Calculating your daily calories needed is straightforward once you know the Dog Food formula and what each input means. This guide explains the method in plain language, walks through a manual calculation, and gives worked examples you can follow — then you can do it instantly with the Dog Food Calculator.
What is Dog Food?
The Dog Food calculation tells you your daily calories needed from a few simple inputs. The figure you are solving for here is the daily calories needed.
The Dog Food formula
The core formula is:
Daily calories needed = 70 × (Dog's weight)^(0.75) × Activity ÷ life stageHere is what each input means:
- Dog's weight — a value measured in kg. Example: 20 kg.
- Activity / life stage — one of: Weight loss (1.0), Neutered adult (1.6), Active adult (2.0), Puppy (3.0). Example: Neutered adult (1.6).
How to calculate it step by step
- Write down the dog's weight (for example, 20 kg).
- Choose the activity / life stage (for example, Neutered adult (1.6)).
- Apply the formula above to get your daily calories needed.
- Double-check the result with the Dog Food Calculator.
Worked examples
Example 1
| Input / Output | Value |
|---|---|
| Dog's weight | 20 kg |
| Activity / life stage | Neutered adult (1.6) |
| Daily calories needed | 1,059 |
| Resting energy requirement | 662 |
With dog's weight of 20 kg and activity / life stage of Neutered adult (1.6), the daily calories needed works out to 1,059.
Example 2
With dog's weight of 40 kg and activity / life stage of Neutered adult (1.6), the daily calories needed works out to 1,781.
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Daily calories needed | 1,781 |
| Resting energy requirement | 1,113 |
Example 3
With dog's weight of 10 kg and activity / life stage of Neutered adult (1.6), the daily calories needed works out to 630.
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Daily calories needed | 630 |
| Resting energy requirement | 394 |
Tips for an accurate result
- Keep your units consistent — mixing, say, months with years or grams with kilograms is the most common source of error.
- Round only at the very end. Rounding inputs early can shift the final answer noticeably.
- Re-run the numbers whenever an input changes, rather than estimating from an old result.
Prefer not to do the maths by hand? — the Dog Food Calculator does it instantly, for free, with the formula and a worked example built in.
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