How Many Grams of Food Should a Dog Eat Per Day? (India Feeding Chart in Grams)

If you have ever stood over your dog’s bowl at 7 in the morning wondering whether that Bowl is too much or too little, you are asking the right question. And you are asking it because almost nobody answers it properly.

Most feeding advice in India gives you cups, katoris, “one bowl twice a day”, or a vague percentage. None of those are measurements. A “cup” of small-breed kibble and a “cup” of large-breed kibble can differ by 40 grams. Meanwhile, your dog’s body is quietly keeping score.

Here is the short answer, and then the honest, detailed one.

Quick answer: A healthy adult dog on dry food in India usually eats somewhere between 12 and 25 grams per kilogram of ideal body weight per day, and that number goes down as the dog gets older. Toy breeds sit at the top of that range, giant breeds at the bottom. A 5 kg Shih Tzu lands near 110 g. A 20 kg Indie lands near 315 g. A 35 kg German Shepherd lands near 475 g. But grams are meaningless until you know two things: your dog’s ideal weight, and your food’s kcal per kg. This guide gives you both, plus the charts.

The Quick Chart: Grams Per Day by Your Dog’s Weight

This chart is built the way a vet builds it: calories first, grams second.

The calorie column assumes a neutered adult dog, moderately active, already at a healthy body condition. The gram columns show what those calories look like on two real, easily available Indian foods so you can see how much the food itself changes the answer.

How to adjust this chart for your dog:

• Sterilised, apartment dog, two short walks a day: subtract 15% to 20%
• Senior, arthritic, or clearly low energy: subtract 20% to 25%
• Intact, or a dog that actually runs and plays hard for an hour or more daily: add 15% to 25%
• Working dog, sport dog, or a dog living outdoors in a cold region: add 25% to 50%

Why the “2% to 3% of Body Weight” Rule Is Wrong for Kibble

Search “how much should I feed my dog,” and you will hit this rule within seconds. Feed 2% to 3% of body weight. It is everywhere: blogs, Instagram reels, WhatsApp groups, pet store staff. The rule is not made up. It is just being used on the wrong food.

Where the rule actually comes from

The 2% to 3% guideline was written for raw and fresh food, which is roughly 65% to 75% water. A kilogram of raw chicken and vegetables carries somewhere around 1,200 to 1,600 kcal.

Kibble is about 8% to 10% moisture. A kilogram of dry dog food carries 3,300 to 4,000 kcal. That is close to three times the energy in the same weight.

Applying a raw feeding rule to kibble is like filling your car with the fuel quantity meant for a different fuel entirely. The number looks reasonable. The result is not.

What This Means for Dogs

Look at the 40 kg row. A 3% rule tells you to feed 1.2 kilograms of kibble a day to a Rottweiler. That is more than double what the dog needs. Do that for a year, and you have not fed a dog; you have built one.

The second problem: metabolism is not linear

A dog twice as heavy does not burn twice the calories. Energy needs scale to roughly body weight to the power of 0.75, not to body weight itself. This is standard veterinary nutrition maths, not a fringe opinion.

That is why a flat percentage fails in both directions. It quietly starves toy breeds and steadily overfeeds large ones. A 3 kg Pomeranian fed at 2% is getting less than it needs. A 45 kg Great Dane fed at 3% is being set up for joint disease.

When the rule is fine

If you feed raw, fresh cooked, or gently cooked food, 2% to 3% of body weight is a perfectly sensible starting point. If you feed kibble or a kibble base, throw it out and use calories.

This matters more in India than most places. In a study of 2,332 dogs in India, roughly 18.6% were classified as overweight and another 31.4% as obese. That is close to one in two dogs carrying weight they should not be carrying. Bad portion rules are a big part of the reason.

How to Calculate Your Dog’s Exact Portion in 4 Steps

Four steps, ten minutes, and you never have to guess again.

Step 1: Use ideal weight, not current weight

This is the step that quietly ruins everything else. If your Labrador currently weighs 38 kg but should weigh 30 kg, and you feed for 38 kg, you have just locked in the extra 8 kg permanently.

Feed for the dog you want, not the dog you have.

Finding ideal weight without a vet visit:

Estimating the number. As a rough working rule, a dog that is clearly overweight is usually about 15% above ideal, and an obviously obese dog is about 30% above.If your Lab weighs 38 kg, don’t calculate food for 38 kg. Base it on their estimated ideal weight instead; around 33 kg if they are overweight, or 29 kg if obese. Use this as a starting point and fine-tune it during your Step 4 check-in.

