How much should a golden retriever eat

The Golden Retriever is one of the most popular pet dogs. It is easy to breed, patient and requires little from its owner. It is a well-proportioned, powerful, and lively breed. The Golden Retriever was originally a retriever, mostly used as a guide dog or a pet dog. Golden Retriever is very friendly to little kids or babies. Given how friendly this breed is, it would make a great emotional support dog to an owner! The Golden Retriever is the fourth most intelligent dog in the world.

It is always a slippery but important question for Golden Retriever’s well-being and health how to feed your Golden Retriever. Normally, the nutritional needs of a Golden Retriever puppy and an older dog is not same. A science Golden Retriever feeding plan is needed according to your Golden Retriever’s age, activity level, weight, and overall health. In this blog, everything about how to feed a Golden Retriever will be introduced including how much to feed, How often to feed, how to control overfeed, what to feed and what not to feed to help you make a right feeding plan.

Firstly, Know How Much and How Often to Feed Golden Retriever

To encourage proper growth and development without making your pup obese, you will have to know how much to feed a Golden retriever.

Golden retriever’s food intake is relatively larger than that of ordinary dogs. It is recommended to purchase professional dog food directly. Compared with homemade food, dog food is more balanced in nutrition and easy to feed, just follow the recommended amount of food and feeding methods. Feed the dog according to size, and buy dog food suitable for Golden Retriever size, such as puppy food when they are young and adult food when they grow up.

It’s difficult to say exactly how much and how often you should feed to your Golden Retriever at different ages.

Here are some general feeding guidelines:

For Golden Retriever puppies:

• Two Months Old: 1 ½ cups a day, 4 times per day
• Three Months Old: 2 cups a day, 3 times per day
• Four Months Old: 2 ½ cups a day, 3 times per day
• Five To Six Months Old: 3 cups a day, 2 times per day
• Six To Seven Months Old (male pups only): 3 ½ to 4 cups a day (females should stay on 3 cups/day)

For Adult Golden Retriever:

• Females: 2 to 2 ½ cups a day, 1 time per day
• Males: 3 to 3 ½ cups a day, 1 time per day
• Active Males: 4 cups a day, 1 or 2 times per day
• Nursing Females: 5 to 6 cups a day, 1 or 2 times per day

Please note that these guidelines work only for high-quality dog foods that contain balanced nutrients. If you are unsure about how much and how often to feed your Golden Retriever, please talk with your veterinarian. I believe that he will be pleased to tell you exactly the right type of feeding schedule for your Golden Retriever.

How Often To Feed A Golden Retriever?

Puppies: Pet experts advise dog owners to adopt the concept of timing and ration. They believe that dogs up to six months old go through phases similar to human infancy and adolescence, being born with poor digestive function and four months of rapid growth with high nutritional and caloric requirements. Trainers and experts agree that Golden Retrievers should be fed three meals a day. In general, dogs start losing their teeth around 3 to 6 months of age. First, the dog’s baby teeth slowly fall out, followed by new permanent teeth. The whole process lasts until the dog is eight to ten months old, and that’s when it’s all over. During the transition, your dog’s teeth will be itchy and he likes to chew on things all the time. Choose a bone or a molar snack to grind your dog’s teeth

Adult dogs: As for adult dogs, pet experts believe that if you do not eat when it is time to eat, stomach acid will still secrete, which in the long run can lead to gastrointestinal diseases such as ulcers. Therefore, it is recommended to eat two meals a day, and it should be regularly fixed. But dog trainers believe that one meal a day is enough. They believe that dogs and humans are fundamentally different. Wild dogs can eat only once every three days or once a week and still remain energetic.

In general: three months ago Golden Retriever, fed four times a day; Three to six months of puppies fed 3 times a day, six months after feeding 2 times a day, adult Golden Retrievers fed 1-2 times a day.

Avoid Overfeeding a Golden Retriever

For those who have Golden Retrievers at home, how to avoid overfeeding a Golden Retriever is an important issue. You have probably noticed that no matter how much food you put, your Golden Retriever wants to eat more and acts like he is on the brink of starvation! Because dogs are usually greedy, they often don’t know when they’re full. Especially for delicious food, it will never eat enough. However, eating too much can have a bad effect on your dog’s health. A lactating Golden Retriever mother should not control how much she eats. Because breastfeeding mothers need to eat a lot, in order to ensure adequate milk. When a golden dog mother has indigestion, we can give him some medicine such as lactase to help digestion, but do not give him less food.

It is recommended to purchase professional dog food directly. Compared with homemade food, dog food is more balanced in nutrition. Before choosing a dog food, make sure that the product is “complete and balanced.” This means that the dog food has passed tests to ensure that it provides all of the necessary nutrition that your Golden Retriever needs to be healthy. The Golden Retriever puppy within 3 months, should feed the puppy dog food. If you don’t want to feed dog food, you can also add an appropriate amount of chopped fish, meat and chopped cooked vegetables to the porridge. If you want to reduce feed cost and do not affect the nutrition of puppy, also can boil the viscera such as pig, cow lung and so on after minced, with green vegetables, corn noodles and other cooked food mixed to feed the dog.

