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Caution when feeding RAW chicken necks

CavyGirl

Active member
Charlie (6 months) was on raw, and I was told to give him chicken necks as well, as the bones are very good for them. It took me 3 months to do it because I was so scared about the bones. Anyhow, I fed the chicken necks for consecutive 3 meals as he seemed to love them. THEN, he got pancreatitis from too much fat. Apparently, you should feed chicken necks in only one meal a day, and spread out over the course of the week. Initially, I was more concerned about the bones, but the scan at the vet showed that the bones were making their way through just fine. Just a caution, to beware of feeding too much chicken neck to young pups.

Charlie no longer likes raw food (after this episode), and doesn't really like dry either. I have found that if I feed his dry as treats, he'll accept it. I guess its ok because he is in training, so I just train him with his kibble throughout the day.

One thing I can say for sure, is that he had WAY better breath on the RAW. I really hope that I can put him back on it one day.
 
Personally, I would never give raw chicken to my dogs, never mind a pup. It seems some people on here do but I think it's ill-advised.
 
I won't risk raw meats or give bones, either. The meat could contain disease, although people who use it say that freezing kills the bacteria and there's always the chance of a bone getting stuck, even a well rounded one.

Wild dogs eat raw everything, with bones fur or feather, but our dogs are domesticated and far away from these wild ones. Early man probably ate raw meat, but we don't.
 
The raw & bones is quite an emotive topic. It seems that opinions vary greatly with what country you live in. Us Aussies are usually quite comfortable with the raw & bones issues, whereas our northern hemisphere cousins are often less than happy with the idea.

Certainly with a dog that is prone to pancreatitis you have to be very careful with the fat content fed. In fact we should all be watching our dog's fat intake is too much is bad for them, just the same as it is for us. My Scarlett had an acute pancreatitis back in November when we were feeding exclusively kibble. Since then we have moved to a BARF diet. For Scarlett I always pick out the less fatty cuts and she never gets chicken skin which is loaded with fat. She also gets a lot less meaty products and a lot more vegetable & fruit than the others. I am pleased to say that since that one episode she has not had another (touch wood!).

However, the rest of my dogs get chicken necks almost every day, but balanced out with fruit & veg.
 
Interesting on necks and fat. Our necks here are skinned; are the ones you get still covered in skin? I never thought the necks when skinned looked like much more than meat and bone. Turkey skin is said to be especially risky for pancreatitis -- lots of dogs ending up in emrgency around the Dec holidays..

I waver on raw, having had a bad/borderline dangerous experience with wings. But necks are fairly crunchable and it is helpful to me that your vet felt they pass through with no issues (that said I have seen some mild rectal bleeding clearly caused by some sharp bits of neck bone in stools. Unless you have to pick up every single stool at the time it is passed, as I do, having to take them on walks to do their jobs, this would be easily missed). I never fed necks daily however; I'd give maybe two as a meal once or twice a week. Now I feed kibble and homecooked meals primarily, once a week they get sardines and kibble. I'll probably go back to doing some necks again. I had no problems with wings except that one time but that one time was enough to make me realise one 'bad' meal and your dog could be dead.

I must say in several months feeding primarily raw, I never really noticed any significant benefit to teeth compared to giving chews, and I've seen raw feeders sometimes split about this. I think a lot is down to being genetically disposed to good teeth, & I think good chews ALL help with teeth just the same as bone. And my two with good teeth, Jaspar at nearing 4, and Lily after having her a year, continue the same though they are not fed bone, while Leo, who had bad breath from the day I got him at 10 months and who is Jaspar's half-sibling, continues to be the one with poor teeth regardless of whether he was on a raw diet with bones, or a homecooked diet with Greenies and chews. They are all fed the same and this pattern continues. I brush all their teeth a couple times a week when I remember and his breath is best right after this. BTW I have had pieces of tartar break off the teeth where they covered the tooth like a sheath, when brushing -- so it really, really, really does help. :)

I ordered the neck sinews treats from zooplus.ie and these are excellent -- last a long time and really work the teeth. They are very hard but are meat not rawhide and very digestible -- they eventually end up as stringy bits of meat. The esophaguses :eek: :eek: also have been a hit and last a long time with lots of teeth scraping going on!
 
i would also never feed my dogs on any raw meat.these days most food seems contaminated with something .even us humans have to be careful.
 
Poor Charlie! How many necks were you feeding him per meal, if I might ask?

I give my dogs a wing a couple of days a week, mostly for the nice teeth cleaning they provide.

Anyway, I hope that Charlie is feeling better now!
 