For a puppy, use current weight, since the target is moving. More on that in the life stage section.

Step 2: Find daily calories (RER × activity factor)

Two small calculations.

First, Resting Energy Requirement (RER). This is what your dog burns doing absolutely nothing.

RER = 70 × (ideal weight in kg)^0.75

If the exponent looks intimidating, use this lookup instead:

Second, multiply by an activity factor to get the Maintenance Energy Requirement (MER), which is the number you actually feed to.

Worked example. Simba is a four-year-old neutered Indie in Pune. Ideal weight 20 kg. He gets two 30 minute walks and pretends the rest of the day does not exist.

• RER = 70 × 20^0.75 = 662 kcal
• Activity factor for a neutered pet dog = 1.6
• Daily calories = 662 × 1.6 = 1,059 kcal

Be honest at this step. Almost every Indian city dog owner overestimates activity. Two slow walks around the society compound are not an active dog. If your dog’s day is mostly sleeping, sniffing, and supervising the kitchen, use 1.4, not 1.8.

Step 3: Find your food’s kcal/kg (the step everyone skips)

You now know Simba needs 1,059 kcal. That is not a portion. It becomes a portion only when you divide by your food’s energy density.

Grams per day = (daily calories ÷ food’s kcal per kg) × 1,000

This number goes by Metabolisable Energy (ME) and is printed as kcal/kg on the pack or listed on the product page. It is the single most useful number on any bag of dog food, and it is the one most brands bury or leave out entirely.

Here is what happens to Simba’s 1,059 kcal across real foods:

Same dog. Same day. Same calories. A 95 gram spread in portion size, purely because of what is in the bag.

This is why “my friend feeds 400 g to her Lab so I will too” is such bad advice. Her Lab might be on a different food, a different weight, and a different life.

Bowlers publishes ME on every product page, which makes this step take about ten seconds:

• Nutrimax Adult: 3,380 kcal/kg, 20% protein, 9% fat
• Nutrimax Club Adult: 3,700 kcal/kg, 27% protein, 15% fat, grain free
• Nutrimax Puppy: 3,570 kcal/kg, 24% protein, 12% fat
• Nutrimax Club Puppy: 3,825 kcal/kg, 30% protein, 18% fat, grain free
• Chicken Platter in Gravy, Adult and With Lamb in Gravy, Adult: 83.6 kcal per 100 g
• Chicken and Liver Platter in Gravy, Puppy: 95.5 kcal per 100 g
• Jerky treats: 280 to 350 kcal per 100 g depending on flavour

If your current food does not print kcal/kg anywhere, on the pack or on the website, that is worth noticing. You cannot portion accurately for a food that will not tell you what is in it. You can browse the full Bowlers range and its published nutrition values here.

Step 4: Adjust every 2 weeks using the rib test, not the bowl

The calculation gives you a starting point, not a verdict. Published research puts the real world variation between individual dogs at roughly plus or minus 20% around the calculated number. Two identical looking Labradors of the same weight can genuinely differ by 250 kcal a day.

So you start with the number, then let the dog correct it.

The two week loop:

1. Feed the calculated grams for 14 days. Weigh the food; do not scoop it.
2. On day 14, weigh your dog on the same scale, at the same time of day, ideally before the morning meal.
3. Repeat the rib test and the overhead view.
4. Adjust in 10% steps only. Never make a big jump.

What to do with what you see:

Two warnings on this step.

Do not use the empty bowl as feedback. A licked clean bowl means your dog is a dog. Labradors, Beagles and most Indies will finish any quantity you put down and then look at you like you have personally wronged them. Enthusiasm is not hunger.

Do not weigh weekly and panic. Dogs fluctuate with hydration, coat, and gut contents. Two weeks is the shortest interval that tells you anything real.

Grams Per Day by Age and Life Stage

Puppies (0 to 12 months)

Puppy portions work differently in one important way: you use current weight, and you recalculate every two weeks, because your puppy is a moving target.

Grams per day on Bowlers Nutrimax Puppy at 3,570 kcal/kg. Subtract roughly 7% if you feed Nutrimax Club Puppy at 3,825 kcal/kg.

