Hi

After considerable trouble getting hold of ND I have finally found a food that my dog will eat - hes very fussy and his tum is easily upset! The only drawback is that it doesnt contain bone although all the other ingredients seem similar to ND. I do feed bones regularly to assist with this but I cant always get hold of them from the butcher and dont have a great big freezer to store them in bulk. Can you buy ground bone to add to the food and if so where can I get it from?

Thanks
Caroline :)

Bonemeal? I remember when I was young all our puppies and youngsters had bonemeal powder added to their food. I only remembered about it when I saw a tub of it in the pet food cash and carry. I'm not sure of the benefits of it - hopefully someone else can advise..I do know that your dog won't like it as much a lovely juicy raw marrow bone :)

Raw chicken wings :)

Daisy

>Can you buy ground bone to add to the food and if so where can I get it from?<

My only question is why would you want to add "ground" bone? I assume this other diet is a complete one? I would not start messing with the calcium ratio's which is what you'll be doing if you add ground bone.Do you how much to add and how to balance it with the phos levels of the food? I would'nt even begin to guess how much to add,and messing with this would do more harm than good IMHO.

Bone meal,egg shell powder etc should only be added to home made diets to balance the high phos levels of meat,and even then it's only 1/2tsp per pound of meat. You can find chicken wings at most tesco's,you can also order most rmb's from landywoods and the like.Rmb's,especially necks and wings have the perfect levels of cal/phos,so you dont have to worry about them messing up your dogs regular diet.

"Rmb's,especially necks and wings have the perfect levels of cal/phos,so you dont have to worry about them messing up your dogs regular diet. "

Not true really, if you only fed your dog on chicken necks and wings you would be giving your dog too much calcium & phosphorous.  Most likely you'd also end up with a very constipated dog or worse, one with a intestinal blockage.

>if you only fed your dog on chicken necks and wings you would be giving your dog too much calcium & phosphorous.<

Not that were' talking about feeding 'only' chicken wings and necks,but could you explain how you came about them giving too much calcium and phosphorous? :)

>could someone explain why adding ground bone to complete food is different to feeding complete and giving raw bones too?<

I thought i had already explained it above ;) If you add 'just' bone meal(calcium) to a complete food which already has the correct levels of both you also need to adjust the phos levels.Same with phosphorous,if you feed an all meat diet(phos) then you will have to add calcium.In other words you cant add or feed one without the other. Bones,particularly chicken wings and necks already have the correct levels of calcium AND phosphorous,so they cant unbalance an already balanced food.

I've probably confused you even more now

Ktee,

No, I am not confused.  Any raw bone is balanced in terms of the mix of calcium and phosphorous.  My point was that if you only fed a dog chicken necks or chicken wings that you would be giving the dog too much bone (which is the source of calcium) in proportion to meat/protein.  There's not a lot of meat on either chicken wings or necks. 

One of the issues vets have with raw feeding is that people tend to make up their own rules about what constitutes a balanced diet.  If you do a search on this site, I'd bet that "chicken wing" is mentioned more times than any other raw food.  I doubt this site is different than any others. I know many people only give their dogs a wing once in a while as a treat and supplement to an otherwise balanced diet.  However, a lot of people don't do the research they need to do behind raw feeding - and there are many who think that all they need to do is toss a couple of wings at their dog and that's all that's the end of it.

Besides dietary imbalance, one of the problems with feeding too much bone in proportion to meat is that it can end up in constipation, or worse, intestinal impaction.  

Guess I'm sort of focused on chicken wings a the moment since one of my dogs ate a cooked wing bone two weeks ago   It ended up in a long discussion with my vet about bones in general and raw feeding.  Neither of the vets in the practice are what I'd call advocates of raw feeding, but neither are they wholly negative either. In fact, one even said that there's no problem feeding raw bones - at which point I nearly fainted on the floor :-) in shock.  Yes, very rarely a raw bone does cause a problem because on the way down a sharp bit has done some damage, but that's very rare.  The issue for both is in their experience they've had several dogs on the operating table as a result of owners feeding way more bone than they could handle. 

Caroline,

As long as the food is sold as a complete food it will have the correct amount of calcium and other nutrients for you dog.  If the food says that it contains "minerals" then calcium (and phosphorous) is more than likely one of them.

Stacey

With some of the larger, fast growing breeds, you actually have to be very careful not to give too much calcium as this can be a contributory factor in the development of osteochondrosis.

Thanks for your replies. I will leave well alone then and keep giving the raw bones I can get my hands on.

Im not that hot on the ins and outs of nutrition though so could someone explain why adding ground bone to complete food is different to feeding complete and giving raw bones too? Wouldnt that equally upset the overall balance?

Looking forward to learning my 'new thing' for today :)

Thanks
Caroline

I think you missed Ktees explaination above....

Complete food is balanced. Ground bone is not balanced, add it to complete food and you unbalance teh complete.

Raw bones ie a chicken wing, thats balanced. Its goign to make no odds if you add a chicken wing or you add another spoonful of complete to the meal they are both balanced.

Em

I didnt miss the explanation, I didnt understand it. My fault, not Ktee's, like I say im a bit green about the balances of nutrition. However, Ktee's further explanation (and yours) clarifies it for me now.

Thanks to all :)