Dogs and chickenbones

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Syzygys, Dec 1, 2006.

  1. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    No, not a hypocrite 'cause I wouldn't adopt a black African kid if I had all the fuckin' money in the world ....and I've never said otherwise. In fact, I've implied on several occasions that I'd rather feed hungry dogs than black Africans!

    Nope, ...maybe a hypocrite, but not in this instance!

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    Baron Max
     
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  3. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    Nobody cares Barox, nobody cares. And by the looks of most of your retarded posts you ain't gonna ever have all the money in the world either. What have you personally done for the world...em let me guess...nothing but riding on the coat tails of other whites, masturbating, and spending 24 hrs on the internet because you have no life and no real friends.
     
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  5. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    snap! :bravo:
     
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  7. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Excuse me, but where is it written into law that we are supposed to do anything for the world?
    But we actually do something, like educating ignorants. If it is not a noble goal, I don't know what it is....
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Shorty37, it sounds like your dog is the boss of you!
     
  9. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    I would say instead of "can be avoided" it should read "SHOULD be avoided". Avoid the femur type long bones. Those are the ones that most often get the sharp edges when broken, but there are some risk even with rib bones getting sharp on breakage. Vets (like all doctors) tend to issue blanket warnings "Dont feed dogs bones" because its easier than sorting out the do's and dont's.

    There is risk to dogs when you feed them bones. There is always a chance for a blockage, or perforation, or choking. I would say its an equal risk with feeding kids hotdogs and choking on those. Sure millions of kids eat hotdogs each year without an issue.... but then theres that one who gulps his food and ends up on TV News that night as a warning to all parents.

    And one cannot compare with wild animals. We have no idea how many of them suffer a death due to bone issues.
     
  10. shorty_37 Go! Canada Go! Registered Senior Member

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    You know what in that instance, I would rather not risk a bite.
    He has some issues and we aren't sure where they stemmed from.
    We got him from the humane society a few yrs ago.
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Actually they've been eating our food for about fifteen thousand years, since before we invented tables.

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    Dogs and humans formed the first (non-symbiotic) multi-species community. Some evidence suggests that our hunting packs kept crossing paths in the same territory and realized they could hunt more effectively together. But other evidence suggests that the wolves whose ancestors became dogs (they're a single species) had more of a taste for scavenging than hunting and when they saw all the garbage in our camps they thought they'd gone to heaven. (Which I suppose they did, compared to the pigs who wandered in for the same reason and weren't so lucky.)
    As I said, our vet removes about one bone a month from a throat. Remember that choking isn't what kills them, so if a dog eventually dies from it the cause may not be accurately identified. Still, it's a very small number. Americans are very poor at risk analysis so we often are alarmed by small risks and blase about big ones. (E.g., drunk drivers kill thirty times more Americans than terrorists--and we even know where all the drunk drivers live.)
    If you cook chickens in a pressure cooker the bones become very soft. Toss the whole thing into a food processor, and the bones will grind right up with the meat. Bingo, there's their MDAR of calcium.

    Be careful about giving your dogs too much meat. Remember that one of the key differences between the wolf and dog subspecies of Canis lupus is that dogs have a lower protein requirement, which is reflected in their smaller brains. If you buy a decent quality commercial dog food it surely contains enough protein and if you add more you're not doing your dogs any favor at all. (It can cause organ damage.) Dogs are not equivalent to cats. Cats are pure carnivores and picky ones at that. Dogs eat their entire kill including the intestines and their contents. (They need the bacteria, which is why domestic dogs eat feces, especially if their diet contains preservatives which constantly kill of their intestinal culture.) And they also scavenge from other predators' kills, as well as eating just about anything else they can find.

