Pet Feeding Amount Calculator
How to Use
Introduction
The feeding guide on a bag of pet food usually sorts animals into wide weight bands, so a 4 kg and a 6 kg cat land in the same row. This page starts from the resting-energy formula used in veterinary nutrition, applies a factor for species and life stage, and converts the result to grams using the energy density printed on your own bag.
The example is a 4.5 kg adult cat on a 3800 kcal/kg food, fed twice a day. Resting energy is about 216.3 kcal; the adult-cat factor of 1.2 gives 259.5 kcal a day, which is roughly 68.3 g of food, 34.1 g per meal, 0.48 kg a week and 2.05 kg a month. Switching the stage to young raises the factor to 2.5 and more than doubles the daily amount.
Always take the energy density from the label. Formulas range from about 3000 to 4200 kcal/kg, and a wrong value shifts every gram figure on this page.
Key features
- Resting energy: Resting energy is estimated from body weight raised to a power, then multiplied by a life-stage factor.
- Species split: Cats and dogs use different factors. The wrong species shifts the amount.
- Life stages: Growth, adult, senior and neutered each carry their own factor.
- Per meal: Enter meals per day and the daily amount is divided into each meal.
- Weekly and monthly: Weekly and monthly totals are shown too, useful when buying bags of food.
- Kilograms: Weight is in kg. Divide a jin figure by two before entering.
How to use it
- Pet type: Choose cat or dog first; the energy coefficients differ and the wrong species skews the amount.
- Body weight: Enter kilograms. If your scale reads jin, divide by two.
- Life stage: Choose growth, adult, senior or neutered; each stage has its own factor.
- Food energy density: Take the metabolisable energy per kg from the bag and update it whenever you change food.
- Meals per day: Set how many meals you serve; it splits the daily amount. Daily, weekly and monthly totals are given together so you can buy by the bag.
Things to keep in mind
- Species: Cat and dog coefficients differ; the wrong species skews the amount.
- Stage factors: Growth, adult, senior and neutered stages use separate factors.
- Weight unit: Weight is in kg; divide jin by two first.
- Meals: Meals per day set the per-meal figure and a blank is prompted.
- Starting estimate: Treat the result as a starting point and follow veterinary advice.
The daily figure is an estimate built from body weight, species and life stage, not a prescription. Food bags differ in energy density, and the value you enter there scales the grams directly. Body condition matters more than the decimal places: recheck the amount after a weigh-in or a diet change, and follow veterinary advice where a condition is involved.
The weekly and monthly figures are the daily amount multiplied out, so they inherit any error in the energy density you copied from the bag. A food with 3500 kcal per kg and one with 4000 kcal per kg will not produce the same gram amount. Treat the first result as a starting portion and adjust it against body condition after a couple of weeks.