I don't have the money right now to switch my four dogs to raw. Three of them eat Canidae chicken and the other eats Orijen fish recipe.

My tenant left (finally) so now I have room in the fridge and freezer to store meat for the dogs.

I've been replacing the odd kibble meal with raw (a chicken quarter here, some chicken backs there, ground beef etc). I don't have any supplements yet either, so they get some raw food for a meal about once every 2 days. They are fed twice a day.

I had cut a whole chicken into four pieces, and the next day I noticed bone shards in the dogs' poops. I was walking my one dog and when I went to pick up the poo with a plastic bag, I felt a whole bunch of sharp little pieces. Now I'm worried - could this be cutting up their little guts and bums??? It was like broken glass!!!

Also, another question. While my one guy was eating his chicken quarter, he tried to swallow it too fast or the piece was too big, and ended up vomiting it back up. In his vomit there was some clearly undigested Orijen kibble, from his meal from 9 hours previous. Is this normal, that his kibble would just sit there in his stomach all day?? Do I need to worry about this?

Thanks!!!

I start dogs with softer bones at first (backs, necks) but still have occasionally seen shards like that. I never saw them for more than a week or two into the raw diet, but anyway, I started giving plain live-culture yogurt (and the digestive enzymes LB sells, for the first couple of weeks).

I think that the bone-digesting enzymes don't kick in instantly.

The kibble from 9 hours ago -- yeah, that's not surprising. As I recall, it takes three times as long (or longer) to digest as raw.

OTOH, plenty of people start with the leg bones and don't see bone fragments.

I have to say that I probably wouldn't be worried; I'd probably just go with softer bones for a while, since you're seeing sharp bits.

Yeah, they seemed fine with the chicken backs.... it was right after I fed them the chicken quarters that I found shards. I never thought of soft vs hard bones... I thought necks and backs were fed to smaller/younger dogs because the bones themselves were smaller.

So if I feed only necks and backs as RMB source for a while.. how long is a while? Remember I am only giving a raw meal once every 3-4 meals or so. A month or two, maybe?

Did you only see shards the one time?

Both of mine still pass bones on occasion even with necks and backs.

I think its one of those things that just happens every now and then.

I would agree with Mike. I still see bones every once in a while.

Without getting too gross, I pay more attention now to the color and consistancy, than what the poop contains (but I still check it out for worms), to assess how my dog is processing his food.

My neighbors must think I'm nuts