Meal frequency by age:

• 6 to 12 weeks: 4 meals a day
• 3 to 6 months: 3 meals a day
• 6 to 12 months: 2 to 3 meals a day
• Adult: 2 meals a day

The large breed puppy warning. If you have a Labrador, German Shepherd, Golden Retriever, Rottweiler, Doberman, Great Dane or Saint Bernard puppy, resist the urge to grow them fast. Overfeeding a large breed puppy is linked to hip and elbow dysplasia and other developmental orthopaedic problems. A slightly lean, slower growing large breed puppy has better joints at three years old than a chubby one. If you can see a faint waist, you are doing it right.

Small breed puppies have the opposite risk. A 1.5 kg Pomeranian puppy has almost no energy reserve and can drop into low blood sugar if meals are spaced too far apart. Keep meals frequent and never skip.

Adults (1 to 7 years)

Use the Quick Chart at the top. Two meals a day, twelve hours apart, is the practical default for most Indian households. It fits work schedules, and it reduces the risk of a dog gorging on an empty stomach.

For deep-chested breeds like Great Danes, German Shepherds, Dobermans and Boxers, split into two or three meals and avoid hard exercise for an hour before and after eating.

Seniors (7 years and up, or 5 years for giant breeds)

Metabolism slows, activity drops, and lean muscle starts to go. Most seniors need 15% to 25% fewer calories but the same or slightly more protein, because they lose muscle faster than they lose fat.

Grams per day on a 3,380 kcal/kg food:

Some seniors go the other way and start losing weight involuntarily. If an older dog is dropping weight on a portion that used to work, that is a vet visit, not a feeding adjustment. Kidney disease, dental pain, and thyroid problems all show up this way.

Grams Per Day by Breed: Popular Dogs in India

These are starting points based on typical healthy adult weight ranges for each breed in Indian homes. Your individual dog may sit outside the range, and the ranges are wide on purpose because a 25 kg Lab and a 34 kg Lab are both perfectly normal.

Grams calculated on a 3,380 kcal/kg adult food for a neutered, moderately active dog.

Breed notes that actually change the number

Labradors carry a genetic variant affecting appetite regulation that makes many of them behave as if they are permanently starving. A Lab’s food-seeking behaviour tells you nothing about whether it needs food. Portion by the chart; ignore the eyes.

Indies and Indian Pariah dogs are metabolically efficient. Generations of surviving on very little means many Indies hold weight on portions that would leave a Golden Retriever lean. Start Indies at the lower end of their range and adjust up only if needed.

Pugs, French Bulldogs and Shih Tzus cannot exercise their way out of overfeeding, especially between March and June in most of India. Heat limits how much they can safely move, so their portion has to do all the work. These are the breeds where an extra 20 g a day shows up fastest.

German Shepherds and Dobermans often look thinner than they are because of coat and build. Trust the rib test over the mirror.

Beagles are the small dog equivalent of Labradors. Same appetite, less body to hide it in.

How Many Grams if You Feed Home-Cooked Indian Food

Home-cooked food is roughly 70% water. That means the gram number goes up sharply, and the percentage of body weight lands closer to 3.5% to 6%, not 2% to 3%.

Same calorie target, very different volume.

Calorie values for common Indian ingredients

All values are for plain preparation with no salt, oil, masala, onion or garlic.

Worked example: a 20 kg dog needing 1,060 kcal

That is 805 grams of food for a dog that would eat 313 grams of kibble. Roughly 4% of body weight. If someone told you to feed a 20 kg dog 2% of its weight in home food, that dog would be running a 500 calorie deficit every single day.

The part nobody wants to hear

Getting the calories right is the easy half. Getting the nutrients right is where most home cooked Indian dog diets fail, and they fail quietly over months.

Common gaps in rice and chicken and curd diets:

• Calcium. Rice and chicken meat are calcium poor with a badly skewed calcium to phosphorus ratio. This is the single most common deficiency, and it is serious in growing puppies.
• Zinc, iodine, copper, selenium. Rarely adequate without supplementation.
• Vitamin E and vitamin D. Almost always short.
• Choline and B vitamins. Variable and usually low.

If you feed home cooked long term, work with a veterinary nutritionist on a supplement plan. “It looks healthy, and he seems fine” is not a nutritional assessment.

The safer middle path: kibble base plus fresh topper

Most Indian households land here, and honestly it is a reasonable place to land. You keep the nutritional completeness of a formulated food and the palatability and moisture of fresh food.

The rule: keep the topper at 10% to 20% of daily calories, and subtract those calories from the kibble.

