Dried food and bones

[fimckenzie]

Is it ok to give bones and the ocassional treat, such as a chicken wing, slivers of liver etc, when feeding on a kibble diet?

Thanks

[pangolin]

Lots of people do There's some advice to not feed raw mixed in with kibble (like you would a wet food) because they digest at different rates, but I've not seen this inforced strictly. I just wouldn't overdo it as you could risk unbalancing their diet, with it resulting, for example, in them getting too much protein, too much fibre, too much of certain vitamins (liver contains lots of vitamin A, which I imagine kibble will have as an artificial supplement, and it's possible to overdose in Vitamin A with some nasty side effects). The odd bit shouldn't affect it overall though.

Kibble is digested slower I think, and swells in the stomach (except the grain-free brands like Orijen).

Too much lambs liver = too much fat as it's the fattiest of the livers.

If you feed raw feed it as one meal, so kibble in the morning (so it's worked through the GI more) and a couple of chicken legs at evening feed when the dog's less active and can digest it better.

I wouldnt mix, these two feeding methods, for the reasons given above, kibble can take as long as 12 hours to digest, where as raw takes about 4-5 hours.

Thats not to say you cant give a chicken drumstick as a treat now and again,.. but personaly I wouldnt do it as a regular feeding program

[kizzy]

An odd time I will give Cassie a raw lamb bone at breakfast time.
She then gets her usual kibble at tea-time.
As this only happens on a rare occassion she doesn't have any problems.