# 18 month old eating double the reccomended amount



## Vizslaowner123 (Mar 21, 2021)

Hi all,

Our V is 18 months old and eats 600grams (300g meals 2x per day) of dried kibble (Autarky white fish). The guidelines on the packaging suggest a dog of his size should be eating ~300g daily. 

Through trial and error (he lost a lot of weight eating at 300g) we upped it gradually to 600g per day and he has been eating this amount and kept a great shape for the last 6 months. 

I know he's more active than other breeds and that requires more fuel, but to be eating double the reference intake to me is a bit drastic, does anyone else have to feed far more than the referenced intake? 

Thanks in advance for any responses!


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## Gabica (Jan 20, 2018)

I had the same challenge with my young boys several years ago. ended up switching food (from kibble to raw), since then we have had no more weight challenges, I can put on and take off weight from them easily. at 18 months they tend to be anyways still in the filling out stage, so a bit harder to compare, but keeping them on one protein the whole time usually is not advised. is there any way you can switch around proteins?


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## derwos (Nov 10, 2019)

Guidelines are "Guidelines". Every dog is different... in activity level and metabolic efficiency.

I'm a huge proponent of switching up protein sources, as @Gabica mentioned above.

"Protein" consumption and utilization is not a simple thing. When ingested by a dog or human, proteins are broken down to amino acids... the base constituency of proteins. In a simple explanation, the building of muscle is dependent upon all required amino acids. Within every species, each individual creature utilizes the amino acids a tiny bit differently. There are common amino acids found in diets... and some are a bit more difficult to find in those diets. In human nutrition models, these are commonly referred to as "essential amino acids".

My personal approach? I am constantly changing Aly's (now, almost 18 months old) diet. The variation is through a graduated approach. I focus on foods (in my case, a kibble) that offers a good balance of protein, vitamins and minerals. Through constant changing, I augment her diet with stuff that contains other protein (amino acid) sources... fishes, vegetables and fruits. Things she likes and I know are are not harmful to her.

The bottom line? Use your dog's appearance as a guide. Ensure your V has a healthy, shiny coat... is bouncing off the walls, as a V should... and is carrying the proper weight (musculature highly visible and a tiny bit ribby).

As seasons change... and the tongue of your V does as well, be creative and fun.

While a dog's "primary" categorization is being carnivorous, they have evolved to be very well adapted to being omnivorous... and there are very highly valuable amino acids within vegetation.

For Aly? If she looks good and is performant... oh, and enjoys her meals, I feel we're on the right track.


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## einspänner (Sep 8, 2012)

I also feed raw, but I'll use kibble or other commercial foods if I'm backpacking or on long road trips and the calories/kg can vary greatly across products depending on the moisture content and ingredients. I'm not surprised that a young, active male vizsla would need a lot more food, but it would be nice to compare the Autarky to other products on a calorie basis to see if that's the cause of the huge discrepancy–maybe their recommendations are off. Unfortunately I couldn't find that information on their site. 

The other thing that comes to mind is the ingredients and how bioavailable those are to your dog. If you're feeding a large volume and he produces a large volume on the other end then a lot of that nutrition is literally going to waste. And Autarky has potatoes and legumes in it; grain-free foods that utilize those alternative fillers are correlated with heart problems (dilated cardiomyopathy). Until that correlation is better understood, I personally would not choose to feed them in any large quantities. Something to discuss with your vet.


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## Bud D (10 mo ago)

We keep food in his dish at all times. We use dry Wellness brand. So he can eat as much as he wants whenever he wants. our vet said this was ideal. He is now 6 months old and weighs 40 lbs.


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## Vizslaowner123 (Mar 21, 2021)

Hi all,

Thank you for each of your helpful insights and thought provoking comments.

You have helped me to make the jump towards a highly rated kibble that includes aspects of the points made above, rather than relying on the same old food day in and day out. Furthermore, there is a great variety of protein sources available so I can easily vary things up!