Here are Some Food Choices For Your Dog For Different Nutritional Requirements.

1. Meat:

Meat is composed of animal muscles, intermuscular fat, muscle sheath, tendons and blood vessels, etc. It is a good source of iron and some B vitamins, especially niacin, Vitamin B1, vitamin B2 and Vitamin B12. Feeding this kind of food to Golden Retrievers has advantages of  good palatability, high digestibility and quick utilization.

2. Fish:
Fish are generally divided into fatty fish and protein fish. Protein fish include cod, plaice, plaice and halibut, fatty fish include herring, mackerel, sardines, small eel, goldfish, eels, etc., fish palatability is not as good as meat, generally dogs do not like to eat fish. When eating fish must be careful.

3. Dairy:
Dairy products are also important to Golden Retriever. They include cream, skimmed milk, whey, yogurt, cheese, and butter. Milk contains most of the nutrients Golden Retrievers need, but iron and vitamin D are deficient.  Dairy products are good at palatability, and generally all dogs, regardless of breed, prefer to drink milk.

4. Eggs:
eggs are A good source of protein, iron, vitamin B2, vitamin B12, folic acid, vitamin A, vitamin D, but lack of niacin, so eggs can not be staple food, only as A beneficial supplement in Golden Retriever dog food.

Wet Food or Dry Food?

As versatile dogs and one of the smartest dog breeds, Golden Retrievers are ideally suited as working, companion and family dogs, as well as being deployed as retrieval, guide, tracking or rescue dogs. So their area of deployment decides the dietary requirements. Every individual dog has different characteristics and therefore individual nutritional requirements, which differ based on size, weight and activity level. In addition, frequently occurring ailments affecting Golden Retrievers like allergies, excess weight and joint problems should be taken into consideration. It’s a matter of the dog’s and owner’s taste whether to opt for a suitable wet or dry food or to combine both types.

Advantages of wet food

• The dog consumes fluids with the food, since wet food is made up of around 70% fluid content
• Wet food is mostly tastier than dry food
• The quantity of food is greater due to the moisture content
• Wet food is lower in calories than dry food, which can be an advantage particularly with dogs that have a tendency to gain weight
• It has a long shelf life and can be heated to prevent the use of preservatives

Advantages of dry food

• Dry food is mostly cheaper than wet food
• Easy to split into portions and store, suitable for holidays and being out-and-about too
• Good energy provision for active dogs
• Large biscuits prevent food being bolted
• Lower quantities of packaging than with wet food

In a word, the dry food has a stable nutritional content, and Golden Retrievers can remove dental stones while chewing. But if the dog has problems with urinary stones, avoid eating a dry diet unless prescribed for stones. High-priced cans made of better materials; In low-priced cans, most of them are unshredded viscera. The advantage is that vitamins are not easily lost, while the disadvantage is that meat is abundant, the odor in defecation is strong, and tooth stones are easy to grow. Dry food is not as tasty as canned food, but it is easier to digest and the bowel movement is not as smelly.

What food Golden Retriever should not eat? 

You will need to avoid feeding your Golden Retriever certain human foods that may make them ill or even kill them. These foods include:[7]

1. Golden Retrievers cannot eat bones, especially sharp ones like chicken bones and duck bones.
2. Golden Retrievers cannot eat the liver for A long time, because the long-term consumption of liver may cause vitamin A overdose or even poisoning.
3. Golden Retrievers cannot eat onion. Some dogs eat this kind of food can cause cell hemolysis, appear the phenomenon of urine blood.
4. Golden Retrievers can’t eat chocolate. Chocolate contains a lot of sugar,  is harmful to the health of the dog.
5. Golden Retrievers can’t eat seafood and other food that easy to cause allergic reactions.
6. Golden Retrievers should not eat foods high in sugar, fat and salt. High sugar and fat food can make dogs fat and cause a series of diseases. Excessive salt is bound to increase the burden of renal excretion, affect kidney health, break the balance of body fluids, causing a variety of skin diseases.

Conclusion

As many owners of Golden Retrievers will discover, most dogs will gulp down their food at one sitting, barely swallowing it, like a vacuum cleaner. As a result, they tend to eat more, and many Golden Retrievers are corpulent. So we must learn some basic feeding knowledge to better raise your Golden Retriever.

About the author:

Lisa Smith createddoghabitat.org because of her interest in all the different breeds, and her desire to learn more. Her inspiration comes from the many dogs she has owned throughout her life.

Is 2 cups of food enough for a golden retriever?

How often should a golden retriever eat?

How much food should a golden retriever puppy eat a day?

Should golden retrievers eat once or twice a day?