    The typical problems with commercial food are:
    • Vitamins in a form that they can't easily metabolize
    • Preservatives, which a great many dogs are allergic to but manifest it in ways that can take you years to figure out, in addition to sterilizing their intestines and forcing them to go out in the yard and eat stool
    • Meat byproducts like beaks and claws that do indeed contain protein but also a lot of other tissue that is not easily digested and should only be eaten in proportion to what they'd get by eating a whole bird they killed themselves
    • Wheat--many people are allergic to it and so are many dogs.
    Americans who come to our house eat very well. We have no control over their dietary habits once they leave. If my wife cooks like this for the dogs you can imagine what she makes for us. We have pizza with homemade crust, turkey sausage and cranberry chutney for Christmas dinner, followed by truffles made with her own chocolate tempering machine.
    Yes, we breed Lhasa Apsos. But only about four of them are breeders. The rest are the ones that were too cute to sell, plus a rescue from somebody else's litter that looked like their momma slept with a giraffe. And one is an Anatolian who keeps the bears and cougars out of the yard, but even she is a rescue dog who is a runt at 90 lbs and takes thyroid pills.
    The only work is pressure-cooking and food-processing the chickens, and one morning's work makes enough to last for a couple of months. Making rice is trivial and the pumpkin comes in cans. (Although the day after Halloween some years we can buy a trunkload of fresh ones for a nickel a pound.) It saves us a couple thousand dollars a year and it seems like a good wage for the effort. Rather spend that money on a housekeeper!
    Just be careful about what kind of scraps. As I said, you can give them too much protein and it causes liver and kidney problems. Trans-fatty acids are just as bad for dogs as they are for humans, and preservatives are terrible for them because they require bacteria for digestion. Don't buy cheap dog food or you'll spend every dime you save on vet bills many times over.
     
  12. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I see.
     
  13. 121force Registered Member

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    Giving Chicken Bones To Dogs

    Hi I have read allot about not being able to give chicken bones to dogs. Well that is half true. A dog is a carnivour and an animal therefore he can eat chicken, meat etc... BUT you need to train them how to eat it properly. I found this out from my mother who her self has raised many animals including dozens of dogs.

    If you would like to feed your dogs bones chew them up first. I feed my dogs all sorts of bones but when they are puppies I show them that I chew them first. With chicken bones I use my molars and chomp on the bones untill they are broken up to make sure there are no splinters. After awhile my dogs have learned that to eat bones they need to minse them with their teeth. When I am breaking them up for them I use a command word like "CHEW" I repeat this over and over during the process that way when they are older I don't have to chew for them I just repeat 'CHEW' and they will start chewing.

    I don't give my indoor dogs raw meet because raw meet, I find, give them a taste for flesh. My mother had farm and field dogs and she use to feed them raw meet only, they were very visious and would usually kill their own food. She did not chew raw chicken bones her self instead she would smash them up with rocks infront of the dog when they were puppies.

    I am proud to say that all of our dogs have died of very old age. My best friend Bruce (Border Collie) died at the age of 21 yrs which is unheard of, he died from cancer. He enjoyed chicken wings from the BBQ, honey garlic was his fave.

    *excuse any spelling mistakes i am a FES.
     
  14. dhowe01 Registered Senior Member

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    Dogs are pretty far removed from their wild ancestors. most breeds would die without human influence. Feeding your dog chicken bones is just asking for trouble. They dont need it, and there is a risk that they wont be able to swallow it. so just dont do it
     
  15. shorty_37 Go! Canada Go! Registered Senior Member

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    Something got into our garbage the other night. When I went outside with Bruce (dog)he immediately ran over to the ripped open garbage bag. He got a hold of some chicken bones and immediatly starting crunching on them. It was too late, once he has something like that in his mouth he isn't giving it up. He has done this before, as I posted above before.

    How do you know if they have suffered any damage from doing so?
     
  16. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The typical "damage" is getting a splinter lodged sideways in his esophagus. This makes it difficult to swallow so you'd notice the problem. If he's comfortable and acting okay for the next few days, especially while eating, then he's probably fine.

    Eating chicken bones is risky enough that you shouldn't let a dog do it, but it's a very low risk. The average vet has to extract several chicken bones a month from dogs' throats, but considering that thousands of dogs ate thousands of chicken bones that month the odds are very low that your dog will be the one who needs medical care.

    There is a fanatical movement that believes in giving dogs raw whole chickens. I imagine the movement would have died out by now if more than a few of those dogs had problems with the bones.
     
