Which raw bones for teeth cleaning?

[Noobs]

Chicken legs are fine because the birds are so young when they are killed that the bones are soft. I'd avoid feeding the leg bones of a gnarled old rooster though.

Nettle says chicken bones are fine. Weight-bearing bones on other animals IIRC is bad because they'd be more brittle I think.

[CoolDog]

Noobs wrote:

Nettle says chicken bones are fine. Weight-bearing bones on other animals IIRC is bad because they'd be more brittle I think.

No, it's the other way round, Noobs! Think about it a moment: Weight-bearing bones such as a leg bone would have to be thicker to support weight. However, any poultry (chickens, turkey) bones should only be given to a dog, only if the dog's owner is supervising the dog, because poultry bones tend to splinter and get caught in the dog's digestive tracts, causing problems such as internal bleeding and/or blocking, which is an emergency trip to the vets. Personally, I would advise not giving your dog chicken bones for this reason.

[Nettle]

Noobs wrote:

Nettle says chicken bones are fine. Weight-bearing bones on other animals IIRC is bad because they'd be more brittle I think.

No, it's the other way round, Noobs! Think about it a moment: Weight-bearing bones such as a leg bone would have to be thicker to support weight. However, any poultry (chickens, turkey) bones should only be given to a dog, only if the dog's owner is supervising the dog, because poultry bones tend to splinter and get caught in the dog's digestive tracts, causing problems such as internal bleeding and/or blocking, which is an emergency trip to the vets. Personally, I would advise not giving your dog chicken bones for this reason.

Cooldog you must have missed the salient points of this discussion, so I'll re-iterate for the benefit of any others who may have done the same:

Chickens raised for meat are very young when killed and so all their bones are soft. These bones are safe to feed raw - no bones whatsoever are safe to eat once cooked.

Turkeys are bigger than chickens (you don't say ) and their leg bones are thicker, even though they too are very young when killed.

Old chooks (several years old) have harder bones: older animals have harder bones, so the load-bearing bones are better not fed to dogs. Most of the time nothing would go wrong, but why look for trouble when so many soft young bones are available?

Bones fed to dogs MUST have a covering of meat on them - hence the mantra of "raw meaty bones". Then they do not cause the intestinal problems flagged up by Cooldog, and yes I agree all bone-eating should be supervised, but I also say that all eating should be supervised whatever you feed your dog.

[runlikethewind]

I've got an image of people misunderstanding chicken legs as weight bearing heee heee. But yes as Nettle means - weight bearing are the weight bearing bones from cattle generally. I think lamb legs are ok depending on what size dog you have.

[Po'ele]

Are bully sticks good for cleaning teeth? I give my dog one large one each week and he loves it.