Introduction
German shepherds are very active, agile and smart dogs, and to unleash their full potential they require special nutrition. Several other factors should be also taken into consideration when choosing the food for german shepherd puppy: large adult dog size, propensity to certain diseases and puppy-specific lifestyle.
The only thing certain is that german shepherd puppies consume about 3 times more food than adults. Good news are, it takes just a 1 year for german shepherd puppy to evolve from a food consuming bulldozer into a moderate gentleman-dog.
Why Puppies Get the Best Food?
First of all, german shepherd puppies just like any other puppies, do a lot of activity while exploring the new world. For german shepherds are considered very active in general, their puppies require even more calories than other puppies. So their energy demands are high – from 500 cal while young puppy to 1600cal when junior.
To develop their full potential, german shepherd puppies require high quality nutrition. That means, the food they get should contain the appropriate amount of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, as well as vitamins and minerals. The best way to get all of these in compact form would be via buying comercial food for puppies, which has balanced and concentrated nutrition as well as feeding instructions provided by the producers you can easily follow instead of reading tons of articles and guides about proper puppy feeding.
And because german shepherds are large dogs, their food should contain not to much nutrients to let the dog’s organism to adapt to it’s high mass increase – that’s why you should use large breed commercial food, developed to fit the large breeds metabolism.
Best Commercial German Shepherd Puppy Dog Feed Recommendations
There are several problems related to cheap commercial dog food. Usage of wheat based products, soy and corn is harmful to german shepherds because they are not intended to digest these products by nature, so they get digestion problems and food allergies from these ingredients.
For german shepherds are carnivorous, their main nutrient is protein, which heavily affects their growth as well. AAFCO (The Association of American Feed Control Officials) recommends that dog foods for large breed dogs contain from 30% to 40%, with a minimum of 22% high-quality protein. High-quality here means the real meat source of protein, not anymal innards or byproducts.
How Much German Shepherd Puppies Should Eat?
In general, they need to eat 3-4 times a day.
Newborn puppies should feed off their mother’s milk up to 4-6 months in order to supply the organism with uniqe and essential nutrients and build up an immune system.
By the end of this period you can give them wet food in small quantities, it usually takes 2 weeks to have puppies eating wet food only.
At the age of 2 months you can begin giving them dry kibble in small quantities as well to let their digestive system adapt to dry food.
Be aware, that puppies dont regulate themselves while eating, so you should control them yourself to prevent overeating. The ribs of your german shepherd should not be visible, though palpable.
