Dry Matter Calculator | How to Calculate Pet Food Dry Matter?

Reviewed By : Rajashekhar Valipishetty

Last Updated : May 06, 2025

Utilise this Dry Matter Calculator tool to determine the dry matter content of a particular pet food brand and helps to compare it with other food brands easily. The tool takes the product protein, fat, fiber, and moisture details to generate the dry matter analysis and compare with other brands.

As-fed Dry Matter Calculator: This free calculator tool is useful for the people who wants to compare any two pet food products on the basis of dry matter content. It will analyse the data present the brand cover such as protein, fat, moisture, and fiber details for comparison. Here you will get the useful information such as how to calculate dry matter content, comparison of pet food and others.

How to Calculate Dry Matter Content?

The detailed step by step process to calculate the dry matter content of a dog food are given here.

Firstly make a note of the moisture percentage, nutrients and other details.
Subtract the moisture content percentage value from 100%.
Divide nutrient's percentage by the difference.
Multiply the result with 100% to check the dry matter percentage of the particular nutrient.
Repeat the process to find the dry matter percentage of other nutrients in the pet food.

Difference Between As-fed Basis and Dry Matter Basis

When buying food items for our pets, we have to select the best food we can afford that is rich in nutrients. However, comparisom of different food brands needs a better understanding of how to read the guaranteed analysis charts of ecah product. A guaranteed analysis chart gives the percentage of quantities of both micronutrients and macronutrients.

We know that every pet food package has a guaranteed analysis chart on it called "as-fed basis". Here the nutrient contents are in percentages that take into account the water content of the food.

To compare the pet foods, we want their moisture contents to be at 0% called the dry matter basis of the pet food. Here the percentages of the nutrients are after completely drying of the food.

How to use Dry Matter Calculator?

Observe the guaranteed analysis of the pet food pacakge such as protein, fat, fiber, and moisture deatils.
Enter all these input data.
Press the calculate button.
It will generate guaranteed analysis (dry matter basis) chart for both products.

FAQs on Dry Matter Calculator

1. What is a dry matter basis?

Dry matter basis is the percentage of nutrients in a pet food when its moisture content is 0%. It is useful to compare various pet foods when they have different moisture contents. In other words, we get the dry matter basis when we dry the pet food until there is no moisture content left in it.

2. How to convert dry matter to as-Fed?

For converting weights from a dry matter to an as-fed basis, divide the weight by the as-fed dry matter percentage value, represented as a decimal.

3. What is guaranteed analysis on pet food?

The guaranteed analysis is nothing but the amount of all nutrients in a pack of pet food. The amounts of the nutrients in a guaranteed analysis is denoted on an "as-fed basis". As-fed basis guaranteed analysis considers the percentages of the nutrients in relation to the moisture content of the pet food.

4. How to calculate the dry matter basis of dog food?

Follow these simple steps to find the dry matter basis of dog food.

Subtract the dog food's moisture percentage from 100%.
Divide nutrients value by the obtained difference.
Multiply the quotient by 100% to know the dry matter percentage of the nutrient.
Repeat the process to calculate the dry matter percentages of other nutrients in the dog food.