The gap this page fills
Look at what a homemade dog food calculator normally asks for. Almost every one of them has a field labelled "calories per cup" or "calories per 100 g of your recipe", and the portion comes out the other end. That field is the whole difficulty: a home-cooked recipe has no label, and the number varies by a factor of three depending on how much fat and water went into the pot. Asking for it is asking the one question the visitor came to have answered — so the tools that ask for it either stall the user, or quietly fall back on a rule of thumb instead.
The fallback is nearly always "feed 2% to 3% of body weight per day". That rule came from feeding raw and fresh-food diets where the energy density happens to be high and fairly consistent. Applied to a pot of chicken, rice and vegetables it breaks, because the density is not consistent and the rule does not know what it is. This page replaces both shortcuts with one measurement chain: raw grams → cooked grams → kcal per gram → daily grams. Every other homemade calculator starts at the third step; this one starts at the first.
The reference tools that dominate the dog-calorie results do not cover homemade feeding at all. The Pet Nutrition Alliance calorie calculator and the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention calculators both stop at a daily calorie figure for commercial food and never reach the question of what a cooked batch weighs.
Meat shrinks, starch swells
This is the step that trips people up, and it is the reason a cooked batch cannot be estimated by simply knocking a quarter off the raw weight. Muscle meat loses roughly a quarter of its weight in the pan — water and rendered fat leave it — while rice, oats and pasta do the opposite and roughly triple as they absorb cooking water. A recipe that is half meat and half rice by raw weight ends up nowhere near half-and-half in the bowl.
| Ingredient group | Raw → cooked | What is happening |
|---|---|---|
| Muscle meat and liver | ×0.75 | Water and fat lost to the pan |
| Fish | ×0.80 | Modest water loss |
| Whole egg | ×0.88 | Water lost when set |
| Rice | ×3.0 | Absorbs roughly twice its weight in water |
| Oats and pasta | ×2.5 | Absorbs cooking water |
| Root and green vegetables | ×0.95 | Boiling barely changes the weight |
| Added oil | ×1.00 | Nothing is lost or gained |
The consequence runs in a direction most owners do not expect: adding rice makes the food heavier per calorie, not lighter. A batch bulked out with rice needs a bigger scoop for the same energy, which is why a dog switched from kibble to a home-cooked recipe often loses weight on what looks like a generous bowl.
Why the 2–3% of body weight rule fails on cooked food
Take a 30 lb (13.6 kg) neutered adult at normal activity. Resting energy is 70 × 13.60.75, which is about 496 kcal; multiplied by 1.6 for a neutered adult that is a target of about 793 kcal a day. The rule of thumb says feed 2% to 3% of 13.6 kg, which is 272 to 408 g.
Now put a real recipe against it. Chicken breast, rice, carrot, green beans and a spoon of oil lands near 1.2 kcal per cooked gram, so the true portion is 661 g — somewhere between 62% and 143% above what the rule recommends. The rule is not merely imprecise here; it under-feeds a typical home-cooked recipe by a wide margin, and under-feeding a dog on homemade food is the failure mode nobody warns about because the bowl looks full.
The rule's band does touch the curve at the far right, around 2.5 to 3.5 kcal per gram. That is kibble territory, and it is where the rule came from. It has never been a rule about dogs; it is a rule about a particular density of food, and it quietly assumes that density.
What actually moves a recipe's energy density
Three things, in descending order of effect: added fat, the meat's own fat content, and water. The first two pull the number up fast and the third pulls it down just as fast, which is why the range across ordinary recipes is so wide.
| Recipe style | kcal per cooked gram | What that means for a 30 lb dog |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast, vegetables, no added fat | 0.8 | About 990 g a day |
| Chicken breast, rice, vegetables, a little oil | 1.2 | About 660 g a day |
| Ground beef, rice, vegetables | 1.6 | About 495 g a day |
| Beef, rice, generous oil or fat trimmings | 2.0 | About 400 g a day |
| Typical dry kibble, for comparison | 3.5 | About 225 g a day |
Note what a single tablespoon of oil does. Oil carries roughly 884 kcal per 100 g, so ten grams of it adds about 88 kcal to a batch — on a 30 lb dog that is more than 10% of the whole day's allowance, and it is invisible in the bowl. Recipes that change the oil between batches change the portion without changing the volume. This is the strongest argument for weighing the finished pot and letting the number, not the scoop, decide.
Scaling the pot: how many days a batch lasts
Once you know the cooked weight and the daily grams, the batch length is one division. A pot that finishes at 1,270 g cooked at 1.2 kcal per gram holds about 1,526 kcal; for the 793 kcal dog above that is a little under two days. Cooking once a week for that dog means a batch near 4,600 g, which is a large pot and a lot of refrigerator space.
Two practical notes. Portion the batch into daily containers before it goes cold, because scooping from a shared pot all week is how the last three days quietly get more than the first three. And freeze anything beyond three or four days — cooked food without preservatives does not keep the way a bag of kibble does.
