I thought dogs could only eat beef bones but other post mention chicken bones and lamb shanks. I thought these could splinter and choke a dog. advice please!

Only if cooked. I feed my chinese cresteds chicken wings etc and touch wood they are absolutely fine. And my Afghan loves lamb ribs and such

Cooked bones become brittle and can splinter and cause internal injury. Raw bones are fine. The same applies to beef, lamb, or poultry.

As with anything your dog chews - you should keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't choke on a bit that's too big to swallow. I have had to retrieve chicken wings before as they try to gobble them up:D not a pleasant task.

hth

Pam n the boys

My bullmastiffs have chicken wings, thighs and marrow bones, they love these,all are given raw and i have had no problems with feeding these bones. They are also fed on Dr Johns Silver complete and are given extras such as pasta, veggies and sardines etc. (god they are spolit!!)
Karen.

sorry to keep going on but isn't there a risk of salmonella with uncooked chicken bones. Harvey my 3yr old whippet has never had raw meat. He was fed on Pedigree with mixer but we have recently changed to Butchers which he loves. But he also has a skin problem which causes him to scratch till he bleeds,(could be an allergy) so after reading some posts I'm going to try tea tree oil and change to nature diet. Is this fed alone or with a mixer, also which mixer is additive free? Sorry its so long I think this site is great I wish I'd looked sooner
Christine

Nature Diet is a complete food, so doesn't need to be supplemented with anything. It has also got the advantage of being totally free of artificial colours, preservatives and flavourings (which may well be the nasty things aggravating your dog's skin). Do take your vets/expert advice about using essential oils directly on skin - they are usually diluted a specific amount, as many are very potent. I'm no expert on essential oils but was there a particular reason you may use Tea Tree oil? It is a natural antiseptic rather than something that would be used to combat an allergy (like, say aloe vera or calendula)

Be careful of any mixer which says "no added additives" - this means that the product does contain additives, they just weren't added by the manufacturer!

Thanks Jo19
Another post told me to try tea tree but also to follow with aloe vera. I will go to the health food shop to get hold of these. Thanks for the advice on naturediet. Having read other posts and being new to the board I have heard a lot about Burns food. Do you think one would be better than the other? Harvey won't normally eat dried food but some seem to suggest mixing moist and dried together. I really want to try and help harveys itchy skin myself before having skin biopses and a vaccine made by the vet.
Christine

If your dog has skin problems then if it was mine, the first ingredient i would remove from the diet completely would be grain/cereal, wich pretty much rules out dry food.

Give the raw diet a go, my lot have stopped scratching, smelling, shedding excessivly, farting (errr, well, not entirely, they wuld explode!) and have no scurf either!

E

Hi Christine.

If you're confident that Harvey's skin problem is definitely the result of an allergy, I certainly think it would be helpful to remove all known allergens from his diet (ie processed food containing additives, a major culprit in skin allergies) and replace it with another complete feed which is 100% free of additives and uses quality ingredients (for instance NatureDiet). As Theemx points out, wheat (which is a major constituent of most commercial dried and moist food) can also upset sensitive dogs, so it would be a good idea to avoid this too. You seem keen to try a dry mixer but bear in mind that dried foods are very highly processed and usually contain a number of artificial additives. It is worth being paranoid about artificial additives in dog food - a lot of vets are and currently the Government is considering reviewing the regulations that cover their use in order to address concern over some of their effects. Fingers crossed they do!

If it was me I wouldn't apply Tea Tree Oil to skin suffering doggie dermatitis - unless the skin was infected and you wanted to clear up the infection. Tea Tree oil's main use is as an excellent antiseptic, not to treat allergic skin conditions. Instead I would use something soothing, like Nelson's Graphites Homeopathic Cream (which you can get from Boots for about £3 but watch he doesn't lick it off). The thing to remember is that applying ointments will not tackle the cause, just soothe the symptom, so eliminating the allergen which is causing the problem is the important thing. However, I find Graphites very effective.

