How Many Calories Do Huskies Need – My Happy Husky

Knowing how many calories your husky needs is super important. It helps with a growing pup, portioning out food, and giving treats.

Huskies can have weight troubles, so it’s crucial to grasp how many calories they eat each day and where they come from. Don’t worry, it’s not tricky, and the info below is simple to follow. 🐶🍽️

Adult Husky Calorie Needs

The recommended daily caloric intake for an adult Siberian husky is about 1000-1200 calories per day, depending on their activity levels.

Most adult huskies (2-8 years) will be just fine with about 1000-1200 calories per day, assuming they have a regular exercise schedule (90 minutes per day).

At first this might surprise people as this is relatively low for such an active breed. And it shocked me too!

But the truth is that huskies have such an efficient metabolism, that they utilize their food/calories to their energy very well. And so they don’t need much food to maintain their weight and health. Some huskies won’t even need 1000 calories.

This ability was learned thousands of years ago when huskies needed to run for many miles on very little food.

Husky Puppy Calorie Needs

Husky pups need a lot more calories than their parents, and this is to support their rapid growth stage from 2 to 8 months.

Husky puppies need around 1300-1800 calories, depending on how active they are. For most, 1500 calories will be the sweet spot and will provide sufficient nutrition to support their aggressive growth.

High-quality premium puppy food tailored for medium to large working dogs should contain this many calories in 2 or 3 cups.

Most of the calories should come from protein, fat with carbs on the lower end. If you spot a high carb content then this might not be appropriate. Huskies thrive on high protein diet with limited carbs.

Senior Huskies & Calories

For huskies in their twilight years, they won’t need so many calories like adults and puppies.

Siberian huskies over the age of 8 are usually good with 700-900 calories. Again this does depend on their health and activity levels.

It’s hard to gauge a senior dogs calorie needs and but owners should be able to gauge this relatively easy by considering their husky’s weight.

As long as your husky remains active, energetic, and their weight is stable, it’s likely their caloric intake is just right.

Husky Calories By Age (roughly)

This is a rough guideline: your husky might need something slightly different. But this can give you a good idea of how much your husky should consume.

• Huskies 2-3 months – 1100-1300
• Huskies 3-8 months – 1300-1500
• Huskies 8-10 months – 1100-1300
• Huskies 12 months over – 1000-1200
• Huskies over 3 years – 900-1200 depending upon activity
• Huskies over 8 years – 700-900 depending upon health and activity

Again, this is a rough guideline we’ve come up with based on the last decade working with huskies while analyzing their weight and exercise levels.

It is always important to contact your vet if you’re unsure about feeding your puppy, their weight, or their exercise levels.

How Calories Affect Treats

A key part of your husky’s day is of course receiving delicious treats!

Treats are an essential tool we need to use for training purposes and positive reinforcement. And also because our huskies are the just the best!

Still, we shouldn’t blindly give our dogs treats without knowing about calories. This is how weight gain happens quickly.

As a general rule of thumb, your husky should not consume more than 10% of their daily calories from treats. So if you have an adult currently consuming 1000 calories per day with an ideal weight, they should not be receiving more than 100 calories worth of treats. (900 from food, 100 from treats 👍).

How many individual treats you can give comes down to how many calories are in each treat. This is why I’ve always recommended low-calorie dog treats like Zukes Mini Naturals, which only have about 3-4 calories per treat. This means I can give a lot before hitting the 10% mark. Perfect for prolonged training activities and positive reinforcement.

A Word on Dog Calorie Calculators

We’re aware that many dog calorie calculators out there can give a good starting idea, but they get a little excessive in some situations.

If you calculate the calories needed for highly active huskies, a dog calorie calculator might spit out 6 or 7 thousand calories as their daily need. And this is way too much.

In most cases, when using a dog calorie calculator, we found that it overestimated the necessary calories for an adult husky by quite a bit in most scenarios.

Unsure about calories?

For those that are still very unsure about calories feel free to shoot us a message, or contact your local vet for extra guidance.

Thanks for reading! Back to more articles