Feeding a Löwchen: calories, life stages and scored picks

Start with the breed as our profile records it: a small dog of 10 to 18 lb fully grown, typically about 14 lb, energy rated 3 of 5, needing 30 to 45 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 small size, which the makers' own small breed labels are written for. 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 Löwchen profile.

Daily calories for a Löwchen

Every figure below comes from one formula: resting energy need, 70 times weight in kilograms to the power 0.75, times a factor for the dog's life. The factors are 1.4 for an easy keeper or a dog on a reducing ration, 1.6 for a typical neutered adult and 1.8 for a very active adult, the same set our feeding calculator uses.

Treats, chews and toppers come out of the same daily figure, not on top of it: keep them near a tenth of it and the main food still does the nutritional work. Our calorie and treat calculator turns the tenth into a treats per day count. Weigh the dog monthly while a ration settles; the right number is the one that holds a visible waist, and it moves with age, neutering and workload.

Life stages

Puppy. Puppies eat for the weight they are now, not the 14 lb adult they will become, and they need a recipe whose label claims the growth stage: our puppy list holds only those. Split the day's ration into three or four small meals while the stomach is small.

While growing. A Löwchen puppy's weight, and so its ration, changes monthly. For a puppy growing toward the breed's typical 14 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 13 to 15 year lifespan. A Löwchen at the low end of the exercise range in our profile (30 minutes) belongs nearer the easy keeper column; one worked or sported daily belongs nearer the active column.

Senior. For a small breed, old age is usually counted from about ten 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.

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 Löwchen's daily calories into that recipe's own measure, using the calorie line the maker prints. The full ranked set is our small 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 $13 a month for this breed, the same figure our profile publishes; the breakdown by tier is on the Löwchen 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.