What do the people who give raw bones think of this?

First of all, as to the varying sizes of say the wings, she went to a variety of stores to get a varied a sample as she could.She also sent in not just one sample to be tested, but 10 samples of the wings.In the book she has three values listed, maximum, minimum, and mean (average).The calcium and phosphorus are listed as the percentage.Edie gave the maximum percentage on them.So the wings, 100 grams, maximum value of calcium 1.15 %.would contain 1.15 grams of calcium, or 1150 mg.       
 
edit: whoops, it was 8 samples of the wings, 10 of the chicken necks  

IMHO, anything can get stuck in the esophagus, kibble, bone, meat, shoelace, whatever. Of these things, only one stands a chance of perforating something.

Before I learned better, I fed Shadow barbecued beef rib and barbecued pork chop. On the beef rib, he ate all the meat and tissue and the cartilege at the end of the bone, but wasn't interested in the main bone itself. With the pork chop, he at the whole thing, as the pork chop bone crumbled easily. He's a chewer, rather than a gulper. I was lucky. I don't consciously feed him bones anymore, raw or cooked. And I have absolutely nothing against someone else feeding raw bones. As Rebecca said, you assess the risks and benefits as you see fit.

It should be known that wolves have an ability in their stomach to hold a bone until it is wrapped in hide. Then it passes through, undigested. They get most of their nutrients from eating stomach contents and organ meat, where the vitamins and such are likely to concentrate, such as vit A in the liver. In and of itself, the bone, not being digestible doesn't offer any nutritional value unless you do as Billinghurst suggests, if necessary, and grind the bone. Then, it is broken down into more digestible components, bits of calcium mlecules waving in the breeze, for a mental image.

And, to be fair, a number of the x-rays shown on the page you are talking about involve dogs that got into a field and ate a mouse or squirrel and the bones got cross-threaded.

In and of itself, the bone, not being digestible doesn't offer any nutritional value

 
I'm really not trying to be argumentative, but I've never seen any undigested bones in Cherokee's poop. It turns white quickly if left in the yard, but I've never seen bone fragments or pieces of any size. Also, I don't see how if bone isn't digestible wild animals get enough calcium. Organ meat, stomach contents, etc., just don't contain enough calcium to keep animals healthy.
 
Honestly, I do believe that there's a danger of a bone puncturing a dog's esophagus, stomach, intestines, whatever, but I guess I'm a gambler. I know how her teeth get without bones, and since I'm not willing to have her anesthetized regularly for teeth cleaning (and she's much too aggressive to NOT be anesthetized), it's either bones or a rotten diseased mouth.
 
And just to be clear, I'm not trying to convince anyone to give their dogs bones. You have to weigh the benefits and risks yourself. I guess I just felt the need to defend my decision to let Cherokee have them.

In and of itself, the bone, not being digestible doesn't offer any nutritional value

I dont understand this either.My dogs often swallow chicken necks and sometimes wings whole,if they wernt digestable wouldnt they be coming out the other end the same way they went in,or at least poop out some bone fragments??Neither of which my dogs do. My dogs get their main source of calcium from bones,this is one of the major reasons raw feeders incorporate rmb's in their dogs diet.If i didnt give my dogs bones i would have to supplement their calcium in some other way,eg egg shells.

ORIGINAL: ron2

IMHO, anything can get stuck in the esophagus, kibble, bone, meat, shoelace, whatever. Of these things, only one stands a chance of perforating something.

Before I learned better, I fed Shadow barbecued beef rib and barbecued pork chop. On the beef rib, he ate all the meat and tissue and the cartilege at the end of the bone, but wasn't interested in the main bone itself. With the pork chop, he at the whole thing, as the pork chop bone crumbled easily. He's a chewer, rather than a gulper. I was lucky. I don't consciously feed him bones anymore, raw or cooked. And I have absolutely nothing against someone else feeding raw bones. As Rebecca said, you assess the risks and benefits as you see fit.

