We started feeding our 4-month English Cocker skinless chicken wings last night after having had her on Embark + ground chicken breast for a week. Today, we found almost the whole piece of drumlet in her stool. Is that usual? If not, what should we do to get her used to RMB?
Reg: 08-29-2006
Posts: 2324
Loc: Central Coast, California
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Hi Pat
It's not unusual to see bits/pieces of bone when you first start out. Your dog is in the process of developing the stomach acids and enzymes needed to handle real food. Adding digestive enzymes to the food is a good idea, IMHO, to help her along. I still add it to the food daily.
Some dogs inhale RMBS and don't take the time to chew. If your dog is like this feeding bigger pieces may help force her to slow down and chew. I always feed wings attached to the breast.
Chicken wings by themselves are pretty much all bone and very little meat...maybe not the best choice as a stand-alone RMB.
Meaty chicken backs and necks are great RMBS to start with. Easy to crunch up and usually the correct proportion of meat to bone. You may be able to get backs and necks at the grocery or you can buy a whole chicken and cut it up yourself...which is what I do. A whole chicken will give you many meals for a smaller dog.
You can feed her yogurt or kefir to increase the gut flora. My guess is that it could take up to 3 weeks to get the gut totally adjusted to the raw and digesting everything like it should.
I would initially feed something with smaller bones, chicken backs would be ideal. Wings are pretty high with the bone ratio.
You could also use a heavy cleaver to chop up the bones a bit until her gut has time to adjust.
Connie Sutherland Moderator Reg: 07-13-2005
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Quote: Pat Khan
Hi.
We started feeding our 4-month English Cocker skinless chicken wings last night after having had her on Embark + ground chicken breast for a week. Today, we found almost the whole piece of drumlet in her stool. Is that usual? If not, what should we do to get her used to RMB?
Connie Sutherland Moderator Reg: 07-13-2005
Posts: 31571
Loc: North-Central coast of California
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Quote: Debbie Bruce
You can feed her yogurt or kefir to increase the gut flora. My guess is that it could take up to 3 weeks to get the gut totally adjusted to the raw and digesting everything like it should.
Yes, good suggestions.
This doesn't do anything for bone processing specifically, but I'm a big fan of probiotics anyway.
The bone-digesting enzymes kick into gear over a few days or even up to three weeks, in my experience too, and meanwhile I do use chicken backs if I can get them.
Connie Sutherland Moderator Reg: 07-13-2005
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Loc: North-Central coast of California
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Quote: Sarah Morris
.... I always feed wings attached to the breast.
Chicken wings by themselves are pretty much all bone and very little meat...maybe not the best choice as a stand-alone RMB.
Meaty chicken backs and necks are great RMBs to start with. Easy to crunch up and usually the correct proportion of meat to bone. You may be able to get backs and necks at the grocery or you can buy a whole chicken and cut it up yourself...which is what I do. A whole chicken will give you many meals for a smaller dog.
Yes to all of this, except one small thing is that the backs I see these days are less meaty than I used to see. Still a great digestible piece and my favorite starter piece, but not so much of a replication of the whole-prey meat-to-bone ratio that they often were (where I shop) even as recently as a year or two ago. I imagine that the butcher is trying to get more onto the parts that sell for more per-pound than the cheap backs.
Tracy Collins Webboard User Reg: 10-09-2008
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Another technique I employ with puppies (still do with my smallest dog) is to smash that knobby end of the drumstick. Just use a hammer, or the back of the cleaver and give it a whack. Pre-chewing it a bit for the dog will help them digest this particularly bony bit.
As others have said, it takes a little while for your dog's system to build up the juices to dissolve bone. Start with pieces of the chicken that have the smallest/softest bones. The carcass--backs (including necks) and breasts have the softest bones, then wings, and legs are the hardest. Those bones are "weight-bearing" so they are by design a bit harder. Factory-farmed chickens are slaughtered quite young, so their leg bones don't ever get all that hard. In short order your dog will have no trouble dissolving chicken leg bones.
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Bone in stool
#234282 - 03/31/2009 06:00 PM 
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