  17. Richard Basehart Registered Member

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    Thanks

    Fellow Members:
    I just wanted to thank the posters to this thread for helping me retain a bit of my sanity during what turned out to be a non-crisis. During a walk my 7 year old German Shepherd consumed a "deadly" chicken bone which he managed to chomp up and swallow before I could stop him. I had often heard that this was not a good thing for a dog to do and being that it was a Sunday I did not have the luxury of contacting my vet. Of course my next course of action was to turn to the WWW, where I was greeted by page after page warning me that I should NEVER feed my dog chicken bones and I was a complete loser for doing this and my friend was as good as DEAD. The Google search I ran displayed this thread on approximately page three. It was nice to read some opinions based on logic as opposed to the prior unfiltered hype I came across. Thanks.

    Also, I talked to my vet who I would let perform surgery on me (he ranks right after my tattoo artist) before some "certified and registered" medically trained stranger (j/k) and he said that a dog CAN get a hold of a "cooked" chicken bone once or twice a year and it they manage to chew it up and get it down they will be FINE, especially when your dog is a 118lb (lean) GSD.

    Once more, thank you all and I wish the best to you all all yours.

    Alex
     
  18. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

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    1,671
    Ok you can and should give dogs turkey necks.. the none splinter crap is ONLY true with cooked chicken uncooked bone is maluable just go look up raw feeding or the barf diet
     
  19. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The BARF ("bones and raw food") diet is controversial, to put it mildy and politely. No reputable veterinarian or biologist recommends it; the best they can say about it is that it's okay as long as you don't give them bird bones, raw or cooked.

    Birds have hollow bones, it's one of the many adaptations that makes them light enough to fly. (Their lack of teeth and their rudimentary, barely functional immune system are others.) Avian bones splinter in ways that most other animal bones do not, leaving breakpoints that have sharp splinters surrounded by air pockets.

    It doesn't matter whether the bone is cooked or raw, it will still splinter this way.

    Since we always have about ten dogs, Mrs. Fraggle cooks her own dog food. This includes tossing entire chickens into the pot. She wants them to have the calcium in the bones, but the way she gets around the problem is to use a pressure cooker. This softens the bones, so she can then run the entire moosh through a food processor, and presto, the bones are ground into powder and won't hurt anybody.

    Note: Many people assume that the reason bird bones are bad for dogs is that they will choke on them. This is erroneous.

    Humans are the only mammal that cannot swallow and breathe at the same time. This is because the larynx (or "voice box") that allows us to speak is an anatomical nightmare. It caused our entire throat to be reconfigured, resulting in a bad compromise.

    Dogs can swallow and breathe at the same time. So if a dog gets a bone caught in his throat he will not suffocate. He'll just A) bleed internally or B) get an infection or C) hurt real bad.

    As I pointed out in my original post, every veterinarian I know says he or she pulls an average of two chicken bones out of dog throats every month. And they don't recommend the BARF diet because too many people think that's a license to just toss a whole raw chicken at their dogs, bones and all.

    DO NOT EVER LET YOUR DOG EAT BIRD BONES, COOKED OR RAW!
     
  20. Jim S Registered Senior Member

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    Rabbit bones seem to be even sharper and more splintery than chicken bones and that's cooked, I don't know about raw - but then not as many people have rabbit for supper I suppose. My big ol Collie named Henry found a way to avoid having a problem with chewing on rabbit bones, he just swallowed the whole rabbit. Didn't bother chewing it, just gulped. Not a little baby rabbit, good size. Of course it didn't stay down long. I don't know if it was dead when he ate it, but it was dead when it came back up!
     
  21. Richard Basehart Registered Member

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    My GSD ate a whole rabbit too. Lengthwise. Like an anaconda. I tried to pull the rabbit out of his mouth but its back legs detached at the hips. The dog kept the rabbit down and proceeded to poop furry turds for two days. I called my vet about that one too and he said it was probably the best meal he had in his life.
     
  22. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    It's chewing the bones that causes them to splinter into jagged points. If the dog can swallow a small animal whole, without breaking any of the bones and, for good measure, with the skin keeping the bones from touching the inside of his alimentary canal, that should be all right.
     
  23. Jim S Registered Senior Member

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    If the subject is what's bad to feed dogs, is is true that raisins are bad for them? Henry used to love them. I couldn't imagine that he even tasted them, it was like throwing them into the grand canyon, they just went straight down. He lived to be 13 and after while I heard that raisins were bad for dogs and felt guilty. I don't think he ever had a lot, I hope I didn't harm him by doing that.
     

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