HeartOfCoal wrote:Out of curiosity, I noticed you said on the first page (and I'm far to lazy to read the whole thing so I just skimed so I apologize if I read it wrong) that we should feed our dogs raw game such as poultry?? Dogs can't eat birds. The bones can splinter and can get lodged in their throat.
COOKED bones will splinter and may get lodged somewhere within the animal's stomach or intestinal tract, raw bones won't splinter and are perfectly safe. Yes, that does include bird bones.
Copy pasted from Myths about Raw feeding:
"Cooked bones are quite dangerous. Cooking changes the structure of the bone, making it indigestible and easily splinterable. Raw bones rarely splinter and are fully digestible, even the collagen proteins that some people claim are "indigestible." It is mostly the byproducts of the digested bone that form the bulk of a raw-fed animal's feces. Dogs and cats do not need the fiber from grains and vegetables, and feeding such foods only results in the big, soft, malodorous stools everyone complains about.
Let me repeat this for good measure: raw bones are completely digestible and are not dangerous for your animal. They are no more dangerous than kibble, and the only reasons they are made out to be dangerous are a) people misunderstand that raw bones are fully digestible while cooked are not, b) people want to scare you into thinking you are going to kill your dog if you give them bones, and c) bone-induced problems are blown way out of proportion in an effort to maintain the status quo of feeding kibble. What these people forget to tell you about are the 60,000 dogs suffering from bloat each year—of which nearly 20,000 die (Burrows, C.F. and L.A. Ignaszewski. 1990. Canine gastric dilatation-volvulus. Journal of Small Animal Practice. 35:295-298. In Lonsdale, T. 2001. Raw Meaty Bones. pg 117)—or the number of dogs dying from choking on kibble—which is a more common occurrence than one hears of! They also forget to mention the numbers of dogs that choked on or swallowed tennis balls, rocks, sticks, and a variety of other objects. These incidences FAR outweigh the numbers of dogs that have problems with raw bones. Just take a survey of veterinarians in your area and see what the most common blockage or choking culprits are in their specific practices. Do not forget to ask how many dogs they have treated (successfully and unsuccessfully) for bloat.
Yes, problems can occur with raw bones, just as problems can occur with feeding the "safer" kibble (bloat, choking, telescoping bowel, aspirated kibble leading to pneumonia, etc.). These problems typically occur in dogs that gulp their food or are fed small things like chicken wings and necks (the prime suspects of choking incidences on raw). Other culprits are the large weight-bearing bones of herbivores, things like knuckle bones, femurs, etc. These, ironically, are the kinds of bones pet food manufacturers and some vets recommend dogs receive regularly to help keep teeth clean! These bones chip or break teeth and can have pieces of bone flake off."
Also, not about a dog, but my kitten was fed some crappy kibble throughout his first months of life by the breeder (not a proper breeder, we "rescued" him) and I changed his diet to raw food and whole raw prey without any problems. Why would a dog get sick about eating it? Commercial food has been available for LESS THAN CENTURY whereas dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years.
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