Dangers of Free Feeding

Feeding your pet at specific meal times is better than free feeding. Free feeding can lead to over-eating and obesity. It can also be hard to determine if your pet is sick and has stopped eating, especially when there are multiple pets in the home. Obesity can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and joint disease. To keep your pets healthy we recommend measuring out the food and meal feeding your pet versus leaving the bowl sit all day and letting them graze.

If you are currently free feeding your pet but want to switch them to meal feeding, here is how: Leave the food out for 30 minutes. When that 30 minutes is up take the food away. Your pet will eventually figure out that the food is gone after that amount of time. It will take some time to adjust but eventually they will figure out that the food is only there for a limited amount of time.

You should also measure out how much you are feeding to prevent obesity. Keeping your pet on a strict caloric intake will help them to stay lean and may help them to live longer.