Worked example for our 20 kg Simba on 1,060 kcal:

• Full kibble portion: 313 g of Nutrimax Adult
• Add one 120 g pouch of Chicken Platter in Gravy at 83.6 kcal per 100 g = 100 kcal
• Subtract 100 kcal of kibble: 100 ÷ 3,380 × 1,000 = 30 g
• New daily portion: 283 g kibble plus one 120 g wet pouch

Do the same for anything you add. A boiled egg costs you 23 g of kibble. Half a katori of rice costs you about 29 g. Nothing is free.

One more note on wet food. If you want to feed wet food as the entire diet, the volume is significant. A 20 kg dog would need roughly 1,270 g a day, which is around ten and a half 120 g pouches. Wet food works beautifully as a topper, a hydration boost during Indian summers, or a full diet for small dogs. For a large dog, it is usually a topper, not a base.

The Katori Problem: Stop Eyeballing, Start Weighing

This is the section that will save your dog more weight than anything else in this article.

Why the katori makes it worse

A standard Indian steel katori holds anywhere from 150 to 180 ml, and household katoris vary far more than that. The same katori scooped loosely versus scooped firmly can differ by 20% in weight. Kibble itself varies: a 240 ml cup of dry dog food weighs anywhere from 90 to 130 grams depending on kibble size, shape, and density.

Put those two variables together and “one katori twice a day” could honestly mean anywhere from 150 g to 260 g a day. For a 10 kg dog, that is the difference between correct and 40% overfed.

The maths of small errors

Suppose you overfeed a 20 kg dog by just 40 g a day. That is one generous scoop, nothing dramatic.

• 40 g × 3.38 kcal/g = 135 extra kcal a day
• Over a year: 49,275 extra kcal
• At roughly 7,000 to 8,000 kcal per kilogram of body fat gained, that is around 6 kg of weight gain in a year

On a 20 kg dog. From one scoop.

The fix costs about ₹400 and takes five minutes

1. Buy a digital kitchen scale. Any 1 g resolution model works. They cost ₹300 to ₹600 online.
2. Put your dog’s usual katori on the scale and press tare so it reads zero.
3. Fill it the way you normally would. Read the number.
4. That number is your reality check. Most people are surprised.

Then choose one of two systems:

System A, the accurate one. Keep the scale near the food bin. Weigh every meal. It adds eight seconds.

System B, the practical one. Weigh out the correct portion once. Pour it into your katori. Mark that level with a permanent marker or a rubber band on the outside. Fill till the line every time. You lose a little accuracy, but you gain a system your whole family will actually follow, including the person who feeds the dog when you travel.

System B done consistently beats System A done occasionally. Pick the one that survives a busy Tuesday.

Bonus tip: if you split meals, weigh the full day’s portion in the morning into one container. Whatever is left in that container at night is dinner. This makes double feeding impossible, which matters in joint families where three people all believe they are the only one who fed the dog.

What This Costs You Per Month (₹)

Once you know your grams, your food budget stops being a mystery.

Monthly cost = (grams per day × 30 ÷ 1,000) × price per kg

How much food you actually buy per month

Where Bowlers sits, and why pack size matters

Based on the pack sizes and prices listed on the Bowlers product pages at the time of writing:

• Nutrimax Adult comes in 100 g, 400 g, 1.2 kg, 3 kg, 10 kg and 20 kg, working out to roughly ₹20 to ₹200 per kg depending on pack size. A 20 kg dog on this food runs around ₹3,350 a month.
• Nutrimax Club Adult comes in 20g, 400g, 1.2 kg, 3 kg, 10 kg and 20kg packs, roughly ₹200 to ₹275 per kg. The same 20 kg dog eats fewer grams on it (285 g instead of 315 g) because it is more calorie dense, though the monthly figure is still higher.
• Wet food pouches at ₹50 to ₹70 for 80 g and 120 g packs work best as toppers rather than a full diet for medium and large dogs.

Always check current pricing on the product pages, since prices move.

Buy the largest pack your dog will finish within six to eight weeks of opening. Per kilogram, larger packs are meaningfully cheaper. But kibble oxidises once opened, so a 20 kg bag bought for a Pug is a false economy. Store it sealed, in the original bag, inside an airtight container, away from heat.

The overfeeding tax

Here is the part that surprises people.

Take the 20 kg dog. Correct portion: 315 g a day. Fed at the 3% rule instead: 600 g a day.

• Extra food: 285 g a day
• Extra per month: 8.55 kg
• Extra cost at ₹170/kg: ₹1,455 a month, ₹17,460 a year

You are paying about ₹17,000 a year to make your dog heavier. And that number does not include what obesity related joint problems, diabetes management, or a weight loss veterinary diet will cost you later.

