jorgelito

You know, I hear alot about how bad it is for dogs to chew on bones, especially chicken bones. I occasionally give my doggie chicken bones, and shirt rib bones etc. But only if I'm there to "supervise". SO far I don't see a problem, my assumptiln is that the dog knows what she is doing and will stop or plan her chewing accordingly. Is the chicken bone scare just that, a scare? HOw about other bones?

Are chicken skins bad? I'm beginning to wonder about fat/cholestrol for my doggie now.

Lady Sage

I tend to avoid giving the dog bones of any kind. Chicken bones tend to splinter, but dogs love bone marrow and my mom used to give my elderly pommeranian bones from chuck roast and she would slobber endlessly over them. Lived to the ripe old age of 14 1/2.

Chicken skin is riddled with fat and usually salt.... icky ucky poo (but it tastes so good)

jorgelito

Hmmm...I suppose if a dog can have eggs, then they could have skins too (unseasoned of course)?

Lady Sage

Lots of fat... fat bad, very bad.... causes heart problems...

flat5

When I was a kid, my family had a dog - over grown Shepland Sheep.

One day she could not close her mouth.
She had a chicken bone stuck in her mouth.
The Vet got it out.
Dogs are not patient eaters. They are not careful with bones.

Elphaba

We would give our newfies beef knuckle bones and they would chew away on them for days until they licked all the marrow out. I have only known of one dog that was given chicken bones (hubby's), but I put a stop to it.

There is often something to the "old wives tales."


Addition: Update on my rottie's diet. I eliminated all table scraps and fat from my fat boy's meals and he is already beginning to slim down a bit. Better yet, he is walking with greater ease and joined in a rabbit chase or two.

JStrider

when we would go deer hunting after the butchering we would always give one of the leg bones to the dog... he loved it and would go to town. Never seemed to have any adverse affects, he lived to like 13 or 14 and he was a really big dog.

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Willravel

Chicken bones are not a scare. A friend of mine fed his dog cooked chicken bones and they splintered, just like the suggested urban myth, and they do a lot of damage. Uncooked pork and beef bones are okay.

roachboy

i feed su tong the wonder husky uncooked chicken on a regular basis.
he loves it...but i have to be quite careful about where i get it from.

uncooked is fine: cooked is a problem because the bones splinter.

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*Nikki*

NO BONES FROM ANIMALS ARE OK. Chicken bones are the worst and do splinter and cause internal bleeding and tearing. All other bones can cause blockages and internal bleeding as well. I would never give my pet one no matter how many he has consumed in the past.

Stick with a rope toy perhaps soaked in fat free chicken broth to keep the pet interested.

zipper

RAW chicken bones are GREAT for your dog...Cooked chicken bones are BAD.

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roachboy

i think i put the post above in the wrong thread, actually.
there are several going at once concerning pets.
not sure why i got confused, but i did. senility maybe.

i would much prefer to feed su tong the wonder husky raw chicken than the mashed up crap pedalled to dog owners in cans. in the main. besides, he wont eat most of the commercial brands available. i dont think he likes ground up meat processing by products. mybae they taste too much like concrete floor or industrial machinery.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

absorbentishe

My sister in law worked at vet hospital, she can tell stories about chicken bones and dogs. Moral is, buy the fake bones at the stores.

thingstodo

I've always heard that chicken and pork bones splinter, so they don't get them. I've also heard that pork is a little trouble for dogs to process and can cause kidney problems - or maybe it is liver. Either way, mine get none of the above.

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jorgelito

Ok, so cooked chicken bones (all bones) are out. But raw is ok? Wow, I never knew that. I just assumed that it would be safer if it was cooked. No salmonella and what-not. Also, I thought if the bones softened up, then it would be easier for the dog to eat. What about those roasted bones they sell at pet stores? Part of the problem is I usually cook my meats with the bone on (I smell a new thread in Tilted Cooking) so it's always been easy to just give the dog a bone afterwards.

Does anyone go to the store (grocery or butcher) to pick up bones and/or scraps specifically for their dogs?

Well, no more chicken bones for my doggie then. I will stick to steak bones etc (raw of course).

roachboy

i have had my husky for 6 years and his main diet is raw chicken--not exclusively but in the main--i only give him raw legs, tho (sometimes quarters, sometimes drumsticks) and am careful where i get them (you know--actual working refrigeration in the store, which is not a given)...

cooked is not good for dogs, like folk have said above: raw is fine, but i wouldn't give su tong a chicken breast whole or in parts.

i dunno about other meats.

i used to get meat and bones at the butcher when i lived in neighborhoods that had them. cheap and easy and good quality--and once the butcher met su tong, often free. the advantage of having a moviestar-like dog you see.

