Hello All,

We recieved our Willow from a rescue. They say she is malnourished. She is very skinny, you can feel her ribs. They say she is about a year old and has had a litter of puppies.

She weighs just under 35 pounds. At a year old, how much do huskies weigh in your experience?

Take a look at our Weigh in topic and that can give you a ok idea of where some of ours are weighing in at but every dog/husky is different. Jack was a bit skinny when we adopted him and with in 2-3 months of finding a good grain free food for him he started putting the weight on and is now at a healthy weight. what you don't want to do is to start just feeding her food to "fatten" her up. do some food research we have a topic section on that as well and get her on a GOOD food and feed her the recommended amounts and she will start to fill in. you said she had a litter, is she fixed now? female weight is between 40-50lbs i think for huskies.

Thanks for such a quick reply. I will look for the Weigh in topic.

Yes we do feed grain free to our cats so it was natural that we feed Willow the same good stuff. I will also look for the feeding topic as I was wondering how to go about getting her a little plumper.

Yes she is fixed now.

Thanks!

i just read your other post and saw TOTW listed as what you feed, thats what we feed. since you have only had her a few weeks give the food time to work, don't force more down her then is suggested, we do 1 cup in the morning and 1 at night. the weight will come on, just give her time, you don't want to end up with a "fat" husky, the weight is even harder to take off! from her picture i don't think she has that much more to put on.

A couple things. First, she's only a year old and if she's 35 lbs now, she's right on target. She might be slightly malnourished, but huskies generally look SUPER lanky and skinny when they're growing. Huskies grow until they are at least 2 years old, sometimes as long as 3 years old to fill out completely. The female standard is about 30-50 lbs for a full grown female. She should probably go through one more small growth spurt at 15-18 months and then fill out from then on. She actually seems pretty tall from her picture

Hailey is 45 lbs and gets 1 cup a DAY of TOTW. So 1/2 cup AM, 1/2 cup PM. Anymore than that and she starts to put on weight. I would feed Willow no more than 3/4 cup- 1 full 2x a day to let her put on some pounds and then bring her down accordingly once she starts to level out.

You mention you can feel her ribs though. You SHOULD be able to feel them, not seem them and her hip bones shouldn't be protruding (which she looks borderline on, so I do think you're right, but feeling her ribs shouldn't be your indicator)

I couldn't find the pics of our Mika, must be on the other computer. Maybe I put in an earlier post...anyway, when we adopted her, she was way too skinny....she was fixed the day before we picked her up. Now she is one of those "fat" huskies Jenn is talking about. Not sure for certain how much weight she put on, but she will steal the other's food if they walk away from it.

Our food isn't grain-free, but is a quality product, and doesn't upset their tummies like other foods can. It didn't take Mika long to put on they weight, so you do have to be cautious.

Lots of good info. Thank you. I did read the thread about what you are feeding your dogs. Going to have to tell hubby to cut back on the food. He is feeding her 3 cans a day. Her farts are nasty!

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not to mention caned food is bad for the teeth as it causes build up on them as well since it tends to sick to the teeth.