When to change to adult dog food?

Question
Kristen, we would like to know when it is best to switch our dog to Adult dog
food. We have a 14 week old doberman pincher. We have been feeding her
Solid Gold Puppy food 3 times a day, about a cup and half per serving. I have
read in several books that it is a good idea to stop feeding a Doberman
Pincher puppy food at four or five months. I read this practice is thought to
help reduce the incidence of Panosteitis (wandering lameness) and reduce the
rapid growth produced by a higher ratio of protein found in most commercial
puppy foods. The Solid Gold is about 28% percent protein and the adult foods
run around 24%. Any help and insights you can give us would be helpful : ).  
Thank you,   Joe


Answer
Joe, I personally do not feed puppy food ever. If you want to switch your dog to adult food, I can see no reason why you shouldn't. If you know about how big he is going to be as an adult (how big are his parents?), when you put him on adult food, feed him the amount of food that it says to feed an adult that weighs 70 pounds, or however large you think he will be when he's grown. You will have to increase this amount as he goes through growth spurts, and then decrease it back down again when he is out of a growth spurt and starting to chunk up.

Panosteitis is caused by too-rapid growth, and occurs most often in chunky puppies.