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it make you sick.

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morpheus01

Myth, myth, myth - corporate "Pedigree Mates" dogfood company myth (well maybe!!)

My dogs have been eating chicken bones, cooked and uncooked, for years. This is because my Spanish fiances mother gave them to her dogs all her life and my fiance told me (her mam doesn't speak ingles) - we haven't had choking problems.

Can't speak for those of you that say you know of dogs that choked. By the way I believe you - and am sure you're not employed by some dogfood company or something but just to letting you know that Senora Otero and myself never had problems - if you do the math (that's a lot of chicken bones without much choking).

Or maybe it has something to do with the size of dog. Mine were always Lab/Mastiff crosses (eats every last bone whole) - medium sized. Mrs Oteros were Cockers. Anyway they were all wolves/foxes at some stage though weren't they? You don't see many of them dying on Discovery after eating birds!

I'd also like to mention having seen broken cooked and uncooked chicken bones - has anyone seen a study which tells us cooked are more dangerous. Uncooked bones seem and feel much sharper.

Morpheu01

ps. Erm what's the story with the statement "NO BONES FROM ANIMALS ARE GOOD"!! I take it then that bones from plants are good to go then?

shakran

No, raw is not OK. Raw bones can still cause problems. If you want to feed your dog raw chicken (I certainly wouldn't, considering the way chicken is processed, which is virtually guaranteed to infest ALL chicken meat with bacteria that needs to be killed through cooking) then cut it off the bone and throw the bones away.

morpheus01

Fair enough point Shakran. What bacteria are you talking about that needs to be killed though? are you sure you're not being a little paranoid?

Myself, Roachboy and Mrs Oteros dogs have been living the life of Riley.

Cool avatar by the way... where did you get it?

roachboy

actually, the industrial chicken that i have purchased (usually by mistake, or from an outlet that doesn't label what they sell) for su tong does cause some trouble--but not because of the bones--more because of the crap introduced during/by processing--industrial chicken gives him diarrhea. every time. which just goes to show: i wouldn't feed purdue to my dog.

it's possible that the safety of raw chicken may differ by breed/size: su tong is a siberian husky---maybe size is a consideration--small dogs may have a different time of it--i dont know.

what i do know is that he really really loves raw chicken.
and he is a very healthy dog (yay!).
and the other thing i do know is that i would not give him cooked bones.

in the end, there is a ton of mutually exclusive information out there about this topic.
when i decided to start feeding him raw chicken, i did so while i was still subscribed to a siberian husky e-list that had a ton of breeders and other neurotics who posted---i simply kept a bit of track of what the breeders said about it.
at this point, i am fairly sure of what works for him and what doesn't because of 6 years of hanging out with the old boy.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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shakran

Campylobacter, which causes diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever, and Salmonella (we all know what that does). These are the two leading bacterial causes of food poisoning. A recent study (published by Consumer reports, discussed in an article on the Cox newswires in December of last year (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/co...OX_A7663.html)) shows that 83% of raw chicken has one or both of these bacteria.

I used to feed my old dog boiled chicken, and considering that my job requires me to eat on the run most of the time, the dog ate considerably better than I do

Thanks for the compliment - - I generated the avatar in Avid Newscutter as a colorbar video file, stilled a frame of it, and reduced its size to fit the forum.

One week later I found an avatar online exactly the same size as mine, which looked exactly like mine, so I could have saved myself a lot of trouble :P

morpheus01

Well said Roachy... there's plenty of perspectives on this.

Though I haven't heard many people saying they've fed their dogs that many cooked bones and that the dogs have been ok. Or any scientific evidence as to why cooked bones are more dangerous. Can we send something into mythbusters about this?? I don't think the billion dollar dog food industry is going to help us find out. KFC is Calvin's favourite.

Brewmaniac

I've been told by at least three vets no bones, except boxed from store and if you must, only beef round neck bones that a dog can't bust apart and splinter.

Atropos4

The only bones I will give my dogs are the big beef soup bones you can buy and give them raw at the store. My dog has yet to be able to break them. She chews the raw meat off and somehow gets the marrow out but can't break them.

I had a big husky/malmute/wolf mixmutt when I was a kid that actually ate one of the neighbors geese. He ended up getting put to sleep because the bones tore up his insides extensively.
I also work at a vet clinic and it's common knowledge that chicken and pork bones are not good for dogs.

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morpheus01

Strange how the dog ate geese that one time and was put down when my own Roachy's, willravel's, zipper's, the others from the above posts, my girlfriends mams and, from the below websites, thousands of other dogs have clearly eaten tons of chicken bones and are fine.

Logically the only explanation is that it's a wild coincidence.