This is a step forward, and the next step might be a raw diet. But I'd just like to thank you all for helping to change my view of Al's diet, I'd be so fed up if I was eating what he was everyday!


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## PhilipL (Sep 28, 2018)

Vizslaowner123 said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Thank you for each of your helpful insights and thought provoking comments.
> 
> ...


I have a nearly four years old male Vizsla, called 'big' Rafa he is called that because he is at the high end of the Vizsla range of size at around 30kg or nearly 70 pounds in weight.

Over the years on the forum I have seen several posts enquiring about the amounts of food to give and the majority have all suggested the 'recommended' amounts on the packaging do not cater for the amount of energy Vizslas burn off and they need many more calories than other less energetic breeds and mostly never overeat.

European Vizslas on the whole appear to have higher body weights than US, with some exceptions too.

Rafa has always been given the best quality kibble I can find and it is now mixed with a meat supplement, the amount of food he gets per day is currently 400g of meat mixed with 150g of kibble, twice a day so 550g+550g = 1,100g per day and he is still ribby. He sometimes leaves a little and sometimes not.

I wouldn't worry about over feeding as they will leave what they don't want. I have dropped in some images so you can see and guage what his ribs/build look like. Hope this helps.


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## BellaVT (12 mo ago)

While there are some (small) differences in caloric efficiency for different foods, as others have pointed out the bigger issue is that the general recommendations can't account for the different levels of physical activity of different dogs. One common way of computing food needs for a dog is based on "Resting Energy Requirement", which is the amount of food a dog of a given weight would need if it was just resting. Here's a page that describes the idea more fully: Dog and Cat Calorie Calculator | OSU Veterinary Medical Center

You use a formula to calculate a single number based on the weight and condition of the dog, and then multiply it by some factor to account for the dog's activity level. The problem is that the "factor" you multiply by varies tremendously with how active the dog is. In the link I gave above, the suggested multiplier varies from 1.0x for a weight loss diet, to 5.0x for the top end of a "Working Dog". So while you can calculate the RER as exactly as you want, the choice of multiplier is going to dominate the answer that you get.

In the same way you wouldn't expect a marathon runner to eat the same as an office worker who weighs the same (well, at least you wouldn't expect them to weigh the same for long if they did) you shouldn't expect an active young Vizsla to eat the same amount as an aging Beagle on a couch. The recommendation on the dog food bag is based on on some "typical" dog. Young Vizsla's are not typical, and if being exercised appropriately, they are more on the marathon runner side of things.

Depending on how active your dog is, feeding twice the amount recommended on the package seems perfectly reasonable. For reference, we also have a intact young female Vizsla who I'd guess is probably getting more daily running than most. She's 13 months old, and weighs about 20 kg. We are currently feeding her a blend of different dry kibbles, but I think they are averaging about 400 kCal per cup. Depending on how active she's been, we feed her about 4.5-6 cups per day. If I'm calculating correctly, I think this is 500-700 grams per day.

Multiplied out, this is about 1800-2400 kCal per day. If I plug her info in to an RER Calculator, I get 690 kCal/day as a baseline. This means we are at about a 3-3.5x multiplier, which seems to be in the right ballpark. More importantly, she's about the weight and condition we want her to be, and if anything a bit light. Which is to say that depending on how active your dog is, and depending on what the caloric density of the food you've chosen is, 600g per day seems like a perfectly reasonable amount to be feeding. But you are probably best ignoring the calculations and the recommended amounts, and instead doing as you've been doing and gauging by how the dog looks.

As to whether you should be feeding a different diet than kibble, that's a much bigger question that I'll leave to others!


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## InTheNet (Jun 1, 2016)

All three of ours have eaten double the recommendations. They have not/do not have an ounce of fat on them.

Our current 2 get a LOT of exercise so they burn the calories.

Watch his weight and adjust as necessary.


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