Twenty seven years of private practice and I've seen plenty of dogs that got sick from eating raw poultry, especially puppies. The problem with poultry is the stuff raised in large confinement barns (i.e. Tyson) is it carries a lot more coliform bacteria on the carcass. Feed at your own risk.
After 40,000,000 years one might think there would be a convenient way to feed a dog complete nutrition in every bite.
They've only been domesticated in the last blink of an eye, in terms of how long their species has been on the planet, and only a tiny fraction of that time eating commercial dog food. Before commercial dog food, they just ate discarded bones, guts, heads, feet, pelts, unwanted organs, supplemented with whatever they could catch and kill (or find already dead) around the homestead.
Twenty seven years of private practice and I've seen plenty of dogs that got sick from eating raw poultry, especially puppies. The problem with poultry is the stuff raised in large confinement barns (i.e. Tyson) is it carries a lot more coliform bacteria on the carcass. Feed at your own risk.
You can't reason with them, they're halfwits. This one by virtue of being half that is their chief. He has no comprehension that many schools have animal nutrition departments and that they can measure nutrition input and work/meat/milk output precisely. He also doesn't believe in vaccination.
After 40,000,000 years one might think there would be a convenient way to feed a dog complete nutrition in every bite.
They've only been domesticated in the last blink of an eye, in terms of how long their species has been on the planet, and only a tiny fraction of that time eating commercial dog food. Before commercial dog food, they just ate discarded bones, guts, heads, feet, pelts, unwanted organs, supplemented with whatever they could catch and kill (or find already dead) around the homestead.
While true, longevity, disease, and other health problems probably are not well documented.
I have my newest dog in an obedience class and the lady teaching has made suggestions that I'm not how might you say, being good to my dog by rewarding with kibble rather than the high dollar stuff from PetCo or wherever.
If you take the time it takes, it takes less time. --Pat Parelli
American by birth; Alaskan by choice. --ironbender
WRT raw diet, if you have a dog you want to train for bird hunting be sure to not feed them any raw chicken/duck/etc. Might seem like a no brainer but it happens and when it does it's hard to break the dog from viewing any shot birds as food.
SS
"To be glad of life because it gives you a chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars. To be satisfied with your possessions but not content with yourself until you have made the best of them." -Henry Van Dyke
WRT raw diet, if you have a dog you want to train for bird hunting be sure to not feed them any raw chicken/duck/etc. Might seem like a no brainer but it happens and when it does it's hard to break the dog from viewing any shot birds as food.
SS
Anyone that does not hunt will not have a dog that makes that error.
If you take the time it takes, it takes less time. --Pat Parelli
American by birth; Alaskan by choice. --ironbender
WRT raw diet, if you have a dog you want to train for bird hunting be sure to not feed them any raw chicken/duck/etc. Might seem like a no brainer but it happens and when it does it's hard to break the dog from viewing any shot birds as food.
SS
There's a British vet on youtube that says the exact opposite, and she has only retrieve trained bird dogs. I'll see if I can find it. But she states that they know the difference between what's fed to them and what they are asked to retrieve.
Purina Healthy Choice for 15+ years for our Dachshunds, the latest one is 13. Before that we feed them Come and Get it. Most all lived to 13-15 years. If were up to me it would be the cheapest rations the feed store carries, but the wive has humanized our pets as most posting here have done. When I was a coming up we feed all our dogs{Beagles and soon-be's} corn bread and scrapes and cheap feed store rations, the ones that did not get killed by cars, other animals, etc. out lived their usefulness and became porch hounds until they became worm food.
Just some old white guy crank with a keyboard and 50+ years dog feeding experience.
My brother and I kept hounds for a number of years. At any time we'd have a few beagles, a few coonhounds and a dozen or more running hounds for fox and coyote hunting. Those days, we got our dog food made up at the feed mill by the ton. One of the dog supply houses had a formula and they sold a mix to provide the vitamins and minerals. It worked okay. We'd supplement it whenever one of the local farmers gave us a dead calf.