I don't think from these sites it's black and white amongst vets either. I also know that in developing countries dogs are given chicken bones without a second thought.

http://dogs.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Dog_And_Chicken_Bones
http://www.northcoastmarines.com/barf.htm
http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/200...es/2003?p=3363
http://www.ukrmb.co.uk/showcontent.toy?contentnid=7209
http://www.community-media.com/wordpress/?p=377

check out the following site on climate change due to wasted food in landfills.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6456987.stm

Also (please keep an open mind when you read this) even if the majority of western educated vets are saying one thing does that mean we should automatically assume they're right? In the 1970's everyone assumed U.S. psychiatrists were always right until a group of psychiatric students proved the whole system was flawed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

All I'm saying is an independant study needs to be done (not one where they look at 20 dogs fed bones over a period of one week and we're told this represents the worlds dog population) long lasting one involving many dogs.

An experiment to find out if cooked or raw bones are sharper would be easy. I already sent in something to mythbusters.

If we are being lied to then it should be exposed.

pan6467

When I had my DinkyDawg (she's a chihuahua) and I ate a T-bone steak I always gave her the bone with plent of meat and she'd clean the meat off in no time. Then naw on that bone for days.

Chicken bones however are full of air and splinter. I was told by a vet friend of mine that chicken bones can rip the dog's esophegus up. But beef or pork bones are normally ok.

Oh and BTW..... I used to feed DinkyDawg food right off my fork..... a bite for me... a bite for DinkyDawg..... LS had to break me of that habit.

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Acetylene

I've broken cooked chicken bones with my bare hands and observed the sharp splinters that result. Just because some dogs seem to have been lucky so far does not mean that YOUR dog is safe from chicken bones. I would never feed chicken bones to my dog.I only give her hard beef bones that she isn't strong enough to break, such as knuckles.

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mtsgsd

Remember that these are animals that didn't always have us to feed them, and that dog food it's self is only 50 years old!

Cooked bones can be dangerous, but in raw form, chicken bones or other soft bones work as fiber for your dog. Look for a book called "give your dog a bone" by Dr. Billinghurst for more info. My wife and I get a kick out of threads like this because we are always getting email from people from European countries asking what the big deal is about raw food. It's all they have to feed their pets with, because they don't have some miser trying to pawn off waste products as pet food.

You can also check out our web site:
http://www.rawdogranch.com

morpheus01

Well then, my dog has been LUCKY thousands of times, and so has this guys

http://www.community-media.com/wordpress/?p=377

...and apparently so have many others. Look at the picture of my dog, he's pretty healthy looking isn't he, and dead happy. I believed this stuff too, until I heard about my girlfriends mams dogs and I thought about what the hell we were saying.

Seriously. They're dogs for god's sake! Do you really think they're that different to the dogs people own in Africa or the middle east. Do you think they carefully put their cooked chicken bones in the compost heap after eating them so their dogs don't have access?? NO THEY DON'T. And the dogs are probably dying of getting hit by cars more than choking. This is crazy.

I still think the uncooked seem sharper.

mtsgsd

I hear you, but try cutting through a chicken bone with poultry shears. uncooked and cooked. I think you'll see a difference.

Our Pack (6 dogs) has gone through about 10 thousand pounds of raw meaty bones in the last 8 years or so. Most of that chicken. I admit I use to cringe when I heard them crunching bones like candy, but it really is safe.

Now. That being said, you also have to use common sense. Our little corgi mix will bolt her food without even chewing it if she can, so we have to make sure she gets bite size pieces instead of something that might choke her. A big dog like a Rottweiller can handle turkey neck bones, but a small dog would have too much trouble biting through them etc.

There are many raw-feeding boards on yahoo if anyone is interested in learning more. Lots of people to talk to and get advice from. Just search on BARF (bones and raw food) or raw feeding.

777

Maybe the breed and size of does have something to with it. We have a chihuahua, we never had a problem giving him bones. We just make sure that he only get's bones that are larger than a person's thumb. Such as a chicken drumstick, and maybe thigh bones, but nothing smaller. And it's fun watching him naw on large beef bones that are too big for his mouth. After the constant nawing, we notice that it's been reduced to his size

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CountryFamily

Any time we give our pet anything that is debatable with good solid information on both sides of why or why not to do it then we are taking a chance!!

My first dog did ok, too, on bones until all of a sudden it only took once to almost take her life. That was all it took for me to learn but at that time I had no one tell me about the dangers of any bones.

Your pet can do ok for years or not on bones but all it takes is one time to kill them or cause injury! Think about it and if that is worth the risk??

I liked what the one person posted about how fast some animals eat and that is so true especially with my last two dogs. As fast as they eat they would had gotten choked for sure if I gave them bones of any kind.

