Growing up, I was always told that you should never feed chicken bones to a dog, because they would splinter and kill the animal. Then, I married my ex, and she fed chicken bones to her dog all the time, much to my horror. Moreover, her father was a veterinarian, and he poo-poo’ed this belief as an old wive’s tale. Her dog loved them, and never suffered any bad results from this, so it was difficult for me to argue.
Since then, I have repeated this expert opinion to others, and they generally become quite agitated against this practice. Do you believe it, and if so, is it (like myself) just because that’s what you were always told? When you think about it, wild dogs eat birds all the time; if it was so dangerous, one would think that natural selection would have weeded out the bird eaters.
Can anybody document injury to dogs from eating chicken bones, or is it just an urban legend?
I have heard this before but I have always given chicken bones to my dogs. None of them have had a stomach punctured or intestine ripped. I also never had a problem feeding them to my cats. There may be some truth to the danger of bones though. Just because my dogs were never harmed doesnt say much. I will continue to give them chicken bones though.
Let me put another mark in the, “I give chicken bones to my dog and they don’t bother him,” column. I had heard that chicken bones were bad for dogs all my, but when I first became a dog own about two years ago, I never gave it a second thought. Dogs are carnivores.
I had a dog that swallowed a chicken leg whole once. Since he swallowed it whole, it didn’t splinter (but it probably did hurt, later on… wince) However, bird bones do splinter fairly easily, so it probably isn’t the best thing to gnaw on.
Sure, they’re carnivores, but how easy is it to hunt birds, without shooting them? I don’t think I’ve ever head of a dog killing a bird that could fly easily, and the ones that can’t fly easily either have stronger bones (ostriches etc.) or are only common near humans (chickens etc.), so selection pressure wouldn’t be so great.
As was pointed out, dogs are carnivores. Carnivores (and omnivores) are designed to eat meat and bones raw. I’m not sure what happens to chicken bones when you cook them, but apparently they splinter more easily. However, I have been feeding dogs chicken bones and small children for about 50 years and none have suffered any discomfort much less death.
I vote with Bear, Lance and Chronos. The only time any of them have ever been wrong was when their answer differed from mine. (JOKE! It’s a joke, don’t shit a chicken bone!)
Supposedly no pork bones either-or beef bones that splinter-only round bones. I actually have had a dog get a chicken bone stuck in the back of her throat. I had to pull it out and it was kinda lodged in there. But that was only once and I have had lots of dogs and cats. But now I try to stick to beef for dogs, raw chicken bones for cats.
My sister’s Golden Retriever ate a whole chicken carcass last year. When she discovered him he was swollen beyond belief. She took him to the vet and his bowel was twisted and spleen was messed up somehow. They operated on him and removed the spleen. It was touch and go for awhile but the big dummy lived. We’ve always been on the safe side and not given our dogs chicken or fish bones. I personally wouldn’t give my dog table scraps anymore. We don’t have a dog right now, but if I did. Dogs get used to scraps and often won’t eat their regular food. Then what do you do if you don’t cook that night? I’ll give them a bone or two but not make a habit of it. We usually eat boneless chicken these days anyway. LOL
My old bitch has caught two robins since I’ve owned her, and both times she was on a leash (albeit a long one). She had to fend for herself (mostly) when she lived with her former owners, and she became a very crafty huntress.
I used to have a German Shepherd and was on an email list for owners of that breed. Many of them fed their dogs raw chicken (bones inlcuded) and I never head of any problems. I also fed my dog a chicken wing or two a day as a treat, and she was fine.
COOKED bones, of any kind, on the other hand, will splinter readily. Someone on the aforementioned list’s dog had to have surgery after eating a cooked pork chop bone and it splintered in the dog’s mouth and lodged in his gums and roof of the mouth. Ow!
I once fed the bone from a porterhouse steak to a Saint Bernard (I didn’t want to, but the dog wouldn’t take no for an answer). It chewed up and swallowed that bone in about 2 seconds flat. Scared the hell out of me, but the dog was fine.
I have a dog that is getting really fat because she catches and eats crows several times a day. She snatches them out of the air and chomps on them, whole (feathers and all. ewww). She has never had a problem with torn intestines or stomach or anything.
My dogs all eat chicken, beef, whatever bones they can get a hold of. Again, no problems.
Oh, and on the subject of other bones to avoid: Stay away from ring-shaped bone cuts with marrow inside, or saw them in half first. My old dog Bear, rest his soul, actually got one of those stuck around his lower jaw, not once, but twice… The first time warranted a $100+ visit to the vet.
Here in Thailand the dogs are fed anything and stay healthy. We have a dog here on our compound that is 10 years old and is fed everything from Chucken bones to fish skeletons, all without any adverse affects.
I;m going to chime in with the raw vs. cooked theory. I’ve always heard the same thing. I have seen cooked bones splinter more easily. Is this more dangerous for the dog? Maybe.
I just talked to Michi today. She is an Emergency Vet so she gets to see what happens when idiots like all of us feed our dogs chicken bones.
The official answer is that chicken bones, cooked or not, (and chocolate too) should not be given to dogs because of the dangers and risks involved.
People knew for 50 years about the risks of smoking but that did not stop millions from doing it anyway and dying of lung cancer. The fact is, there are people in their 90s who have smoked since they were 12 and they are fine. Similarly, there are dogs who have eaten chicken bones everday since they were puppies and they are also fine. So it is definately dangerous and not recommended but hey, like that ever stopped anyone before…
Since from time to time all creatures will suffer catastrophic results from problems ingesting food (the python that burst eating a croc whole is perhaps the finest ever illustration) the question can’t be “is it 100% safe to give my dog a bone”
The question is more accurately, “is it on the whole safe to give my dog bones to eat”
I have a few points to make, some in confirmation of other’s points
Domestic dogs have been trailing humans for about 15000 years, presumably eating scraps and surviving in times of shortage when a bone would sometimes be the only nutrition between life and death - they have had plenty of time to adapt to eating bones, yes
some recent breeds might not be so robust though, for obvious reasons I wouldn;t expect the same bone crunching efficiency from a chihuahua as from a bull terrier, a hyena can crunch a glass bottle w/o suffering harm, apparently :eek:
Even I can eat chicken bones, I often eat the bones in KFC hot wings, yum yum, very attavistic, very satisfying, I am not a dog btw
I remove the “needle bone” from poultry before giving to my dog, as it presents a clear ‘no brainer’ threat to lodging in the throat of an animal that gulp-gorges as an ingestion strategy
a veterinary friend said that he had never seen or heard of second hand a canine chicken bone issue, but had had a good few fatalities from dogs bolting larger bones, beef, pork and lamb, esp chops - apparently they suffer by swallowing them whole!!
my dog ate a slab of finest Ardennes pate yesterday after stealing it from the kitchen counter - if I’d caught her in the ensuing 10 minutes chase I would have choked her manually
another dog I once had ate a audio cassette tape of my music, master copy, then when defecating managed to get tied by her bum to an apple tree by trying to scratch the itching presumably, and the vet had to be called to sedate her and finger the lost songs out of her bumhole
Another dog I had died of MY food poisoning, I has awful gastroenteritis when I was 17, my parents thought it was serious enough to call an ambulance, and the ambulance ran over our dog . . .
I believe it also makes a difference how the bones have been cooked. Roasted or fried chicken bones are chewy, or where they are hard, tend to snap or crunch, Boiled chicken bones (for example leftovers from making stock) have much of their gelatin and fat removed, and so are brittle and splintery.