Raw food for Akita after weight loss on patties

Weight loss on commercial raw patties is more common than it should be — and for an Akita it's a real concern because they're a large, muscular breed with higher caloric needs than most people expect. Raw feeding done well can be excellent, but done badly it creates nutritional gaps and simply not enough food to maintain condition. The difference is balance, calorie density, and getting the portion right for the individual dog. Before I point you toward something better, can you tell me a bit more — how much does your Akita weigh right now, and roughly how much of the patties were you feeding per day? That'll help me understand whether this was a quantity problem, a product quality problem, or both.

That's the problem right there — 400g a day for a 42kg active Akita is significantly undereating. A working-weight adult dog of his size and activity level typically needs somewhere between 700g and 900g of raw food daily, around 2–2.5% of their ideal body weight. Those patties likely gave no clear feeding guide for large breeds, which is a common failure with that format. He hasn't gone off raw food — he's just been hungry for three months. What brand of patties were you using, and do you know whether they were nutritionally complete, or did they need supplements added?

Completely reasonable — and actually a complete ready-made product is the right call if you're not going to weigh and calculate yourself, because DIY done carelessly is exactly what causes the long-term nutritional harm. My recommendation for your Akita is Natures Menu Country Hunter Raw Nuggets. They're frozen, genuinely nutritionally complete to FEDIAF standards, made with 70–80% named meat and offal with added botanicals, and the nugget format makes portion control straightforward — you weigh out what you need rather than being locked into a fixed patty size. For a dog coming back up from 38kg toward his ideal 42kg, I'd start him at around 800g a day split across two meals, then adjust over four to six weeks as he regains condition. They're available in several proteins — chicken, duck, rabbit, and venison — which also helps if he develops any protein sensitivity over time.

Start with chicken or turkey — they're the most digestible, and after three months of underfeeding his gut may need a gentler reintroduction to a higher volume of food. Introduce the new product over five to seven days by mixing it with a small amount of whatever he's been eating as a transition buffer, then move him fully across. Once he's settled and gaining weight steadily — usually four to six weeks in — you can rotate proteins if you want the nutritional variety. Keep an eye on his stools: well-formed and not too loose is your sign the quantity and food are both working. If he's consistently producing small, chalky stools, that's often a sign of too much bone content, which you can flag with the brand.

Getting the calories right is by far the biggest lever — everything else is secondary. That said, a few things worth doing: weigh him every two weeks on the same scales so you can track progress objectively rather than guessing by feel. If he's not gaining after three weeks at 800g, increase to 850–900g before assuming anything more complex is going on. It's also worth a vet check if you haven't had one since the weight loss started — three months of undernutrition in a six-year-old Akita is worth ruling out any secondary issue that the weight loss may have masked. But honestly, my strong expectation is that consistent, properly portioned complete raw food is all he needs.