It should be known that wolves have an ability in their stomach to hold a bone until it is wrapped in hide. Then it passes through, undigested. They get most of their nutrients from eating stomach contents and organ meat, where the vitamins and such are likely to concentrate, such as vit A in the liver. In and of itself, the bone, not being digestible doesn't offer any nutritional value unless you do as Billinghurst suggests, if necessary, and grind the bone. Then, it is broken down into more digestible components, bits of calcium mlecules waving in the breeze, for a mental image.

And, to be fair, a number of the x-rays shown on the page you are talking about involve dogs that got into a field and ate a mouse or squirrel and the bones got cross-threaded.

ron,
I'm not trying to argue, but I've read that wolves eating the actual contents in their prey's stomach, is a myth.
In fact, when given stomach (whole stomach and fresh) dogs will leave behind the contents. It's like eating waste. It doesn't happen (from what I've read).
I mean, there's just SO much conflicting information. You say bones are undigestable and provide basically nothing for a dog (or wolf) but I've NEVER read that. I'm not saying you're wrong, I've just NEVER read that.
I, personally, don't see a difference as to whether you grind up a bone, or a dog chews up a bone. I mean, obviously if you grind up a bone it'll be in considerably smaller pieces, but either way the bone IS getting broken up.

oops, I should add that I meant that theirs conflicting nutritional information in general, the pros and cons, not with what you're saying.
Sorry if that reads a tad wrong.[]

ron,
I'm not trying to argue, but I've read that wolves eating the actual contents in their prey's stomach, is a myth

 
One line in a book by L. David Mech says that and it's become everyone's experience. Every other link and reference I can find to L. David Mech, he points out that wolves are omnivorous and eat plant matter. The observation of other researchers besides Mech who show that the wolves go for the stomach, first. The experience of a few farmers I know. The experience of someone here who's actually taken care of wolves for a period of rehabilitation. Some video documentation of of wild canid eating habits. Field notes from a wildlife researcher tracking coyotes in the Adirondacks. These are some of the things that show me that wolves do eat stomach contents and are omnivorous by behavior and biology.
 
Someone will next say how the teeth of a dog means they are carnivore and my reply would be yeah and humans still have an appendix and during gestation, we still grow a tailbud that later disappears. Evolution is not perfect.

But is or isn't bone digestable?

I know this is only one citing for you, but this mentions David Mech. I'm SURE that when this has been argued by others before, this same site has probably been cited.

[linkhttp://rawfed.com/myths/stomachcontents.html]myth about stomach contents with David Mech quotes.[/link]

Granted, I've never read the book, but it's weird that you say he says one thing, and this person says he says something different.


I just want to know who's right![]
I mean, out of curiosity only, I don't plan on feeding Ella fresh stomach and its contents anytime in the near future.
I believe any tripe I would buy for her would have the insides completely cleaned out anyway.

ORIGINAL: jessies_mom

 I've brought up this site before and so have a few others; it's a hotly debated subject. I can tell you that bones are the most frequent cause of esophageal obstruction in dogs. I do give Jessie bones occasionally but she's a very careful chewer and not a gulper and I'm careful about which bones she gets. I also watch her while she's chewing them.

I see this comment quite often about watching the dog while it was chewing the bone.  My question is, if the bone get's stuck in the dogs throat, how is the average person going to get it out before the dog suffers severe problems? 

"Green" tripe is ground pretty much with the contents intact.  The thing is that it's mostly preprocessed - I don't know how careful they are about removing the rumen intact, for instance, with its fluids.  Tripe seems to vary wildly with what they include - whether it's the bleached stuff they sell for human consumption, or green tripe complete with whatever's still in there.

It's not like our stomachs, where recognizable food sits in a liquid chamber so that if you upchucked it you'd be able to tell what you ate.  The final chambers of the digestive system of a ruminant break down vital nutrients processed by the rumen.  The brown slush produced by the rumen moves into specialized folds of tissue that have various missions, ending in the fourth, or true stomach, which operates much like ours does, preparing proteins, fats, and carbs for entry into the intestines.

From what I've been able to gather, it's the last three "chambers" that are incorporated into most green tripe.

