Fera Pets launches a $49.95 weight and muscle chew for dogs

Vet-founded supplement maker Fera Pets launched Healthy Weight & Muscles, a dog chew priced at $49.95 for 90, on October 13th, 2026. Fera's site sold it that day, though the release also invites pre-orders.

The pitch rests on "clinically studied ingredients." Neither published dog trial we found of its postbiotic moved body weight.

The formula is three branded ingredients plus carnitine

Each chew carries 425 mg of myHMB, 300 mg of Betafin betaine, 150 mg of L-carnitine and 5 billion "HTC" of ADM's PRIOME Metabolic Health postbiotic, per Fera's product page. Dosing runs by weight, from half a chew a day under 15 pounds to four for the biggest dogs.

"As dogs age, they gradually lose muscle and gain fat, often without any change on the scale," co-founder Dr. Michelle Dulake said in the release. The Glendale, California company said in May it was expanding into Petco stores nationwide, and it launched a Longevity chew at the same $49.95 price in September. It was also a gold sponsor of a senior pet conference in September.

The studies test ingredients in athletes, kennel dogs and cats

Fera's page links one study per ingredient. None tests the finished chew, as Fera's own carnitine graphic says, and each was funded by a company that sells the ingredient or by a pet food maker.

• myHMB, a greyhound and sled-dog study funded by MTI Biotech, which originally developed HMB. It measured race times and blood work. Its authors call for work "to evaluate applicability to aging or sedentary companion dogs."
• L-carnitine, a Lonza-funded study of Labrador retrievers on a running program, where the carnitine group gained lean mass while controls lost it.
• Betaine, a Hill's-funded study of 48 dogs fed to hold their weight, which tracked blood metabolites.
• The postbiotic, an ADM-funded 24-cat gut-health trial of a different PRIOME product, built on Bifidobacterium longum CECT 7347.

Dog trials of the actual strain exist, and ADM scientists worked on both. Its 45-dog Labrador trial, published in January 2026, found that supplementation "did not significantly influence body weight, body condition score, or body composition during either phase of the study." The 15-dog postbiotic group did post a 6% smaller post-meal glucose curve than placebo during the weight-loss phase.

The authors say the short seven-week phases and modest weight change may explain the null weight result. A 2024 Journal of Animal Science trial in 36 dogs, with ADM co-authors, saw no difference in body weight or condition score. By our read, the most favorable published dog result for the weight ingredient is a blood sugar marker. Fera's own Hip + Joint page links that Labrador trial. The new weight chew's page does not.

The doses hold up by our math. A 45-pound dog gets two chews, about 42 mg of HMB per kilogram a day, above the greyhounds' 31 and 36 mg. It also gets 10 billion postbiotic "HTC," a unit Fera does not define. If that means heat-treated cells, it is double the Labrador trial's daily dose. That dog's supply costs $1.11 a day at list price.

Weight chews need outcome data, in our view

The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention's latest prevalence survey classified 59% of dogs seen at participating U.S. clinics as overweight or obese in 2022.

Prescription diets set a different bar. Hill's says on its Metabolic page that 96% of dogs lost weight at home in two months, a company-reported figure with no study details shown, but at least a claim about the finished food.

Regulation does not force the question. FDA decided in 1996 that the human supplement law does not cover animal products and regulates them as animal food or animal drugs, and Fera's release and product page report no trial of the finished chew. We argued last month that the next supplement winner brings outcome data to vets, and weight is one category where that gap shows.

If we had to guess, the brand that wins the weight aisle will run a placebo-controlled trial of its finished chew in overweight dogs, because that is the study a vet can set beside a prescription diet.

We found no published trial of the chew itself.‍

Source: Fera Pets via PR Newswire