I was curious to find out for those that feed your dog(s) a mix of dry and canned together what is ratio of the two?
The rescue where I got both of my dogs told me to feed 1/3 canned to 2/3 of dry.
But find my dogs prefer more like a 50/50 ratio.
it doesn’t really matter for dogs. You can feed 100% canned if you like, or 100% dry. Canned food is generally higher-quality, more palatable, and generally healthier than kibble; most people don’t feed canned solely due to cost and inconvenience.
Some people have some weird misconceptions about canned- that kibble cleans teeth so you shouldn’t feed canned (which is entirely false), that feeding canned food is “spoiling” your dog, all sorts of weird concepts.
It takes more volume of canned to be equal the calories/nutrition of dry, so what do you mean by “ratio”?
1/3, by volume, canned, is far less calories/nutrition than the same volume of dry, so it’s not equivalent.
Some canned foods have a higher moisture content, so you have to take that into account as well.
All three of my current dogs - & all of my dogs in the past - have done very, very well (& with vets’ blessings) on approx. 1-1/2 cups dry (I feed Nutro’s Lamb & Rice), with 1/3 can of Alpo mixed in along with a little warm water. Sometimes I use chicken stock if I have some on hand.
Healthy happy dogs in good weight, with shiny coats, & excellent annual health exams.
As others have said ratios are a bit difficult when you are doing a dry vs wet comparison. That being said, Dex eats 1-1.25 cups dry and ~ 1/4 cup wet. So I guess you could say it is a 1:4 ratio. He would kill for a 50/50 but that would be too much volume for him at once and very expensive since his wet is the wellness 95% Turkey.
I also like keeping the ratio low so that in a pinch I can feed dry. He eats with much less enthusiasm but it’s not that big of a difference so he survives.
I feed roughly 1/2 and 1/2, depending on the canned food in question. My dogs loooove canned green beef tripe, but it’s not a “complete dog food”, so when I’m feeding that I feed under 50%…the rest being dry and/or some complete canned food.
I’d feed all canned (my dogs prefer it), but the expense would be pretty huge, since there are two of them and they aren’t tiny and I’m not feeding them 59 cents a can supermarket food.
My dog is small(mini aussie) and she gets a good quality dry food (1/2 cup per day split into two meals) with a couple of spoons of a quality canned food(mainly to mix in her supplements-fish oil for her coat, another coat/joint combo, and some Benadryl for her summer itchiness). I guess with the amount of foods she gets it is about 60/40-dry/canned.
