How Much Weight Should a Puppy Gain Per Week?
There is no single right number, because it depends on how big your puppy will be and how old it is now. What matters most is a steady growth curve and a good body shape: ribs easy to feel under a thin layer of fat, and a visible waist.
To see where your puppy is on its curve, use the puppy weight calculator.
How to tell if the weekly gain is right
Instead of one target number, vets compare a puppy with a growth chart for its size. The WALTHAM Puppy Growth Charts were built from the weights of 50,000 healthy young dogs recorded at Banfield Pet Hospitals in the USA. There are 14 charts, for male and female puppies in seven size groups, tracking growth from 12 weeks old to adulthood. How to use them:
- Weigh your puppy every week or two and write the weight down with the date.
- Plot the weights on the chart for your puppy’s sex and expected adult size.
- Check the line. A healthy puppy tends to follow the curve it started on. A line that flattens, drops, or climbs across the curves is a reason to talk to your vet.
What the charts show in general: puppies grow fast at first and then slow down, smaller dogs stop growing sooner, and big dogs keep gaining for longer. WALTHAM says small breeds (under 9 kg) are full grown in about a year, a 30–40 kg dog in about 18 months, and some giant breeds take almost two years.
How much weight should a puppy gain per day?
Daily gain is too small and too noisy to judge on its own. Puppies gain in spurts, and a scale reading can swing with a full stomach or bladder. Look at the trend over two or three weigh-ins rather than one day.
How much weight should a puppy gain in a month?
Look at the month as a whole on the growth chart: the gain should keep your puppy on roughly the same curve. The monthly gain gets smaller as your puppy gets close to its adult size, and that happens sooner in small breeds than in large and giant ones.
How to weigh your puppy
- Small puppies: use a kitchen or baby scale.
- Bigger puppies: weigh yourself holding the puppy, then yourself alone, and subtract.
- Same time, same scale. Weigh at the same time of day, before a meal, every week or two.
- Write it down. A simple list of dates and weights shows the curve much better than memory.
When to call your vet
Growth curves vary, but talk to your vet if your puppy:
- stops gaining or loses weight
- gains much faster than usual and is getting round, with ribs hard to feel
- has diarrhoea, vomiting or a poor appetite alongside weight changes
Large and giant breed puppies should not be pushed to grow fast. Feeding the right amount of a large-breed puppy food helps them grow at a steady pace.
Feeding for healthy growth
How much your puppy eats drives how fast it grows. The puppy food calculator uses the NRC growth formula with your puppy’s weight and expected adult size. Recalculate every couple of weeks, because the right amount changes as your puppy gets bigger.
Track your puppy’s growth and expected adult size with the puppy weight calculator.
Sources: WALTHAM Petcare Science Institute puppy growth charts; Salt C. et al. (2017) Growth standard charts for monitoring bodyweight in dogs of different sizes, PLOS ONE 12(9): e0182064; NRC (2006) puppy growth energy equation. General information, not veterinary advice.