Today I only feed three dogs. I feed a grain-free, high-protein dog food made with completely North American sourced ingredients that costs about a hundred bucks for a 28.5 pound bag (delivered to my door.)In my opinion it's worth every penny. One bag lasts my Chessie and the two little house dogs (7 pound papillions) a month. They are all rock hard with brilliant dense coats. I will put my Chessie up against any retriever as far as speed, strength and endurance. When he's been in for his annual check up my vet has told me that he's in the top one percent of the dogs he sees with regard to health and fitness. I have been around too many dogs of too many kinds for too many years not to know that what you feed a dog matters.
Maybe a little off topic, but I am completely opposed to getting a dog castrated. The vets tend to push it because it's a quick, easy couple of hundred bucks (in this market) and almost guarantees the dog with have recurring health problems that will keep them coming back. There was a time no one thought about just routinely removing a major part of a dog's endocrine system and in those days you seldom saw all these autoimmune problems, diabetes, cancers and other maladies that it seems so many people with their "neutered" dogs are continually shelling out money to treat. Combine that with a diet of meat meal and who knows what else that comes over from China by the shipload and you've got a guaranteed recipe for canine health disaster.
My brother and I kept hounds for a number of years. At any time we'd have a few beagles, a few coonhounds and a dozen or more running hounds for fox and coyote hunting. Those days, we got our dog food made up at the feed mill by the ton. One of the dog supply houses had a formula and they sold a mix to provide the vitamins and minerals. It worked okay. We'd supplement it whenever one of the local farmers gave us a dead calf.
Today I only feed three dogs. I feed a grain-free, high-protein dog food made with completely North American sourced ingredients that costs about a hundred bucks for a 28.5 pound bag (delivered to my door.)In my opinion it's worth every penny. One bag lasts my Chessie and the two little house dogs (7 pound papillions) a month. They are all rock hard with brilliant dense coats. I will put my Chessie up against any retriever as far as speed, strength and endurance. When he's been in for his annual check up my vet has told me that he's in the top one percent of the dogs he sees with regard to health and fitness. I have been around too many dogs of too many kinds for too many years not to know that what you feed a dog matters.
Maybe a little off topic, but I am completely opposed to getting a dog castrated. The vets tend to push it because it's a quick, easy couple of hundred bucks (in this market) and almost guarantees the dog with have recurring health problems that will keep them coming back. There was a time no one thought about just routinely removing a major part of a dog's endocrine system and in those days you seldom saw all these autoimmune problems, diabetes, cancers and other maladies that it seems so many people with their "neutered" dogs are continually shelling out money to treat. Combine that with a diet of meat meal and who knows what else that comes over from China by the shipload and you've got a guaranteed recipe for canine health disaster.
End of rant.
At $3.51/lb, you could save money and just feed pulled pork!
On the neutering, a lot of that came from overpopulation of unwanted dogs. Kept pounds going.
On our latest dog the vet reco'd waiting a year before "monkeying' with his hormones.
If you take the time it takes, it takes less time. --Pat Parelli
American by birth; Alaskan by choice. --ironbender
We have friends that have service dogs. They feed them raw chicken.
That's the staple I feed both my dogs, bones and all. They crunch them up like pretzels. Amazing how cheaply you can buy chicken in bulk.
PS Never, but never, feed a dog cooked chicken bones, or any sort of cooked bones. They splinter sharp and hard, and can do a job on the digestive tract. Raw bones are no problems. Like I said, 40,000,000 years of evolution made their mouths and digestive tracts into raw bone processing machines. Their stomachs are five times as acidic as our own, and turn raw bones into soft rubber.
With all due respect Hawk, I'm calling bull on this. Our beagles ate chicken bones all the time and we never had a problem whatsoever.
