If your pup is too skinny, you have to find out the best way to fatten them. The key to feed your pup si to give them a small portion of food but frequently in a day, give them supplement to fight the lack of nutrition and make sure to get rid of stomach worms. But if the cause isn’t lack of food and medical ones, such as no appetite, diarrhea or they look very unhealthy, bring your pup to the vet immediately. No matter the reason keeping your pup in the ideal weight is very important, to make sure that they will grow into a fine adult dog. Read more about information fostering a puppy without its mother
Here 3 tips to help a malnourished puppy to gain weight
1. Find out why your pup is malnourished
- If you know the reason why a dog can be malnourished like a female dog who just gave birth or raised a pup who is very greedy and eats a lot or a pup who just got rescued after being abandoned, then the solutions can be easy. Read also 6 Easiest ways of caring puppy at home for beginners
Make sure to keep watch on the malnourished dog so you can pinpoint exactly what is the problem. For example, if you have more than 1 dog, the problem is could be because the other dogs is stealing the malnourished pup’s food.
- Check the pup’s health thoroughly. Every kind of diseases can disrupt their ability to digest food and absorbing nutrition and result in losing weight. If that is the case, your pup must have shown signs of losing appetite, increasing thirst, lack of energy, puking, diarrhea and body shape changes.
- Health problems may result is losing weight some of them are lack of enzyme pancreatic, diabetes, lives disease, kidney problems, cancer and colon disease.
- If you notice a few sign of your pup having one of those disease bring them to a vet immediately.
- Go to the vet. If you think your pup is sick or you noticed them losing weight without any obvious reasons, the best solution is to bring them to a vet. If your pup suddenly lost their appetite with any reason, bringing them to the vet is also a good solution before things get worse. If the vet said that there is nothing wrong with your pup and they are just rebelling, there are strategies to solve this problem.
2. Portion the calorie intake for your puppy
- Compare the weight of your pup to the average weight of other pup with the same breed. You may already know that your pup is underweight, but in reality that may not be the case. Your pup may be only slightly underweight or even normal weight compared to other overweight pups of the same breed. Maybe your pup is fine and other pup are overweight!
- Compare the information on the dog food packaging to the ideal weight of you pup. For a skinny pup but very energetic and a solid feces. The first step is to check if they get enough calorie in each meal. The pup maybe losing weight because they use more energy than what they eat. So the cause of this is clear, not enough food. In this case, you need to increase the portion of each meal.
- The simplest way to do this id to compare the ideal weight of you pup to the ideal portion that is recommended on the food packaging.
- If your dog is of certain breed, there are lots of information on the internet about the ideal weight of any type of breed. Look for the information regarding the weight of the pup that you own. For example, if you own a male Labrador, they usually weight around 40 kg.
- Compare the amount of food that you give to the amount of food that is recommended. The amount of food that you give to your pup everyday should be matched with the weight of your pup. Make a note about the weight of the food and compare it with the recommended weight on the packaging.
- Bear in mind that the recommended amount written on the packaging is usually 25% more than what your dog needs.
- If you give a Labrador 400 g of food every day and the recommended amount on the packaging is 500g every day, than your dog will get 20% less of calorie. This can be easily taken care of by increasing the amount of food on each day.
- Determine how much you can increase the portion of the food. This may be difficult to determine because each food contains different amount of calorie and dog’s size is also varied. The main rule is to increase the portion by not more than 10%
- If you give your dog 400g of food each day, 10% increase is 40g and you can divide this in half 20g in the morning and the rest in the evening.
- Give your dog the same amount of food for 2 – 3 days and make sure that your dog doesn’t have diarrhea and increase it by another 10% and so on.
- Increase the portion of their food periodically. Increasing the portion of your pup’s food in one go may cause disturbance in their diet. It is much safe to increase it periodically.
3. Change your dog’s diet
- Give your dog food that contains vitamin B. Liver contains the most vitamin B12 compared to other kind of food. You may give your dog beef or chicken’s liver 2 or 3 times in a week as a treat or in-between meals.
- For example, you need to give them 50 to 70 g of cooked liver to a dog that weighs 10 kg
- Egg is also rich of B12. Besides that, egg also contains vitamin A, B12, iron, selenium, and fatty acid. Give them raw eggs and put 1 piece of egg 3 times a week into their meals.
- Remember to add these food periodically, so their digestive system won’t get disturbed.
- Give them a high energy food once in a while. High energy dog food contains a high amount of calorie and can be easily digested. This kind of food can prevent your dog from being underweight, and can make them gain weight instead.
- Replace dry food with wet food or vice versa. If you eat the same kind of food every day you will get bored right? It’s the same with your pup. They can get bored eating the same kind of food for too long. Replacing wet food with dry food or vice versa can give them their appetite back.
- Give them homemade food with the vet’s permission. Giving your pup a homemade food can add variety of food that they eat, and make them love eating more.
So here are 3 tips to help a malnourished puppy to gain weight, and i mean it when i see easy, remember that other dog owners will be gladly help you anytime. You might also interested in Tips To Take Care Of A Puppy When You’re Out To Work