If Harvey is scratching himself a lot this will further aggravate the problem, so it would be a good idea to watch him closely and try and distract him in a positive way to give him something else to think about - ie if you see him scratching get his attention in a happy, enthusiastic way, ask him to sit (or some other command) and give him a little treat.

Good luck!

Hello Jo
Thanks for the advice. I purchased naturediet today and gave Harvey his first meal which he loved. So I will continue to feed naturediet with no added mixer and she how he gets on. The reason I spoke about mixer is that I thought moist food on its own might be too rich and give diarrhoea, but as I said I will give naturediet on its own from now on.
Christine

we feed our toy poodle on cooked drumstick bones for a treat. she has no problem at all eating them from one end to the other since she was a year old. she is now seven and has never had ill effects. I had a relative who used to eat the marrow out of the the drumstick, which is why I gave the bones to our dog.
I have heard that dogs who eat chicken carcasses,, wolfing them down, can die because the chicken ribs puncture the stomach before they get digested.

I think you mean 'so far she's had no problem.........' IMHO it's just too high a risk to take -have you ever seen a drumstick that's been cooked and munched by a dog??

Sorry, but you've been very lucky. Cooked chicken bones splinter and can cause serious internal injuries - they are very different from raw bones.

I know there are risks to a lot of things, but cooked bones?? I'd never risk it.

Wendy

We feed our youngest two pups (7 months and 4 months) chicken wings raw. The 7 months old Working Beardie has them chopped into pieces and eats them that way and the 4 month old Working Cocker chews them while I hold the other end - delightful eh?

None of the adult dogs have bones, because they have not grown up with them and they just don't know what to do with them. Sounds silly, but it's quite true. They are all fed BARF without the bones.

Manda
x

Hiya..

I've never had a problem with raw chicken wings for the dogs.

I have to say though.....I put a chicken carcass (cooked) out in the rubbish..in 2 plastic bags, and then in the black bin bag. That should have been ok, but...my cat (and cat's are better with chicken than dogs) managed to get into the bags, and he got a chicken bone stuck in his throat. Luckily he came home, but he was choking, so we took him straight to the vet. The vet was able to take the chicken bone out of 'Saffron's throat, but it meant an anaesthetic..and unfortunately, during that time, Saffron suffered lack of oxygen to the brain as his throat had swollen. I now have a cat who is partially blind and deaf, and also has slight brain damage......and that was all through a cooked, splintered chicken bone.
Needless to say, I'll never forgive myself for that.

Hope you understand what I'm saying

Lisa

When we first tried our older rescue dog with a chicken wing, he swallowed it whole and then brought it up again :) After that he would just take them to his bed and lick them - they always ended up in the bin. Once we started giving them to our pup, he had some competition and soon learnt how to crunch them :D

Daisy

I'm really confused about the salmonella thing with raw chicken. Are dogs immune to it or something? It sounds terribly risky to me, but that is because I don't have any information to the contrary. Does anyone have any explaination as to why raw-chicken-fed dogs don't get salmonella? I was under the impression that it was still quite rife amongst the chicken population. Can anyone help?

One of the benefits of feeding raw is building up a healthy immune system. Correctly fed living things develop a certain immunity to the odd germ. Bear in mind that dogs are, after all, creatures that lick their own and others bottoms, eat manure etc etc in order to put the risk of salmonella into perspective! :)

The stomach acid of dogs is much stronger than ours because they have developed over the years to not only eat freshly killed animals but also carrion etc. Dogs can suffer from E-coli, campylobacter and salmonella however if their immune system has not been compromised the risk is very small.

Hi,
my dog also suffers from itchy skin and is constantly chewing her feet,her allergy is grass related tho.
i got this recipe of another site it's supposed to be great for the itchies,hav'nt tried it yet but will after her next bath.
the recipe is:
make a very strong batch of chamomile tea about 1.5 litres using 5-6 teabags,let steep for about an hour.Add 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar and 2 drops essential lavender oil.
put this in a spray bottle and spray on affected area after bathing. (ACV and lavender has soothing and antiseptic properties)

hope this helps

christine