I bought a few whole chickens recently to feed to the dogs and would give my staffy a leg or the wings but am wondering how much to give my rott boy.  He is around 7 stone at the last weighing (about 45kg) and I have no idea how much of a 1.5kg chicken to give him.  Any ideas?

All of it!

Seriously it depends on the dog.  My 40kg GSD eats 1kg of food twice a day. He needs it as he burns so much of it off in both physical and mental energy. 

Do you normally feed raw or are you giving chicken as an extra to complete foods?

It depends on where you expect the chicken to fit into his diet but he could certainly manage a whole one.

I have an HPR breed 2.5yrs old, very fit and very active.  He weighs 28.5kg and currently has 900g per day of raw food.  I balance his bony meals with mince so I'd probably feed half the chicken for one meal then give him a variety of other meats before giving him the remainder of the chicken a few days later.  I tend to follow bone with offal and the occasional kibble meal as mine can get a bit constipated with too much bone in one go.

He gets a mixture of kibble and raw.  Mainly orijen kibble but with 3-4 raw meals a week although planning to up the raw feeding.  I ended up hacking it up and giving the two dogs a breast each and my boy also got a wing and the back.  He has been at training today so has eaten loads of sausage today too.  I will give him a whole one next time but as he had already had breakfast today it would have been too much for him.

I feed raw but they do not get whole chickens - just a carcass (the one's I get are meaty enough).  Feeding a whole chicken is too much meat really.

My male Rottie is also roughly 45kg, depending on his daily exercise he will get 1 chicken carcass for breakfast - today he had an extra half because he had a demanding day exercise wise yesterday and will again today.  In the evening he has roughly 600/700 grms of meat.  My 6 month old Rott pup eats the same amount as him due to her growing.

Staff wrote -  I feed raw but they do not get whole chickens just a carcass (the one's I get are meaty enough).  Feeding a whole chicken is too much meat really.

I have to say I find this statement rather strange? most chicken carcasses I find have very little meat on them and I always have to add more meat ot tripe to the bone. A whole chicken would have more meat on so I would quite happily feed a whole chicken or part of a whole chicken to my dogs. Usually it is recomended that you feed 2-3% of the body weight per day so For a 45kg dog it is  900-1350g  per day. If it was me I would probably just give him the whole chicken and then feed him slightly less than normal the next day. Feeding dogs is much like feeding ourselves. If we over ingdulge one day then it is a good idea to eat less the next. :)

Why strange?

One of the butchers where my chicken carcasses come from do not completely strip the carcass of meat like others in town do.  My dogs get fed twice per day, morning they have their carcasses and evening is blocks of meat or bone (they also have meaty bones, whole fish, offal, eggs etc)  if they were fed whole chickens in the morning they would be getting too much meat compared to bone.

My adult male Rott eats around 1 - 1.5 kgs of food per day.  Akita bitch eats only around 900gms, Rottie pup eats around 1kg per day, Staffie 350gms, the other Rotts, GSD's and Leo all eat similar amounts to the above.

When you get the carcasses do they have the tiny wee sharp ribs in them?  I took these away as they seemed to be quite brittle and I didn't know if they would do any harm as they are like wee needles.

Maybe strange is the wrong word but I don't understand how feeding  a whole chicken gives you too much meat in relation to bone? Bone needs to be about 10-15% max of the total diet and most carcasses  I have seen are probably at least  80-90% bone. if you re feeding just carcasses in the morning, then you really need to feed something without bone in the evening.  When I feed chicken carcasses I add at least the same amount of meat to the carcass and then would just feed meat at the next meal.

Sorry you may have missed that I feed them two meals per day - the dogs have meat on their evening meal.  Hence feeding a whole chicken in the morning then pure meat in the evening would be too much meat in my opinion.  I follow Tom Lonsdales Raw Meaty Bones diet - have done for years and have never seen the dogs looking so good.

Again like I said the carcasses I get are very meaty.  The butchers basically just take off what they need and give me the rest - they don't completely strip the carcass like I have found all the other butcher do.  If they did they would be too much bone.

well id love to feed chickens whole or carcases but my rotts wont touch them!

now thats strange lol.

We have a GSD that won't touch carcasses either!  The Rotts on the other hand eat anything going!