Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Dogs

How often should you feed a puppy?

PawTracks
By

Congratulations on your new puppy! With a healthy start and proper nutrition, your four-legged fur baby will grow into the happy and strong life companion you’ve always wanted. Good eating habits depend on your dog’s age and change as your puppy grows. This guideline helps you establish a puppy feeding schedule to make sure your pooch gets the nutrition they need from day one.

puppy food
Natali Zakharova/Shutterstock

First six to eight weeks

The first six to eight weeks of your puppy’s life are crucial to ensure they get the antibodies that protect them from unwanted diseases. During this time period, the best source of nutrition for your baby puppy is their mother’s milk. Just like human babies, puppies should be allowed to nurse on demand to keep them strong.

Related Videos

If your puppy’s mother suffers from eclampsia or mastitis, they may not be able to breastfeed their puppies. In this type of situation, you need to provide your puppy formula in a bottle. These milk replacers contain all the nutrition your puppy needs and are available at all major pet stores. 

From eight weeks to six months

After the first few weeks of life, your pup is ready to wean to solid food. This is a gradual process that takes two to three weeks to complete. Talk to your vet and select a high-calorie puppy food that meets their dietary needs. 

Woman buying dog food
VLG/Getty Images

Once you’re ready to start weaning, introduce the puppy food by mixing it with formula. Blend your dog’s new food with the milk replacer and offer the gruel three to four times a day. If your puppy takes it well, you can slowly reduce the amount of milk until you eliminate it altogether.

This gentle process ensures that your puppy doesn’t suffer from an upset stomach and adapts to solid food. It also starts to get your pooch on a regular feeding schedule, which is important for housetraining and their development.

Keeping in mind that every puppy has a different metabolism and energy levels, these are the basic feeding guidelines for puppies under six months old:

  • Toy breeds usually eat four to six meals per day.
  • Medium-sized puppies need three meals every day.
  • Large breed puppies require three to four meals per day.

From six to 12 months

By the time your puppy hits six months of age, they’re more mature and grow less rapidly. This means that their bodies need less frequent feedings and can graduate to two meals per day. Keeping similar portions to what your puppy was eating before, simply eliminate other meals and limit them to one morning and one evening feeding. Doing so helps prevent excessive weight gain and other health concerns. 

After your puppy is one year old

Around their first birthday, many puppies are considered adult dogs. Of course, they’ll always be your baby but their nutritional needs change at this point and it may be time to switch them to adult food. Consult with your dog’s vet to make sure they’ve reached maturity, because larger breeds may take up to two years to fully develop into adult dogs. In general, these are the maturity patterns of different breeds:

  • Small breeds up to 30 pounds mature between 10 and 12 months of age.
  • Medium breeds up to 80 pounds reach maturity between 12 and 16 months.
  • Large breeds that weigh over 80 pounds may not reach maturity until they’re two years old.

Once your vet determines that your pooch has reached maturity, switching to adult food should also be a gradual process. Start by adding small amounts of adult food to their puppy food, and gradually increase the proportion of adult food until you’ve made a full transition. This process should take one to two weeks to avoid upset tummies.

Other things to consider

dog eating out of dog food bowl
Kabo/Unsplash

Foods to avoid: Paying close attention to the ingredients in your dog’s food helps avoid corn or meat by-products. For best results, look for brands with meat as their first ingredient.

How not to overfeed: Free feeding your dog often leads to weight problems and health complications. If your vet determines that your dog is overweight, limit your dog’s intake and adjust their diet as recommended by the doctor. Sticking to a schedule helps avoid overfeeding and keeps your dog regular.

Considering fresh food: Many dog parents prefer fresh dog food over kibble or processed wet food. Whether you make natural dog food at home or buy it from a store, remember that puppies have different nutritional needs so make sure you’re feeding your pup the right food for their age.  

Learning how much to feed a puppy is a matter of experience and your dog’s individual needs. By providing your pup with an age-appropriate diet and a feeding schedule, you can keep them healthy and strong. Good eating habits are key to preventing future health complications so you and your furry friend can enjoy each other’s company and a lifetime of love.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Mental health service dogs 101: What you need to know about alert dogs, emotional support animals, and others
Find out about the different types of mental health service dogs
A therapy dog wearing their harness sits and looks to the side

For many pet owners and animal lovers, simply having a four-legged friend around can make the worst days a little better. They can single-handedly coax you out of bed in the morning, and they're the perfect outlet to talk or cry to when things are too much to take on alone. That's the power of unconditional love!
Of course, animals like dogs can do so much more for their owners' mental health. That's why some pups make the perfect candidates as mental health services dogs, such as emotional support animals (ESAs), psychiatric service dogs (PSDs), or even therapy dogs. Before you get lost in all the fancy terms, though, let's run through what these service animals do, and how they differ from one another. The details might surprise you!
Here's everything you need to know about the different kinds of service dogs for mental health.

Emotional support animals aren't trained for specific tasks, but they provide lots of love and comfort
Despite being wonderfully helpful to those who need them, emotional support animals can also be controversial because of the lack of regulation in the industry. There are countless online organizations that claim to offer ESA certification (for a large amount of money, too), but the only true way to have your pet licensed is to get a "prescription" from your psychologist or psychiatrist.

Read more
5 most common Bernese mountain dog health issues and what to do about them
What you should know about health issues before bringing home a Bernese mountain dog
Man holds his Bernese mountain dog outside

Choosing the perfect breed of dog for your family is nearly as hard as choosing to get a pet in the first place. When weighing the options, the health of the animal and its pedigree should enter into your decision. You want your new furry friend to stick around for a good long time!
While one of the most lovable breeds out there, Bernese mountain dogs also have one of the shortest life spans of only about 8 to 10 years. These gentle giants come with a few issues that can be managed with proper care and a little bit of genetic testing. Here are five of the most common Bernese mountain dog health issues.

Hip and elbow dysplasia
These dreaded conditions are particularly prevalent in large breeds like Berners and can contribute to stark reductions in the quality of life for pups. The good news is that there are a number of breeding programs that attempt to correct for both with careful study to pick the perfect pups for continuing the line.

Read more
Should you get a health and dog DNA kit? Here’s what you need to know about this new trend
Get some insight into your pet with a dog DNA kit
Corgi walks next to the water outside

Dog breed reveal parties might be the new trend, but is a dog DNA kit worth it? After all, how much information do you really get from one of these? And which tests work the best for the price? It's good to ask a few of these questions and do some research before buying one — they aren't cheap and you want to make sure you get the correct breed and health data so you can make informed decisions about your pet. This is what you should know before buying one for your pup.

What do DNA and dog health testing kits tell you (and what don't they)?
Dog DNA kits work similarly to human ones. The companies have the genetic makeup of many different breeds in their database that they then can match to your beastie. That means a number of official pups with papers got to give their DNA to help you connect your animal to them.

Read more