[Bob Pr.]

Shannon -- how old is your Lab, what's his weight, how many cups/day are you feeding, and how many kcals/cup in the food you're using.

 

[Bob Pr.]

Pitch is 2yrs of Age
Weighs about 94-97 lbs
Feed him 4 cups of food a day, 2 cups in the morning, 2 cups dinner
Per cup of food 522 kcal per cup of food, so 2088 kcal.

Thanks!!

Gosh, that sounds like a LOT of kcalories for that size Lab. We feed Costco's Kirkland (similar to Diamond Naturals, made by the same company). The info on their bags for recommended daily feeding is a LITTLE bit higher than most dogs need BUT not AS unreasonable as that on many other brands.

For dogs in the 80-100 lbs. range, they recommend 3.5 - 4 cups of food daily. Kcals/cup are 393/cup so that amounts to a range of 1366.5 to 1572 kcals/day. Since your Lab is midway in that weight range, let's say 3/4 of the way between 80 and 100 lbs., that would be about 153 kcals more than the 1366.5 kcals at 80 lbs. Adding them together = about 1520 kcals/day -- but you're feeding almost 500 kcals/day MORE than my bag recommends.

Maybe you have one of the rare self-regulating Labs and he's trying to tell you -- "don't give me so much!"

As I said, IMO my food mf'r is a little too generous, especially when compared to recommendations in sources such as the nutrition chapters in the UC-Davis Book of Dogs .

My Puff, 63 lbs, is a fairly active Lab (60 min. offleash walk every morning in a nature preserve with 30-40 retrieves, some VERY long) plus 2 other brief exercise periods a day and, in summer, some swimming retrieves. My bag says 2 3/4 cups for a dog of her weight; Puff does quite well on 2 1/4 cups/day.

Of course, a great deal of food requirements depends on that individual dog's particular metabolism as well as their energy demands from exercise, cold temps, etc.

A recent GREAT very pertinent longterm study by the food scientists at Nestle-Purina used Labs as subjects divided into 2 groups.

They fed one member of a matched pair however much it wanted to eat for 15 minutes and the other member 75% of that amount. All the Labs in the 75% group lived significantly longer and had significantly fewer health problems. So, if you must err, underfeeding is best for the health and longevity of your Lab.

I'm going to ETA this post later when I can find a link to something relevant to this that I recently posted along these same lines that may be worthwhile for you to consider.

Be right back.

ETA: http://forum.justlabradors.com/showthread.php?t=1566

Much of it may be relevant but scroll down to the bottom for the Suggestions.