Portioning correctly is one of the very few things in dog ownership that improves your dog’s health and costs you less.

FAQs

How many grams of food should a 10 kg dog eat per day?
Around 185 g of dry food at 3,380 kcal/kg, or about 170 g on a denser 3,700 kcal/kg food. That is based on roughly 630 kcal a day for a neutered, moderately active adult. Adjust down 15% to 20% for a low-activity or senior dog.

How many grams should a Labrador eat per day?
A Labrador at an ideal 30 kg needs about 1,435 kcal a day, which is roughly 425 g on a 3,380 kcal/kg food or 390 g on a 3,700 kcal/kg one. Labs are strongly food motivated, so use the rib test rather than their reaction to the bowl.

Is one katori of kibble enough for your dog?
Impossible to answer, and that is the point. A katori holds 150 to 180 ml, and kibble weighs 90 to 130 g per 240 ml depending on the food. One katori could be 80 g or 110 g. Weigh it once and find out what your katori actually holds.

Should you feed once or twice a day?
Twice a day for most adult dogs, roughly twelve hours apart. It steadies energy, reduces begging, and lowers bloat risk in deep chested breeds. Puppies need three to four meals. Once a day is generally not recommended for dogs under a year, small breeds, or deep chested breeds.

Your dog finishes the bowl in 30 seconds and looks for more. Are you underfeeding?
Almost certainly not. Speed and enthusiasm are normal dog behaviour, not hunger signals. Judge by body condition and the two week weigh in. If the bowl vanishing too fast bothers you, use a slow feeder bowl or a snuffle mat, which extends the meal without adding a gram.

Do you feed by current weight or ideal weight?
Ideal weight, always, for adult dogs. Feeding an overweight dog for its current weight keeps it overweight permanently. Puppies are the exception: use current weight and recalculate every two weeks.

How many grams should a 2 month old puppy eat?
Depends on its weight, not its age. A 2 month old puppy weighing 4 kg needs around 594 kcal a day, which is about 165 g of a 3,570 kcal/kg puppy food split across four meals. A 2 month old Great Dane puppy weighing 12 kg needs far more. Weigh the puppy, then calculate.

Does soaking kibble in water change the grams?
No. Water adds no calories. Weigh the kibble dry, then soak it. If you weigh it after soaking, you will badly underfeed. Soaking is useful for puppies transitioning off milk, seniors with dental problems, and fast eaters, and it helps hydration in hot weather.

How much wet food replaces dry food?
Compare calories, never grams. One 120 g pouch of Bowlers adult wet food is about 100 kcal, which equals roughly 30 g of Nutrimax Adult kibble. As a rough rule, wet food carries only a quarter of the calories of dry food per gram, so 100 g of wet food is worth around 25 g of kibble.

Should you feed less in Indian summers?
Mild appetite reduction in peak summer is normal and usually self-correcting. Do not force feed or add rich toppers to compensate. Do add moisture, feed during the cooler parts of the day, and make sure water is always available. If your dog’s exercise drops significantly for weeks, trim the portion by about 10% for that period.

The feeding chart on your dog food bag says more than your chart. Which is right?
Both can be right, because they answer slightly different questions. Label guidelines are typically built for an average, moderately active, often intact dog. One analysis compared eight randomly chosen adult dry dog foods against standard calorie calculations and found only two matched across all body weights, with several recommending too much for larger dogs. Use the label as a starting range and the calorie calculation plus body condition as the decider. Whichever you start with, adjust from the dog.

How long before you see a change after adjusting the portion?
Give it 14 days before you judge anything, and 8 to 12 weeks before you expect visible body condition change. Weight loss should run at 1% to 2% of body weight per week. Slow is not failure; slow is how it is supposed to work.

Can you feed only home-cooked food?
You can, but do it properly. Home cooked diets need roughly 3.5% to 6% of body weight in grams, and they need a calcium source plus a broad supplement plan to be nutritionally complete. Rice, chicken, and curd alone will be deficient in calcium, zinc, iodine, and vitamin E within months. Work with a veterinary nutritionist, or use a complete food as the base and home cooking as the topper.

This guide is for general education and is not a substitute for veterinary advice. If your dog has a medical condition, is pregnant or nursing, is a large breed puppy, or needs to lose more than 10% of its body weight, plan the diet with your veterinarian.