How much homemade food to feed your dog: grams by weight and recipe

Published 2 October 2026. Not yet reviewed by a board certified veterinary nutritionist. Numbers marked as engine output come from the Petcare engine on the date shown.

A healthy neutered adult dog needs about 1.6 times its resting energy. Resting energy is 70 x body weight in kg to the power 0.75, in kcal a day. For a 20 kg dog that is 662 kcal resting, 1,059 kcal a day, and 728 g a day of Petcare's low budget recipe at 1.5 kcal per g.

The formula behind every number here

Resting energy requirement (RER) is 70 x kg^0.75 kcal a day. Daily energy is RER times a factor for the dog's life stage and activity. Both the equation and the factors appear in the AAHA 2021 nutrition guidelines and the WSAVA Global Nutrition Toolkit Grade A. Petcare uses 1.6 for a neutered adult on daily walks, 1.8 for an intact adult, 1.4 for a lazy or senior dog and 2.0 for an active one, the same factors the Merck Veterinary Manual lists Grade C. The 1.6 factor equals 112 kcal per kg^0.75, close to the 110 kcal per kg^0.75 that FEDIAF 2025 gives for dogs aged 3 to 7 years Grade A.

Kilocalories are only half the answer. Grams depend on the recipe, because each recipe has its own energy density. The table below converts kcal into grams of one specific recipe, so the gram column is not a universal number.

Grams a day from 5 kg to 50 kg

The table was produced by running the Petcare engine on 2 October 2026 for a female neutered dog aged 4 years, standard body shape, standard activity (daily walks), no health concerns, no allergies, low budget. For every weight the engine built the same eight ingredient recipe (egg, oat bran, broccoli, peas, beef shank, lamb heart, lamb liver, sunflower seed) at about 1.5 kcal per g as fed, and the recipe landed within 3 percent of the kcal target.

Read the gram column as a starting point for this one recipe. A 5 kg dog eats 258 g, which is 5.2 percent of its body weight. A 50 kg dog eats 1,447 g, only 2.9 percent of its body weight. That gap is the reason flat percent rules go wrong at both ends, and it comes straight from the 0.75 exponent.

Why grams differ between dogs

Energy need does not grow in step with body weight. Doubling a dog's weight raises its RER by 68 percent, not 100 percent, because 2^0.75 is 1.68. So the 10 kg dog in the table needs 63 kcal per kg and the 40 kg dog needs 45 kcal per kg. The factor matters as much as the weight. The same 20 kg dog needs 927 kcal a day if lazy or aged 9 or more (factor 1.4), 1,059 kcal on daily walks (1.6), 1,192 kcal if intact (1.8) and 1,324 kcal if active (2.0). The engine's recipe for those four cases weighs 619 g, 728 g, 767 g and 790 g a day. Age, neutering and daily exercise therefore move the bowl by more than 170 g for one dog of one weight.

How much individual dogs vary

Individual dogs vary more than any factor captures. In 586 client owned dogs the mean intake was 98 kcal per kg^0.75 with a coefficient of variation of about 30 percent (Thes et al. 2016) Grade C. The RER equation matched measured resting energy within plus or minus 20 percent in only 51 to 57 percent of 77 dogs (O'Toole et al. 2004) Grade B. A meta analysis of 70 groups of adult dogs found a mean of 143 kcal per kg^0.75 with a standard deviation of 55 (Bermingham et al. 2014) Grade B. Merck puts the practical range at 30 percent above or below the calculated amount Grade C. FEDIAF describes its own tables as starting points that the owner must adapt Grade A.

Why grams differ between recipes

Two recipes that both deliver 1,059 kcal can differ by 100 g a day, because water, fat and fibre change the kcal per gram. The engine shows this on the same 20 kg dog when a constraint changes the ingredient list.

The beef free recipe swaps beef shank for lamb shank and the egg free recipe is built on duck, cauliflower and salmon. Both are wetter and leaner per gram, so the dog eats more grams for the same energy. Fat carries about 9 kcal per g against about 4 kcal per g for protein and carbohydrate, the factors FEDIAF uses to estimate the energy of fresh ingredients Grade A. A recipe you found online will not have the same density as any of these, so never copy a gram figure from one recipe to another. Work out the kcal per g of your own recipe, or let the engine do it, and divide your dog's daily kcal by that density.

Treats count: keep them under 10 percent

Treats, chews, dental sticks and the crust of your toast all carry energy. The common professional rule is that treats and extras should supply no more than 10 percent of daily calories, the limit built into the Pet Nutrition Alliance calculator and the APOP feeding calculator Grade C. For the 20 kg dog that is at most 106 kcal of treats, and the main recipe then drops to about 953 kcal, or roughly 655 g of the low budget recipe. The 10 percent cap exists for balance as well as weight. The recipe is formulated to meet the dog's nutrient minimums in its full portion; treats are not, so a treat heavy day dilutes the minerals and vitamins the recipe was built to supply. Carrot, cucumber and a few pieces of the dog's own cooked food are low energy choices that keep the arithmetic simple. If a chew is a daily habit, write its kcal into the plan rather than hoping it is small.

The 10 percent adjustment rule

Because the calculated amount can be 20 to 30 percent off for an individual dog, the number from any calculator is a first portion, not a verdict. The practical routine most clinics teach is simple: weigh the dog every two to four weeks on the same scale, score body condition against the WSAVA 9 point chart Grade A, and if the dog is drifting, change the daily grams by about 10 percent and hold the new amount for another two to four weeks before judging again Grade C. For the 20 kg dog on 728 g, one step is about 70 g a day. Small steps avoid the overshoot that comes from doubling or halving a bowl. Record the weight and the grams each time, because a written trend is far more reliable than memory. Research on energy intake has not settled a single correct step size; 10 percent is a convention that keeps changes visible without being drastic.

When to see a vet

Petcare and this table cover healthy adult dogs maintaining weight. Puppies, pregnant or nursing dogs, dogs with any diagnosed condition and dogs that need to lose weight should be fed on a plan from a vet. Weight loss in particular needs a target weight and a controlled pace: in a clinic cohort the median loss was 0.6 percent of body weight a week (German et al. 2015) Grade C, and faster is not better. Make an appointment if your dog's body condition score is 3 or below or 7 or above on the WSAVA 9 point scale, if weight changes by more than 5 percent without a change in feeding, if appetite drops for more than two days, or if you cannot feel the ribs under a light touch. The AAHA guidelines ask for a nutritional assessment at every visit Grade A, so bring your gram figure and your weight log; they make the conversation faster.

Check it with Petcare

Enter your dog's weight, age, sex and activity in the Petcare calculator to get the RER, the daily kcal, the recipe and the grams a day computed by the same engine that produced the table above.

Petcare is software, not veterinary advice. It builds recipes for healthy adult dogs. For puppies, pregnant or nursing dogs, dogs with a condition or food allergy a vet has diagnosed, dogs on medication, and dogs that need to lose weight, the diet should come from your vet.