Feeding a Boerboel: calories, life stages and scored picks

Start with the breed as our profile records it: a giant dog of 110 to 175 lb fully grown, typically about 142 lb, energy rated 3 of 5, needing 45 to 75 minutes of exercise a day. This page turns those numbers into daily calories and matches them to recipes we have actually scored.

This breed has a page of its own because of its large frame, which large breed labels and controlled puppy growth are written for, and a joint condition named in its health notes. Breeds whose profiles give no such angle are not listed here at all: for them the general guides are the honest answer, and the breed food index says which breeds those are and why. The full breed facts sit on the Boerboel profile.

Daily calories for a Boerboel

Resting energy need is 70 times body weight in kilograms to the power 0.75. A day's ration is that figure times a life stage factor: 1.4 for an easy keeper or a dog losing weight, 1.6 for a typical neutered adult, 1.8 for a very active adult. Those are the same factors our feeding calculator uses, so the two tools cannot disagree.

Nothing extra rides free: treats, chews and toppers are paid out of the same daily figure, at about a tenth of it, so the main food still supplies nine tenths of the nutrition. The calorie and treat calculator converts that tenth into a daily treat count for a given dog. While a ration settles, weigh the dog monthly; the correct figure is whichever one holds a visible waist, and it shifts with age, neutering and work.

Life stages

Puppy. A Boerboel puppy is building a giant frame, and big frames must grow slowly: too many calories and too much calcium in the growth months are linked to skeletal problems in large breeds. Feed for the weight the puppy is now, at the growth factor the calculator offers, and prefer a recipe whose own label covers growth of large size dogs where one is available. Our puppy list keeps only recipes whose labels claim the growth stage.

While growing. A Boerboel puppy's weight, and so its ration, changes monthly. For a puppy growing toward the breed's typical 142 lb, on the size class growth curve our profiles publish:

Individual puppies run ahead of and behind any curve; the vet's growth checks outrank this table, and a puppy that is gaining too fast is fed for a leaner curve, never starved back to it.

Adult. The typical adult column above is the starting ration for most of the breed's 9 to 11 year lifespan. A Boerboel at the low end of the exercise range in our profile (45 minutes) belongs nearer the easy keeper column; one worked or sported daily belongs nearer the active column.

Senior. For a giant breed, old age is usually counted from about five or six years, which is the threshold our senior tools use. Older dogs lose muscle, and muscle is kept by protein and movement: a senior recipe that cuts protein hard along with calories is working against the dog. The picks on our senior list show each label's protein line plainly.

Joints: what the profile flags

The health notes on our Boerboel profile name the issue directly: “Hip and elbow dysplasia are the headline screenings, and elbow health matters especially in a dog this heavy.” Two label facts follow from that. First, extra weight loads the joints, so the calorie table above is joint care as much as the ingredient panel is. Second, some makers add glucosamine and chondroitin, the joint support compounds, and say so on the panel. The highest scoring recipes in our database whose own ingredient lists name at least one of them:

An ingredient on a panel is present, not dosed: labels rarely print the amount, so treat these as a starting point for a conversation with your vet, not as a treatment.

Starting points from our scored database

Every recipe below was read from its own label and scored under our published rubric. The last column converts a typical adult Boerboel's daily calories into that recipe's own measure, using the calorie line the maker prints. The full ranked set is our large breed list; the food finder answers the same database by life stage, format and the proteins a dog must avoid.

At a standard quality tier the typical adult ration above runs about $72 a month for this breed, the same figure our profile publishes; the breakdown by tier is on the Boerboel profile and in our food expense calculator. Change foods over about a week, and judge any food by the dog in front of you: steady weight, good coat, normal stools.