chicken bones

[MommaDogs]

I do two things with my chicken bones. One, I feed them raw to my dogs. I stopped giving them turkey wings or chicken leg bones. I'm told they are fine, but they splinter, so I stopped just in case. But the necks, backs, breast, they're so yummy to them. It's cooked chicken bones you can't feed a dog. Nothing wrong with raw bones, they are still flexible and won't splinter. I start all my rescue dogs on raw chicken bones and have never had a tragedy in all my years of feeding raw.

 

The other thing I do is when I make chicken soup, I give them the bones after. CAUTION: I cook my chicken stock in a slow simmer over two days, so by the time I'm done, they are very soft. There are NO splinters after cooking for so long. I just take a potato masher and mash everything up. I have even put it in a food processor when it has cooled - comes out the consistency and color of pate. Either way, they eat it up like crazy.

[MommaDogs]

Originally Posted By: HSmom

I'd like to be able to add calcium to his mixture. That would go a long way to decreasing our dependance on commercial kibble.

BTW - I also use egg shells... great calcium supplement... I just grind up egg shells in a coffee grinder and sprinkle them over their food. I've been doing that for years and they never even seem to notice. I have never toasted them, I wonder if they may like it?

[HSmom]

My egg shells get recycled back to the chickens.

 

I bought a few whole chickens recently - marked down, cuz they were close to the date. I froze the legs for oven cooking or BBQ. I pulled the breast & rib meat off the bone and raw-pack canned them. I also raw-pack canned the innards, wing-tips and necks (with bones) for the dog. The main carcass and the meaty parts of the wings went into the soup pot, and I canned several pints of chicken soup with meat, potato & carrot. I could have then canned (or pressure cooked) the bony carcass for the dog, but I didn't have any other reason to fire up the canner.

 

It feels really good to be giving my dog super nutrition from things I would otherwise discard.