How much food should I feed my dog?

Dog food calculator by breed and weight: how it works

Two published equations, in order. First the resting energy requirement: 70 multiplied by bodyweight in kilograms raised to the power of three quarters. That is what a dog burns doing nothing. Then a life-stage factor turns resting into maintenance, which is what it actually needs to eat.

Worked through for a 40 lb neutered adult: 40 lb is 18.1 kg, so resting is 70 × 18.1^0.75 = 615 calories. Multiply by 1.6 for a neutered adult and the daily requirement is 985 calories. On a food giving 400 calories a cup that is two and a half cups a day, split across two meals.

Breed only enters through weight. Two dogs of the same adult weight burn the same energy whatever their breed, which is why picking a breed here just pre-fills the middle of its published range and leaves the field editable. The dog on your scale beats the breed average every time.

Dog feeding chart by weight and age

Daily calories for a healthy adult at three life stages. Divide by your food’s calories per cup to get portions. Puppies are not in this table because they need two to three times the adult figure and change month to month.

Why the bag’s feeding chart says something different

Bag charts are written for the average dog of a given weight, and they lean generous. They cannot know whether your dog is neutered, how much it moves, or whether it is already carrying extra weight, so they publish one number per weight band and let the owner adjust. That is the gap this calculator closes: same food, same dog, but the life-stage factor applied explicitly.

Where the two disagree, treat the smaller figure as the starting point and watch the dog over two to three weeks. Weight is the feedback signal, not the chart.

Feeding puppies

A puppy under four months needs three times its resting requirement, dropping to twice from four months until it finishes growing. Because the resting figure is calculated from today’s weight, the amount has to be recalculated as the puppy grows, roughly every two weeks while it is gaining fast.

Meal frequency matters as much as the total. Under four months, split the day into three or four meals; a puppy stomach cannot hold a day’s energy in two sittings. From four to twelve months, two or three meals work. The weight calculator will tell you what adult size you are feeding towards.

Adjusting for body condition

The formula assumes a dog at a healthy weight. If yours is not, the calculation should be run against the target weight rather than the current one, and the pace of that change is a veterinary decision rather than an arithmetic one. Crash-cutting calories is how dogs get hurt.

The practical home check is ribs you can feel without pressing and a waist visible from above. If either is missing, or the number this page gives is far from what your dog currently eats, that is a conversation to have with your veterinarian.

Method and sources

Every figure on this page comes from these two references. Nothing here is our own estimate.

• Ohio State University Veterinary Medical Center, Companion Animal Nutrition Support Service Resting energy requirement formula and the life-stage factor table.
• WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee, Calorie Needs for Healthy Adult Dogs One-page starting-point chart for a healthy adult dog, updated July 2020.

Where a source publishes a band rather than a single factor we use its lower end and label it, since overfeeding is the more common mistake. How we write and correct these pages.

Common questions

How much food should my dog eat?

Work out the calories first, then convert to cups. A neutered adult dog needs its resting requirement times 1.6, and resting is 70 times bodyweight in kilograms to the power of three quarters. A 40 lb neutered adult lands near 990 calories a day, which is two and a half cups of a 400-calorie food. Puppies need two to three times that per pound.

How many cups of food should I feed my dog?

Divide the daily calorie figure by the calories per cup printed on your bag. That second number is the one people skip, and it is the one that matters: foods run from about 300 to 450 calories a cup, so two bags with identical feeding charts can differ by a third of a cup a day for the same dog.

How much should a dog eat a day?

For a healthy adult, somewhere between its resting requirement times 1.2 and times 1.8, depending on whether it is neutered, intact or inactive. In calories that is roughly 400 a day for a 10 lb dog, 990 for a 40 lb dog and 1,600 for an 80 lb dog. Split the total across two meals rather than leaving food down all day.

How many cups in a pound of dog food?

It depends on the kibble density, so weigh it rather than assume. A standard measuring cup of dry dog food usually weighs between a fifth and a third of a pound, which puts a pound at roughly three to five cups. Weighing one cup on a kitchen scale once gives you an exact figure for your bag.

How many cups in a 30lb bag of dog food?

Multiply 30 by the cups per pound you measured. At a quarter of a pound per cup that is about 120 cups; at a third of a pound per cup it is closer to 90. For a 40 lb dog eating two and a half cups a day, that bag lasts between five and seven weeks.

How many times a day should a dog eat?

Adult dogs eat twice a day. Puppies under four months need three to four meals because they cannot hold enough at once to meet their energy needs, dropping to two or three between four and twelve months. Keeping the daily total the same and splitting it differently is what changes, not the amount.

How much does it cost to feed a dog per month?

Take your cups per day, multiply by 30.4 for a month, convert to pounds using your measured cup weight, then divide by bag weight and multiply by bag price. The optional fields above do that arithmetic. We do not publish a national average here because food prices vary more by brand than by dog.