Cross Breeds

How often should I feed my 3 month old German Shepherd puppies?

The place I bought them from fed them 1-2 cups of dry food mixed with a little wet food twice a day. Some lady at a pet store told me I should be feeding them 4 times a day. Please help.

Public Comments

1. i would not go the wet food route. they will begin to only want that and its not as healthy. read the back of the dog food bag, and it will tell you how much they need.
2. At 3 months they should be fed 3 times daily. When they are around six months, you can start feeding them twice daily, for life.
3. 3x is sufficient.... morning, afternoon and evening. Make sure you are feeding them puppy dry and wet food. Ask your vet, to be sure...they are large adult dogs, so I would be on the side of caution....
4. A puppy eats a lot of food. From birth up to six months of age, he'll need to eat two to four times as much as an adult dog to support all that growth. A good rule of thumb is that after his first week of life, when his weight doubles from what it was at birth, a puppy should gain one to two grams per pound of anticipated adult weight each day. This means that if your German Shepherd puppy weighs 75 pounds as an adult, he should gain three to five ounces per day as a puppy. Here's a link to better get a view of this: http://elfurl.com/ahvi5
5. You should be feeding them 3 times a day at the same time everyday. Like breakfast at 9:00pm, Lunch at 1:00pm, and dinner at 5:00pm. And the same time and amount every day. They should get one 1 cup of dry food and maybe a half cup of wet food. Make sure you don't feed them too much and don't give them anything else (table scraps and stuff like that). Other than their regular meals and maybe a dog chew or two, they shouldn't get anything else.
6. Puppies need to be fed more often than adult dogs to keep their energy levels up. Adult dogs are perfectly fine to be fed just once a day. But yeah, if they're only twelve weeks old, they will need feeding around four times per day. As they get older you can gradually reduce it to once or two times per day. By 12 months they should be eating like an adult.
7. It varies from puppy to puppy. one puppy may need less food than another, just like one child may have a higher metabolism than another. Try to wean them off the wet food as they can have teeth problems and plaque buildup later. Ideally, the puppy should be eating 3 times a day. If you try this and the puppies eat poorly 3 times but great two times, then stick with 2 times, preferably 12 hours apart. Put the bowl down and let them eat as much as they want within a 15 minute period. Then take the bowl up for next mealtime. Check their ribs. You should be able to feel them but not see them. In some cases you will barely be able to see them while they are walking/running around though. If you have to press hard to feel them then they are eating too much. Quite often the instructions on the bag are way off. My current shepherd eats more than the writing on the bag and is in perfect health, and my last shepherd ate way less than the instructions and was also in perfect health while he was growing up. They got checkups all the time. Even my vet agrees that a little chicken, unspiced or beef, unspiced is good with their meals if you want. No chicken bones though.