I want to stop free feeding...

What brands? There should be calories listed on the packages, and thats really what it boils down to, taking into account the age and activity of the cats.

If the cats get along, you could just try what someone else recommended rather than measuring calories and trying to prevent them from stealing each other's food, which was just group feeding and then taking the food away. The cats will then just eat until they are full, limiting their intake.

Put down a bunch of dry food (could use a trough if you want heheh), and what they don't eat you just pour back into the bag. Ditto on the wet, put a couple big plates out, and what they don't finish put into a tupperware back into the fridge.

Could do dry in the morning, and wet at night.

When I had more then 2-3 cats in the house, I would feed each of them in a small bowl in different spots (large cage for those I could not trust to go eat other's food), treehouse, counter, floor.

They usually were spaced apart enough so that they all got finished about the same time.

We switched to all wet food non-free feeding in November. Well - one cat wouldn't switch, so he still gets dry food.

The guidelines for how much to feed are on the food. If none of your kitties are overweight, they self-regulate. So what I'd do is assume that as they're going to be fed three times a day, 2/3 of their calories will be coming from wet food. So whatever wet food you're feeding them, figure 1/3 of what they need should be given at those two meals. For the dry, measure out individually what 1/3 of the guidelines recommend. It is going to look like VERY little food if you're used to filling up one big bowl for them to free feed!

We have to "monitor" while they eat, and when a cat walks away from the bowl, we pick it up so the three piggies we have don't run around and finish other's bowls. Once they adjusted to the fact that they're on a schedule, for those that self-regulated to begin with, we try to adjust the amount we're feeding, so we're putting out the amount they're eating.

It will take them a few days to figure out they can't just eat whenever they feel like nibbling, and you're going to feel like you're starving them. (At least that's how it went for us).

But they'll catch on. And just keep an eye on them. Guidelines are just that - guidelines. We had a couple of cats lose some weight that we didn't think needed to (turns out we were wrong, and the vet felt their new weight was "perfect."). We still have three kitties that need to lose more weight, so once again, I've had to reduce the amount I'm feeding them.