Hi everyone!

I own a Boerboel puppy who is now 17 weeks of age. He is a great "little" chap. We are feeding him a raw diet consisting off any combination off beef, lamb, chicken, turkey and tripe combined with liver, beef heart and bit of green stuff plus chicken wings. He is currently growing at a alarming rate 2kg - 2.7kg a week.

We took him to the vet today to get him chipped and were told that he should be slowed down with his growth and look leaner.

As far as leaner is conserned I can see 2 ribs and he has good loin defination. Not sure he can be more leaner than that tbh. He is relatevly low energy chap so feeding him about 6.5% of his body weight. We dont think he is overweight but we are conserned about his growing rate.

Should we drop his food intake down even more and is it muscle meat that goes down? Is it even safe to go down to say 5% of his weight? He's dad is 95kg (~209lb's)so he is going to be a big boy.

Thank you for any advice you can give us in advance!

Oh, on a side note... With chicken wings, ~30% is bone but do you count the remaining ~70% towards the daily muscle meat total or is it extra? atm we have been treating it as extra

I know nothing about Boerboels, but the pup in your picture has a few extra pounds on him, to my eye.

I'd throw out the math you have in your head and simply feed based on the pup in front of you. If the vet thinks he's growing too fast and too fat, there you go.

I'd much rather err on the side of a pup being lean than fat.

For what it's worth, I've never liked the formulas that base how much to feed a puppy based on the PUPPY'S weight. Because they never really say at what age. And then what? Every day the puppy grows. And every day he's a different age. So any calculation based on a current age and weight will only be correct once.

A much better way to arrive at a "ballpark" figure of how much raw food to feed a puppy is to base it on the pup's IDEAL ADULT weight (which is a fixed number.)

2-3% of the ideal adult weight in food per day is where I start.

So a puppy that is expected to grow to 95 kg as an adult (Jesus!) would be fed something like 2 - 2.75 kg of food a day, spread out into however many feedings you do.

But again, the math only gets you close. You really do have to adjust based on the individual dogs metabolism, growth spurts, etc. I want a dog or puppy that I can easily feel ribs on, and see a "waist" when you look from above.

So if you decide to decrease his food, you'll do it proportionally with all the foodstuffs---you don't want to reduce just muscle meat, or just raw meaty bones. Too much of one or the other will produce either consitpation or loose stool, and throw the nutritional balance out of whack.

No need to try and guess the amount of meat-to-bone in a chicken wing. Just count it as "raw meaty bone." It, and any other bone-in items you feed should make up nearly half the diet. The other near-half is boneless muscle meat. The remainder is organ meat and any other veggies, supplements, etc that you choose to add. Regardless of the size, age, or breed of dog, those proportions stay more or less the same.

Thank you Tracy,

"2-3% of the ideal adult weight in food per day is where I start. " is a good idea, however currently he's taking in about 1.5kg a day so putting it up to that figure would result even bigger tummy.. Will prolly move him to 2%-3% when the current regime gets a bit closer. As far as counting the feed atm isnt actually difficult at all, I weigh him ones a week and feed accordingly, increasing slighty towards end of the week.

Also thank you for the chicken wing answer

"...the pup in your picture has a few extra pounds on him, to my eye. "


Yes.

No need to add anything to Tracy's great advice (as usual), but a strong "ditto" to Tracy and the vet on the extra poundage.

Nothing scary, but I'd want to trim him down a bit.

"... combination off beef, lamb, chicken, turkey and tripe combined with liver, beef heart and bit of green stuff plus chicken wings"

I'm sure this is is silly over-checking, but you do mean RMBs, right? The chicken wings are not the only bone?

There is bone content in the muscle meat i buy round 5% or so, knuckle bones and good amount of chicken wings per day is what he gets. the poop watch is fine

The diet we are following is more or less this.

http://www.african-boerboel.co.za/choosingfood.htm

I do notice that a lot of people in this forum advocate lower mucsle meat content.

The proof is in the poops. If they are firm logs, but not rock hard or crumbly, then your meat to bone is just fine.

The RMB I use are quite boney--chicken backs and duck necks--so the diet I make up requires about an equal amount of muscle meat.

Folks who use leg quarters can get by with less muscle meat, because the leg quarters have a good deal of meat. I sometimes feed whole turkeys with almost no added muscle meat because commercial birds have such enormous breasts. A lot of this is learning by doing. And watching poop.

Hi Nina

I have 2 Boerboels (have had 3 from 8 week old pups) and they all grew like crazy for the first few months, I have had to keep a really strict eye on their weight, as they are utter pigs and will eat themselves to death given the chance, the really important thing with these dogs is protecting their joints as they grow, as I am sure your breeder told you.

The guys on this forum will give you some really good advice regarding diet etc, but for my 2, I like to see a waist and keep them a bit ribby, pups of course have specific needs, and I will leave it to the experts to guide you there.