[linkhttp://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/136/7/1923S]http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/136/7/1923S[/link]
 
[linkhttp://academic.evergreen.edu/s/stidav22/reports/WolfBehaviorReport.pdf]http://academic.evergreen.edu/s/stidav22/reports/WolfBehaviorReport.pdf[/link]
 
[linkhttp://www.kidsplanet.org/tt/wolf/intro/faq.pdf]http://www.kidsplanet.org/tt/wolf/intro/faq.pdf[/link]
 
[linkhttp://www.unity.edu/FacultyPages/Nelson/Lecture21.htm]http://www.unity.edu/FacultyPages/Nelson/Lecture21.htm[/link]
 
These are some links that are somewhat related. I'm still looking for the links I had where Mech points out the ability of wolves and other wild canids eating vegetation. Some of these links contain statements, such as successive trips to the carcass wherein everything is eaten except for a few scraps of hide and bone.
 
And coyotes do eat vegetation and stomach contents. It's determined that they do so in their scat, not just whether you can see them eat the contents or not see them. I had a link for that and I will have to find it again.
 
I've a few co-workers that live on farms and suffered a cow being killed by a wolf or coyote. The stomach region was the main point of entry.
 
Wolves in rehab will be feed carcasses to maintain their ability to hunt and pull meat from animals but they are also fed kibble for the nutrient balance, as they always come in malnourished and usually starving. So, some wolf packs may not eat so much of the stomach contents but they can also be malnourished.
 
I've seen a grey wolf in Canada eating berries off the bush. And someone promptly told me that the wolf probably didn't absorb or digest it. Evidently, he was just doing it for the camera, saying to his packmates, "Watch this. I'm gonna confuse Ron and a million other viewers."


 

Oh, and ron, just so you know, I'm not going to argue whether or not wolves and/or dogs can digest or process fruits, vegetables and/or grains. I just wanted to get set straight on whether or not wolves eat the contents of the stomach.
And I still have to check those links out.

I think it may depend on where the wolf is, too. In the arctic, any food left out is frozen and inedible. In lower latitudes, a kill can be left out and wolves can keep going back to it or it may be scavenged by a coyote.
 
As for the original question, do dogs get benefit from bones, the original website linked says no, and so does petDIETS.com. Granted, the scientists at those websites do not follow arctic wolves. They've merely spent the last 20 to 40 years studying what nutrients dogs need and how they get them or don't get them.
 
Also, a scientist that comes here and has quoted directly from the textbooks, (not written by Iams or any other food maker) about the biology of dogs and how they benefit from an omnivore diet in both nutrition and bowel action. Not to worry, though. These bits of inconvenient science get ignored because Mech said that the wolves he has seen do not eat stomach contents and I'm sure he is telling the truth as best he can, nor do I disregard his creds or his work. I think there is a range of diet behavior throughout all canids. Some canids eat very little vegetation of stomach contents, though maybe they should eat more of it.
 
Per the field study of coyotes in the Adirondacks, their scat shows that the bones they swallow are wrapped in hide and resemble twigs. I would submit, however, that there might be some calcium to be had eating the soft part of a bone or cartilege. But they also get likewise, some of the nutrients from vegetation, as well.

My question is, if the bone get's stuck in the dogs throat, how is the average person going to get it out before the dog suffers severe problems?

 
  Good question; my answer is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Jessie's about the size of most Labs she meets; I call her size medium-large. She's not a gulper but if she were, I wouldn't give her any bones small enough for her to swallow without chewing. You really need to know your dog's chewing habits; Jessie could swallow ox-tails whole but she chews them into small pieces before swallowing them. Some people on this forum have Danes and if thier dog is a gulper they hold a chicken leg while thier dog is chewing it to prevent them from trying to swallow it whole. If my dog didn't obey the leave it command or wouldn't let me take a bone away from her she wouldn't get them, but when I think she's starting to break bone chips of the inside wall of a marrow bone or she's eaten the cartilage of a soup bone and is trying to eat the bone it's attached to I can tell her "leave it" or "out" and she'll drop the bone.