We have friends that have service dogs. They feed them raw chicken.
That's the staple I feed both my dogs, bones and all. They crunch them up like pretzels. Amazing how cheaply you can buy chicken in bulk.
PS Never, but never, feed a dog cooked chicken bones, or any sort of cooked bones. They splinter sharp and hard, and can do a job on the digestive tract. Raw bones are no problems. Like I said, 40,000,000 years of evolution made their mouths and digestive tracts into raw bone processing machines. Their stomachs are five times as acidic as our own, and turn raw bones into soft rubber.
With all due respect Hawk, I'm calling bull on this. Our beagles ate chicken bones all the time and we never had a problem whatsoever.
In a sense, you are correct. The odds are very small of any problem occurring with cooked bones. Small as the odds are, though, they are astronomical compared to the chance of any problems occurring with raw bones.
PS As a kid in the 1960s, it was common to hand your dog cooked bones after you've eaten most of the meat off. We did it all the time, too, and never had a problem. The little dogs got the pork rib bones, and the big dogs got the lamb leg bones. Few knew that this wasn't a good idea, and rarely did a problem occur (never for us), but vets will tell you that problems do sometimes occur with cooked bone shards piercing something along the digestive tract.
PPS The only bones we didn't give our dogs were cooked chicken and/or turkey bones. On rare occasions, though, one of our dogs would somehow get a hold of such a carcass and consume it entirely, without ill effect. It happened just a few years ago, in fact, and my dog was fine. I don't choose to intentionally take that chance, though
My brother and I kept hounds for a number of years. At any time we'd have a few beagles, a few coonhounds and a dozen or more running hounds for fox and coyote hunting. Those days, we got our dog food made up at the feed mill by the ton. One of the dog supply houses had a formula and they sold a mix to provide the vitamins and minerals. It worked okay. We'd supplement it whenever one of the local farmers gave us a dead calf.
Today I only feed three dogs. I feed a grain-free, high-protein dog food made with completely North American sourced ingredients that costs about a hundred bucks for a 28.5 pound bag (delivered to my door.)In my opinion it's worth every penny. One bag lasts my Chessie and the two little house dogs (7 pound papillions) a month. They are all rock hard with brilliant dense coats. I will put my Chessie up against any retriever as far as speed, strength and endurance. When he's been in for his annual check up my vet has told me that he's in the top one percent of the dogs he sees with regard to health and fitness. I have been around too many dogs of too many kinds for too many years not to know that what you feed a dog matters.
Maybe a little off topic, but I am completely opposed to getting a dog castrated. The vets tend to push it because it's a quick, easy couple of hundred bucks (in this market) and almost guarantees the dog with have recurring health problems that will keep them coming back. There was a time no one thought about just routinely removing a major part of a dog's endocrine system and in those days you seldom saw all these autoimmune problems, diabetes, cancers and other maladies that it seems so many people with their "neutered" dogs are continually shelling out money to treat. Combine that with a diet of meat meal and who knows what else that comes over from China by the shipload and you've got a guaranteed recipe for canine health disaster.
End of rant.
At $3.51/lb, you could save money and just feed pulled pork!
On the neutering, a lot of that came from overpopulation of unwanted dogs. Kept pounds going.
On our latest dog the vet reco'd waiting a year before "monkeying' with his hormones.
If money was an issue I wouldn't have dogs. My grandfather used to say every family has a dog and every damn poor family has two.
I know the rationale for castrating dogs. I guess I'd ask, "How's that working ?" From all indications we've got more unwanted dogs than ever. Kinda like the war on drugs. There's no quick easy solution to the problem. It's like raising kids. They need to be managed within certain constraints. We also seem to have more fat, unhealthy, unmotivated dogs than ever. Honestly, most of the house dogs I see in people's homes are pathetic.
I'm on a roll tonight. One of my pet subjects (no pun intended.) Better quit before I go off on backyard breeders.
