🐾Pet Calorie Calculator

About this tool

Choose dog or cat and kilograms or pounds, enter your pet's weight and pick a life stage, such as neutered adult, puppy, kitten or weight loss. Enter the food's calorie density from the label, per cup, per 100 g or per can. The calculator shows daily calories, resting energy, how much food that is per day and a treat allowance.

How vets calculate a pet's calorie needs

Vets start with the resting energy requirement (RER), the energy a pet uses at rest: RER = 70 × body weight in kg^0.75. Daily needs, the maintenance energy requirement, are RER multiplied by a life-stage factor. Common factors are 1.6 for a neutered adult dog, 1.8 for an intact one, 1.0 for weight loss at the target weight, 3.0 for puppies under four months and 2.0 for older puppies; cats use about 1.2 for a neutered adult, 1.4 intact and 2.5 for kittens. A 20 kg neutered adult dog has an RER of about 662 kcal and needs about 1,059 kcal a day. At 380 kcal per cup that's about 2.8 cups, split over two meals. Treats should stay under about 10% of the daily calories. Honest limits: individual needs can vary by 50% either way with breed, activity, coat, climate and metabolism, so use the result as a starting point. Weigh your pet every few weeks and adjust, and ask your vet before changing diet, especially for puppies, kittens, pregnant animals or pets with medical conditions. The dog age calculator and the cat age calculator convert pet years. Dog years: the real conversion explains how dogs age.

Frequently asked questions