The necks here in Oz are skinned too and usually they are very lean. However yesterday I bought a batch that seemed to have quite a bit of fat on then, which I'd never seen before. When I got them home I stripped off the extra fat as I wasn't happy for any of my guys to have that much.

In the old days I never gave a thought to giving my dogs fat and we'd give the skinny ones the fat off our plates. I won't do that anymore. Pancreatitis is horrible. I think a dog has to have a disposition towards it to get it from fat, but still it just isn't worth the risk. It is such a painful condition. :(

Has Charlie fully recovered? Hope so!
 
Charlie had about 1.5 chicken necks per meal... for three meals in a row. Anyway, I learned my lesson! I really didn't think of the fat when I gave it to him, I was more concerned about the bones. My gut feeling said not to feed him chicken necks, but I did anyway since others had said they were great for them. Anyhow, no more chicken necks.

Charlie has been on kibble for about 3 weeks now (California Natural), and I can notice a huge difference in him in the last week. He is more lethargic, he now has all this 'sleep' in his eyes when he wakes up(he didn't have this before...well, not this much anyway), and he has smelly breath (whereas before he didn't have that doggie breath). The vet said he is fine, but I know it is from the change in his food. I really want to switch him back to raw. If he doesn't get back to his normal self in a week or so, I think I will try the raw again (without the chicken necks!).
 
I am sorry to hear that Charlie isn't doing so great on his current diet. If you do decide to go back to feeding raw, just be sure to trim all fat off meats, remove all chicken skin & add plenty of fresh veg & fruit. If he baulks at eating his greens you can mince it in with his meats. This is what I do for my Scarlett who had a pancreatitis back when she was on kibble... diet kibble... go figure! I was a bit worried about her when I moved over to raw, but since changing her over she has not had another attack and her farty-bum is not farty any more, nor does she have soft poos which was always a problem with her.
 
Stools do get really hard on raw diets, at least when there's bone as well.

n the old days I never gave a thought to giving my dogs fat and we'd give the skinny ones the fat off our plates.

Yeah we always gave the fat cut offs from meat to our pyrenees, too! She was never the worse (in her long life (13 years) she only ever had to make one non-annual trip to the vet, when someone seemed to have kicked her when she got out once :( ). I suppose fat is a lot easier to manage for a big dogs as well where a piece isn;t going to have the same impact as on a smaller dog.
 
2 of my young ones:paw: were raised from pups on raw food. our old timer Guinness, was changed at around 9 and half and he is 11 now.:rolleyes:

Personally, I would not go back to the processed rubbish:yuk: - you don't know what scabby horse it came from or what it died of.
My dogs eat food passed for human consumption, i.e. is passed as disease free.

The necks we get are skinned and usually do not have much fat on them.

We cycle what we feed them,so only one day in three for necks; then a day of wings then a day of minced meat and veggie mush.

I only find that they get hard poo from the necks and wings, then the mince softens them up. As it happens, for a dog that has problems with anal glands, hard poo is great. Since we started on this feeding method, Guinness has much less anal problems. :eek:

Trips to vets have reduced alot.;)

I hope that you can bite the bullet and go back to a balanced raw diet.

Saw Oprah on TV the other day, the pet nutritionalist she was using rated raw food as tops, followed by home cooked - at the bottom was the kibble stuff.

Anyway, feed the way you want:razz: - I'm just a raw food convert and I and they love it.:luv:
 
I'd feel a lot more confident about raw if someone would actually do some controlled studies. And having almost had a crisis with a raw wing, I'm just skeptical about all those claims of how bone quickly gets pulverised and digested and how fast a dog's digestive system is supposed to work etc etc. I woudn't feed whole wings again.

The one irony that always occurs to me wih the 'human grade food' argument is... that canids in the wild eat meat that would rarely qualify as nice fresh human grade food. Lots of scavenged rotting carcasses, and wild canids do not hunt nice healthy animals, they hunt the sick and the old. In other words, primarily the equivalent of the 'downers' that would not be allowed into the human food chain if it were a chicken, a cow, a pig. Not that I'd go hunting out rotting meat for the dogs :lol: but it's just a different take from a different angle. :)
 
I've had both of mine on a frozen prepared raw (Primal) for about a month and a half now and am amazed! I've always had issues with Jake having soft poop...not anymore!! It's much smaller, much much firmer and much less smelly. The Primal is a breeze to feed once you get a system down from thawing and storing....and I've reached that point. Won't go back to kibble ever again. I haven't yet done any bones, except marrow bones. Slowly but surely we try new things.
 
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