Chicken wings

Well I've just been really brave and given the boys a raw chicken wing each :lol:

I did give Rupert one about 6 years ago - he swallowed it whole icon_yikes icon_yikes I panicked and when he brought it back up, took it away from him. I've been told since that I should have left it with him, as he would probably have sat and chewed it then

It's taken me this long to summon up the courage LOL

Rupert is very much a "gulper", but he did chew the chicken wing so I was really pleased. I put the boys in separate rooms so there was no competition so that he wouldn't rush it.

TedBear loved his!! He spent ages crunching it up...but is now refusing to eat his kibble :lol: guess I should have given that first HUH icon_whistling

I'm trying to vary their diet a bit more, as you know they have sardines, and I do give them yogurt about once a week to 10 days too. They often have raw carrot, apple and love frozen green beans and peas

I did try frozen tripe which I thawed and mixed with the kibble, but TedBear wasn't that impressed.

With raw mince, I think there can be bacteria in it so i need to cook it first? Can anyone tell me what I should do with it please?

Thanks very much

I cook mince as there is a slight risk; I think any 'real' food is good for them and cannot see a huge difference in raw or cooked -- not in the health of my dogs, which have been on both exclusively at times, nor in the general concept. Dogs are known to have been domesticated for 100,000 years or so, and long ago gave up a life of hunting and foraging in the wild for a relationship with humans, where they'd have lived for thousands of years on a mix of cooked and raw food -- all scraps from human meals. If a dog can eat meat off a bone it buried a week earlier I simply cannot see how it cannot very happily manage to digest cooked food as efficiently as raw -- or both in the same meal.

To me some of the raw argument would be logically followed with an argument that we, too should be eating raw meat as that is what we would have been doing in the same era when dogs were undomesticated... of course we can and do eat various meats raw across different cultures, but we also eat cooked.

Bones are a different matter for dogs and should be raw and meaty for good reason, the softness of the bones and better digestibility. Therefore wings and necks and chicken backs all are good raw but I know many are not comfortable with this!

Nicki, Jaspar too nearly had serious trouble with a wing; he broke it in two and swallowed it in two chunks. Hours later he was getting increasingly agitated and vomiting a lot. I was just getting ready to bring him to the emergency vet when he vomited up the two chicken wing halves, virtually undigested. icon_yikes Now I mostly give wings cut into three pieces (at the joints) -- indeed have been feeding those the past week -- but if you have a dog that will crunch the whole wing down and you hear that reasurring snap and crunchcrunchcrunch I wouldn't worry. I have not had any problem since and they sure digest them with no problem at all. And they just LOVE raw chicken.

I now sometimes get a whole chicken then cut it into portions, which leaves the back. I split the back in two down the spine and that is a meal for each dog. backs are great as they have to really cruch and gnaw it down; they can't gulp it. Lots of meat too; they love it.

If folks feel really strongly about an all raw or an all cooked diet or all kibble then go for it; I just feel there are many choices from which we can choose.