Just something to think about is all.

morpheus01

Goddamn it man, I'm sure thousands of dogs almost choke on their dog biscuits every day too, but we don't start to talk about stopping feeding them.

I reiterate; my dog, associates of my dog, including his best mates, everyone I mentioned above and 777's dog two posts above have eaten 100s of thousands of bones and are ok.

I'm not letting this go. If you feel strongly about this, then please post something into Mythbusters (and get them to prove it once and for all!!!)

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/my...thbusters.html

Thank you.

ps. I'm determined for some experiment to take place. I'm currently studying in my final year degree at night time (as well as training to be a top flight footballer!). But I will keep putting this forward come June...

shakran

mythbusters is not going to feed stuff to a dog to see if it dies.

Y'know, your argument, morpheus01, sounds a lot like the people back in the 60's who bitched about seatbelts. "Goddammit, none of my friends have died driving, why the hell should I get seatbelts?"

morpheus01

Erm shakran, what are you talking about? Did you read the above posts? The experiment would be to see whether uncooked broken chicken bones are sharper than cooked ones. This is because several people seem to have established uncooked bones are safe to feed to dogs.

I wasn't even born in the 60's. What the hell has seatbelts got to do with this thread? Is it some sort of shock tactic?

My dog Calvin doesn't like you by the way. He thinks you're working for a company which manufactures dog food or seatbelts and has a bad attitude.

shakran

I was responding to your post, which said that you feed bones to your dog and he hasn't died, and then told us to call up Mythbusters.

And why do we need mythbusters for that?

Uncooked bones *ground up* might be OK, but a whole bone, especially something the size of a chicken bone, still presents a choking hazard.


Shock tactic? No, it's pointing out the fallacy in your arguments. Here's another example for you. "Well I've driven drunk dozens of times and never had an accident. Therefore it must be safe to drive drunk."

The point is that just because you happen to have fed bones to your dog, and your dog happens to have avoided dying, does not mean that it is impossible or even improbable for a dog to die if it eats bones, which is what your argument seems to put forth. I've narrowly avoided serious accidents myself - that doesn't mean that whatever I was doing to get me into that situation is totally safe and that I should do it again.

Um. . .

morpheus01

Dude, you seriously need to start reading what's in the thread. It's not just about my dog, it's about 777's, mtsgsd's and the tens of thousands of other dogs.

Why do we need mythbusters? Are you going to do the experiment?

I doubt any of them are grinding up the bones.

Fallacy is a fancy word. I've been pointing out the fallacy in all your points with legitimate facts in all my replies to you so far. Why do you keep talking about drink driving? Are you mad??

"The point is that just because..."
You're repeating yourself here again. It's not "impossible or improbable" for any dog to die at anytime doing anything - anyway.

I'm just warning you in case you ever try to pet Calvin. He's a very placid dog but I do believe he'll bite you.

oiekeooiyw

I read most of this thread, but not every word so shoot me if this was said already and this is an older thread, but I just found it.
What do you think wild animals eat? They eat other animals. Birds, chickens, small mammals, large mammals. Domestic dogs aren't really too far from wild animals and their bodies are designed to eat what they kill.
I've had 2 dogs that went on the 'raw foods diet' (I didn't find the exact book title in a quick search, but I'll find my copy in the next day or so and post the title). the point of the book is to feed dogs what they are designed to eat. Raw, uncooked, unprocessed food. My dogs get raw ground beef with vegetables (mostly carrots and zuchini) for their meals with a raw chicken leg or a beef knuckle as a snack every couple days. Yes it takes some time for the owner to get used to (and might take some time for the dogs body to adjust to just as it takes some dogs to get used to a new type of processed dog food)but my dogs have done much better since they started getting raw foods instead of processed dog food.
Yes, dogs can choke on bones. But people can choke on things to. I had a sister that choked on a hot dog. I had a friend that choked on a piece of chicken from KFC. So following the logic about dogs potentially choking... people should not have access to hot dogs or KFC or many of the other foods that people have had choking issues with in the past 100 years.
Do some research and come to your own conclusion about raw foods for animals.

morpheus01

Well said oiekeooiyw. I think we should start a thread on "The Truth About Hot Dogs" and get people to stop eating them and putting their lives at risk.

ngdawg

I find it interesting that people think bacteria, bones, fat, et al will affect their pets the way it does humans.
Fat is bad, but for dogs, only bad if they lie around all day. An Irish Setter will pobably do better than a Shihtzhu via chicken skin. A Boxer will handle chicken bones better than a Pekinese.
Dogs eat their own feces, lick their privates and tear apart squirrels, but raw meat and small bones are bad?