Cups, and why they are the wrong unit here
A cup of cooked homemade food is not a fixed mass. Dense beef-and-rice packs into a cup at well over 200 g; a loose chicken-and-vegetable mix may sit near 120 g. The same cup therefore delivers wildly different calories depending on the recipe, and it changes again depending on how finely you chopped the vegetables. Weigh one portion once with a kitchen scale, note the grams, and from then on you can scoop by eye against that reference — but the reference itself has to come from a scale at least once, per recipe.
Where this estimate breaks down
- It is a quantity calculation, not a completeness check. Hitting the calorie target says nothing about whether the recipe supplies the vitamins and minerals a dog needs. A meat-and-starch recipe is characteristically short of calcium, and a recipe balanced on calories alone is not the same thing as a balanced diet. Have any long-term homemade recipe reviewed by a veterinary nutritionist.
- The yield factors are estimates. Roasting loses more weight than simmering; draining rendered fat changes both the weight and the calories. Weighing the finished pot removes this error entirely, which is why the field exists.
- Ingredient values come from generic food-composition entries. Real chicken breasts vary in fat content, and the fat trim on ground beef varies by brand. If your ingredient's label states a different figure, use it.
- The calorie target itself is a population estimate. Individual dogs vary, and the conventional error band is wide. Treat the first number as a hypothesis and recheck body condition every two weeks.
- Puppies, pregnant and lactating dogs should not be rationed from a generic recipe. Growth has its own mineral requirements and the margin for error is much narrower.
Frequently asked questions
How much homemade food should I feed my dog per day?
Work out the daily calorie target, then divide by the energy density of your cooked recipe. For a 30 lb neutered adult at about 793 kcal a day and a chicken-and-rice recipe at 1.2 kcal per gram, that is roughly 660 g a day. Change the recipe's fat or starch and that gram figure moves even though the calorie target does not.
Is 2% to 3% of body weight a good rule for homemade food?
Only for dense food. It assumes an energy density around 2.5 to 3.5 kcal per gram, which is where kibble and some raw diets sit. A cooked chicken-and-rice recipe is closer to 1.2, where the rule under-feeds a 30 lb dog by roughly 250 to 390 g a day. Use the recipe's own density instead.
Why does my dog seem hungry after switching to homemade food?
Usually volume, not calories — cooked food is roughly 70% water, so the same energy arrives in a larger, less calorie-dense serving and empties from the stomach differently. It can also be a genuine shortfall: if the dog is losing weight, the recipe's density is lower than you assumed and the portion needs to go up. Weigh the dog every two weeks rather than reading the bowl.
Should I weigh ingredients raw or cooked?
Raw, when you are building the recipe, because that is how recipes are written and how food-composition data is listed. But the number that matters for portioning is the finished cooked weight — the water absorbed by rice and lost by meat both change it, and only a scale on the finished pot settles it.
Does adding rice make the food less fattening?
No. Boiled rice roughly triples in weight by absorbing water, so it makes the portion heavier for the same calories, not lighter. Bulking a batch with rice or vegetables lowers the recipe's energy density and increases the grams you have to serve.
How long does a batch of homemade dog food keep?
Refrigerate for three to four days and freeze anything beyond that. Portion into daily containers before chilling so every day gets the same amount, and thaw in the refrigerator rather than on the counter.
Can I use the same portion if I switch protein?
Not without recalculating. Chicken breast and 85% lean ground beef differ by roughly 80% in calories per raw gram, and the cooking yield differs too. Swap the ingredient in the calculator and read the new grams.
Do I need to add a supplement to homemade dog food?
Almost always, and this page deliberately does not compute it. A recipe balanced for calories and macros is still typically short of calcium and trace minerals, and the correct supplement depends on the exact recipe. That is a formulation question for a veterinary nutritionist, not a portion question.
Is homemade food lower in calories than kibble?
Per gram, usually much lower — around 1.0 to 1.6 kcal per cooked gram against roughly 3.5 for dry kibble. That is the single most important number on this page: it is why the portion in grams roughly triples when a dog moves from kibble to a home-cooked recipe.
Sources
- Resting energy requirement 70 × kg0.75 and the maintenance multipliers — MSD Veterinary Manual, nutritional requirements of small animals.
- Per-ingredient calorie values for the default recipe, raw weight, as-fed basis — USDA FoodData Central: chicken breast, skinless, boneless, raw FDC 171077, 120 kcal/100 g; white rice, long-grain, regular, raw, enriched FDC 168877, 365 kcal/100 g; carrots, raw FDC 170393, 41 kcal/100 g; green beans, snap, raw FDC 169961, 31 kcal/100 g; olive oil, salad or cooking FDC 171413, 884 kcal/100 g.
- How calorie content is stated and compared on pet food — AAFCO, understanding calories in pet food and AAFCO, calorie content.
- Body condition scoring, used to check the estimate against the dog — WSAVA Global Nutrition Guidelines.
Need the calorie target on its own, with the full coefficient table? Use the dog calorie calculator on the home page, or the dog food calorie calculator to see how long a bag of kibble lasts against the same target.