What commercial manufacturers call "dog food" is NOT actual FOOD, it is a profitable way of using up the otherwise-unmarketable scraps left over from making real food for people.
With REAL food you just feed whatever's available today, none of that tedious nonsense of mixing 25% of the new poison with 75% of the old poison.
Realise that dogs are canids, and canids - coyotes, dogs, foxes, jackals, wolves - are carnivores.
Their digestive system evolved to perfectly suit animal proteins, both carrion and fresh - birds, eggs, fish, insects, mammals, reptiles.
They lack the enzymes needed to firstly dissolve the cellulose walls of every plant cell, and to secondly convert the plant proteins into forms an omnivore can assimilate. Even if they did have those enzymes, their digestive tract is too short for those enzymes to have time to work. When a special plant diet is required, those enzymes have to be poured over the plant material and given time to "pre-digest" the plants before the dog eats them.
During the centuries of domestication, dogs have evolved slightly to thrive on cooked table scraps. Crushing & cooking (as with the flour we use) makes plant materials digestible, but at the cost of denaturing several of the valuable ingredients, especially the vitamins. In my opinion the heat applied during an extrusion process does not cook the plant protein enough. If you MUST feed kibbles, make sure that they are BAKED.
But the logical, natural diet for dogs is raw meat on small bones, supplemented with "leftovers" aka cooked table scraps. For a GSD, mice, rats, chickens can be eaten bones and all. Bones from sheep - tails, briskets, maybe ribs - make great gnaw-bones. Do NOT feed baked or roasted bones, but bones that have been given long slow pressure cooking are good - my dogs love it when I come home with a pack of KFC.
Those who consider kibble to be real food need to sit and think about what else has changed in the world of dogs since about 1965, apart from better veterinary techniques. That IS the period during which kibbles have gone from unheard-of to almost-universal. It is also the period in which allergies have escalated and GDV-bloat has increased by about 18,000%!!! See http://www.vet.purdue.edu/epi/bloat.htm - I think it is the third article that gives the increase & the period.
Table scraps:
"Predisposing factors that decreased the risk of GDV significantly were a "happy" temperament and inclusion of table foods in a usual diet consisting primarily of dry dog food." See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&li st_uids=9138229
ANYthing that reduces the intake of kibbles is an improvement!
When it comes to amounts, basically it is whatever she eats without stopping - as soon as she stops eating you remove the bowl. And she should be on 3 feeds a day at that age, then 2 meals a day from 6-through-10 months old.
You can't feed on a "so much per age" basis (and manufacturers want you to overfeed anyway) - it depends on how efficient is the dog's metabolism, and how much energy it burns off exercising/playing .
Assuming that she has a correct GSD coat, you eye will tell you whether she in correct condition, neither overweight nor underweight. The "rule" is that you should see the outline of every rib when she is working (gaiting, panting) but no more than the very last rib when she is rested.
Les P, owner of GSD_Friendly: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/GSD_Friendly
"In GSDs" as of 1967
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