal time.

4. How Long Food Should Be Left Out for the Dog at Feeding Times

In order to teach a dog that they must eat their food at the scheduled feeding times, the food cannot be left on the ground for extended periods of time, as that is akin to free-feeding.

It is best to leave the food down for your dog to eat for a time period between ten to twenty minutes in length, depending on how well-trained and used to eating on a schedule the dog, as well as the dogs age and type of food they are fed, which all have an effect on how quickly he or she can eat their meals.

5. What to Do If the Dog Wont Eat During Scheduled Meal Time

If you are 100% certain that your dog is not having difficulty eating due to being ill, in any way, you can withhold treats for a few days and also skip one scheduled feeding, in order to allow the dog to become hungrier and therefore more motivated to eat their food during the next scheduled mealtime.

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