my pup is a little underweight and im not sure what to feed him as ive had conflicting advice. he is currently on eukanuba puppy large breed and you can see his ribs. he doesnt look like a rescue case though and is very energetic.i also want to start to show him now hs old enough
  the vet told me just to give him as much as he wants but to stick with just the eukanuba,
however the breeders at the breed group say to feed him meat and pasta and that dried isnt that great.
i dont want him to put on too much weight just enough so you cant see his ribs, other than this he has a lovely coat and is very healthy

hiya ellibelli,

my sister has the same prob with both her youngest boxer. She added tripe to his burns to bulk him up a bit. It worked, but as soon as she stopped the tripe and increased the burns, it made no difference at all and the weight dropped. It was because he has a rice, potato starch, wheat, soya, and allsorts of other allergy! He's now on a royal canin prescription food, and his weight has increased and is consistent.

i'd have thought though, that euk on its own should be ok. Have you considered switching from euk? It may be he doesn't agree with him.

how old's your pup? He'll be growing at such a rate that keeping a consistent weight would be difficult. My oldest lab fluctuated all the time. So long as he's healthy and happy, i wouldn't be overly concerned.

nic

hes 6mth. i have considered changing as ive recently heard bad things bout euk and testing etc but havent long since bought a sack and you know how expensive it is. i will probably change at the end of it but havent a clue what to change it to

Hi Ellibelli, just to provide a bit of reassurance, your puppy sounds absolutely normal to me. Boxer babies are lean looking anyway, and I always think it's much better to be slightly on the lean side than the roly poly side at this age. If his poos are firm and he's got plenty of energy and he's eating the food, then I'd leave well alone. You'll see a big change in him as the months go by, as he develops and matures. I would think he'll be about 2 to 2 1/2 years old before he's fully mature, you can't rush these things.

Regards, Dawn R.

Wouldn't worry too much about feeding meat and pasta.

It's all about feeding the right food for your dog - all dogs are different what is right
for one isn't necessarily the right one for another.

I've tried many complete foods for my Boxers at the moment I'm feeding my 'junior'
on James Wellbeloved fish and rice junior with half 400gr tin of butchers tripe in each of
her 2 meals. She seems to keep just enough weight on this balance. Give her just the adult version
of fish and rice with tinned tripe and she drops weight and becomes too lean.
She seems to prefer the fish varieties of dog food and doesn't really go that much on either chicken or
lamb versions or even the turkey version!

It's all about trial and error if you want to change your dogs food do so over a period of 5-7 days
slowly introducing the new food and reducing the old food until you are feeding all the new food
by the 5-7th day.

Boxers can be on the lean side until they 'mature' or body-up which is typically the 18months-2 years old.
Which is precisely what my junior is doing at the moment (she's a slow maturer).