How to bulk up a Rottweiler? If your Rottweiler seems way too skinny, you are most likely not providing enough nutrition for your dog. The average adult Rottweiler should be eating up to 2500 calories a day if they’re considered to be very active. But this number shouldn’t be satisfied with only dry dog food for Rottweilers, only meat, or only vegetables. Bulking your Rottweiler up requires the right balance of nutrients.
So, how to bulk up* a Rottweiler? To do this, your dog should base its diet on lean protein-heavy dishes that are beef-based or chicken-based. Pork is not recommended as they tend to contain a lot of fat.
So exactly what kind of food do you have to feed to bulk your Rottweiler up? In fact, should you even try to bulk your dog up? What are the benefits and risks of becoming more muscular and heavier?
Bulking up in this article will be defined as “to gain weight especially by becoming more muscular” (per Merriam-Webster). Emphasis on the latter part: “becoming more muscular”. You do not want to make your dog fat. That isn’t the goal here. Instead, you want your Rottweiler to be the muscular, fit, athletic Rottweiler that the breed is known to be.
Menus That Can Help Your Rottweiler Bulk Up
We’ve done the research for you!
Here are a few of our favorite menus that are safe for you to feed your Rottweiler and will help your Rottweiler bulk up!
1. Bowl of Spinach, Zucchini, Peas, Carrots, and Ground Chicken
This dish (by Damn Delicious) requires very little preparation. It’s almost like a bowl that you can find in Chipotle.
All you need are, as per the name:
- Spinach
- Zucchini
- Peas
- Carrots
- Ground chicken
As you may or may not be able to tell, this recipe does not include anything that has animal fat (vegetable fats are okay). Animal fats are terrible for helping your Rottweiler bulk up: it causes your companion to eat less. Therefore, use ground chicken as your main source of protein for this dish.
The main benefit of this bowl is that carrots contain a lot of vitamins, meaning that it will boost your dog’s immune system.
Sicknesses are the archenemies of dogs that want to bulk up.
Dogs won’t be able to exercise, eat well, and sleep well, leading to even more weight loss. To prevent this, feed your dog carrots!
Another benefit, of course, is that the protein is coming from a very, very lean source.
Ground chicken (even better if it’s ground chicken breast) is easy to digest and difficult to fail. Moreover, since the ground chicken isn’t served raw, there is little to no risk of food poisoning.
Again, you don’t want your best friend to be sick! You also can’t forget that proteins that are found in chickens are used to develop your dog’s muscles. This dish is amazing for bulking up!
Spinach and peas contribute to the daily doses of vegetables your dog should be eating. Again, the definition of bulking up isn’t to get fat. It’s to gain more muscle mass. Vegetables help break down the fats that are stored (inevitably from snacks), making it easier to burn through all of them when you and your Rottweiler go for an exercise session.
All in all, this bowl is a type of superfood: it’s great in protein, breaking down fat, and preventing sickness. As long as your dog finishes this bowl, it will be willing to exercise because it will be full of all that healthy energy!
2. Crockpot Dog Food
Again by Damn Delicious, here is a very simple recipe that requires minimal cooking yet includes all necessary ingredients in order to help your dog bulk up all the while staying healthy.
To make this dish, however, you do need a crockpot, as suggested in the title. Also, this does take a long time to prepare, but it’s all for your Rottweiler!
The meal consists of:
- Ground beef
- Kidney beans
- Butternut squash
- Chopped carrots
- Peas
Do you see the similarity here? Carrots and peas again! But the dish has so many other advantages too.
What you want to do for this dish is to leave it in a pot for 3 hours.
Obviously, this would make the vegetables and the meat very soft and tender. This is where the first advantage lies: because the food is so easy to eat, it is digestible.
If your dog is suffering from digestive problems, it really shouldn’t have any problem digesting this menu because all ingredients are not processed and very soft due to the long period of cooking.
Another benefit comes from the ground beef specifically. Beef, unlike chicken, contains a lot of iron even after it is cooked. Iron is essential for dogs when it comes to how bright or energetic your dog is.
If your Rottweiler is suffering from iron deficiency, it won’t be able to exercise to convert all of the calories it intakes into muscle mass. In other words, your dog won’t be bulking up. Instead, it would only be gaining weight. Beef helps you veer away from falling into such a trap with its high iron concentration!
Butternut squash is another reason why this dish is so healthy. Nutty fats tend to be great for dogs.
In contrast to animal fats, nutty fats are so much easier to digest due to their chemical compositions and how well it works with the dog’s enzymes. It goes without saying that though your Rottweiler doesn’t really need too much fat, it’s always good to have small doses in your dishes. Butternut squashes should be just enough!
Benefits And Risks Of Bulking Up
1. Benefit: Athleticism
A dog that lives off of a healthy diet in order to bulk up will be very, very athletic. This means that it will most likely love to exercise because, as all animals go, your Rottweiler has to find a way to burn all the excess energy that is being produced by all the good food you’ve been feeding it.
Make sure to be exercising at least once a day.
You’re supplying your dog with a lot of food; it needs to digest all of it and burn all of the energy to continue bulking up. The worst-case scenario is when you do not take your dog to exercise.
All that food might make your dog lethargic. At that point, your Rottweiler will only be gaining weight.
2. Risk: Too Heavy
By too heavy, we mean that your dog might have too much muscle mass for its own good.
Male Rottweilers weigh around 60 kilograms on average. Though you have been feeding great food, your companion’s bones can only develop so much.
If the dog’s joints and bones aren’t well taken care of, all that muscle mass might cause too much stress, making the bulk up process harmful for your best friend.
To prevent this, I suggest that you visit a veterinarian and consult with such professionals when you’re deciding on how you should bulk up a Rottweiler. They will most likely give you a target weight that your dog should be in depending on how much you want your dog to bulk up!
Related Questions
We recommend that you start the bulking up process once your Rottweiler is an adult. Only be concerned when your puppy is severely underweight. Usually, their physiques change over time!
Do not force your dog to do anything. However, if your dog is malnourished yet still doesn’t want to take a bite off of all the good food that you prepare, do have it checked up by a veterinarian.
