Ok, so we agree that it’s efficient, if all you care about is cutting down on chore time. However, rationing and feeding twice a day instead of on a free choice basis has some serious upsides.
Written By: The Dog Journal
By rationing your dog’s food, you can hone in on exactly what that dog needs when it comes to intake. Some dogs eat everything they see, so they may gain unwanted weight if fed free choice. By feeding twice a day, you get to measure exactly what that dog takes in every single day, and that makes it easy to turn the body fat up or down.
Some dogs are picky, and rationing their food can help them get the drift that when it’s time to eat, they had better eat. Have you ever been around food all day, only to find out that you’re never really hungry? It can work the same way for dogs. Sometimes it better to let them get hungry, and then feed them.
Breeding adult dogs need different types of dietary supplements, dewormer, etc. at different times of their life. Feeding twice a day will give you, the breeder, a great opportunity to carefully monitor and manage those extras. Why not take care of this at mealtime? Not only that, this will give you a great opportunity to do a quick “health check” on a regular basis.
Ok, I know how it is, when we free choice, we can just make sure “the hopper stays full.” That’s missing out on some valuable time to socialize with your dogs and puppies, though. If you feed twice a day instead of free choice, your dogs and puppies will always be glad to see you, and as you’re preparing their meal, you get to interact and socialize with them. Do they know how to take treats? Could you teach them to “sit” while preparing their meal? Can you work crate training into mealtime?
Ever wonder how important certain breeding practices are to your potential puppy buyers? Well, we did too, enough so that The Dog
Journal decided to have a customer survey done
in the hopes that some of our questions could
be answered.
Ok, so we agree that it’s efficient, if all you care about is cutting down on chore time. However, rationing and feeding twice a day instead of on a free choice basis has some serious upsides.
Appropriate desensitization and counter conditioning to handling is important for all dogs in adulthood to ensure their comfort and minimize fearfulness.
