Pet food formulator Steve Brown provides pet owners with this easy method to know exactly how much pet food to provide to meet minimum protein requirements.
What if you are not/cannot feed the recommended amount to meet minimum protein requirements?
In many instances, a pet would gain weight if you fed the recommended amount of pet food needed to meet the minimum protein requirements. If you are feeding less food (less kcals than the result above), Steve Brown offers us these suggestions to meet the minimum protein requirements:
- Switch to a pet food with a higher protein percentage. Such as – using a dry food as the example – if your current pet food is 25% Protein (listed in the Guaranteed Analysis) – switch to a pet food that is 30% Protein.
- Or, increase the protein your pet is receiving each day by adding fresh meat to your pet’s diet. For every gram of protein needed, you can add 5 grams of raw lean beef or raw chicken (roughly a heaping teaspoon) – or 4 grams of cooked beef or chicken to your pet’s daily diet (roughly a heaping teaspoon).
To calculate how many grams of meat to add to your pet’s diet daily:
Grams of protein needed per day (from the chart above) divided by the number of kcals needed of this pet food (the end result from above), times the amount of kcals you are currently feeding = the grams of protein you are currently feeding.
Such as, if you are currently feeding 30 grams of protein and your dog needs 35 grams – add roughly five heaping teaspoons of raw or cooked lean meat daily to their food (one heaping teaspoon per gram deficient).
Sandy M
January 31, 2024 at 2:06 pm
This is great! Thank you for sharing this process.
Verena
February 1, 2024 at 1:11 am
I would appreciate if the measurements could be in KG and Gramms for people from other countries. Thank you for your precious word
Monika
February 2, 2024 at 8:44 am
Thank you for sharing this!! To increase the protein, Can cooked/steamed chicken be substituted for raw? If yes then how many grams and what type of chicken meat- breast or thighs?
Susan Thixton
February 2, 2024 at 10:46 am
Yes – Steve stated to us raw or cooked can be added. Same measurements for both.
Kim Thomas
February 2, 2024 at 10:16 am
How do I calculate the protein requirement for my 16-17lb dog since only 15 and 20 lbs are in the list & calculator? As I understand the protein requirements are not linear so I can’t just take the halfway point between the 15lb number and 20lb number.
Susan Thixton
February 2, 2024 at 10:45 am
You’ll need to estimate between 15 and 20 lbs. We can’t build a program for all weights – did the best we could. Remember this is just a minimum protein calculator – the minimum amount needed. So you could calculate for 20 lbs and know you are slightly above minimum.
Elsa Dueno
February 4, 2024 at 9:20 pm
I feed a home-made diet…I have a 20lb and a 28lb (30lb)dog. I feed 6oz of protein (cooked meat) to the 20lb dog and 8oz to the 28lb dog. I looked up the conversion rate for grams and it said 26 grams is 0.917123. This is confusing to me as my scale shows 3.0 oz? So what exactly is .917123? Thank you
Piangduen Suwanawongse
April 21, 2024 at 4:57 pm
Is there a calculation for feeding puppies?