Dog bone dog treat usage – the definitive Healthy Dog Treat guide (function & food).

The fact is that we provide as many different healthy meat cuts, bones and offal as we can to our Australian customers. Many owners have bone dog treat preferences based on previous history (what is available and what a dog likes to eat), but many people have no idea where to start in the pursuit of the perfect bone for their dog.  This guide aims to demystify the subject for EVERY dog owner.

What do you want to use your dog treat bone for?

This might seem a simple question, but there are many facets to bone giving:

Dog bones (dog treats) for different functions

We currently have bones in these animal bone categories:  beef, Kangaroo, Lamb, Pork.

We do not stock dried chicken bones as small dried bones are considered too risky.

The smaller and easier chewing bones (of the big bone variety) are mostly the regular lamb and pork bones (the smaller bones pictured in this blog below).

Big chewing dogs will be able to break these smaller bones open to get to the marrow, but mid to smaller dogs will still only chew the ends off.

Beef bones come in the most varieties, but are too big for many smaller dogs (such as the beef shin bone shown above in Kara the bull arabs mouth). They also come with the natural 10% fat levels (if dogs get to the marrow), which if you are feeding several of the beef bones to your dog per day, need to be taken into consideration as added kilojoules in their diet. If you have a big dog, and want a big bone, beef bones are usually the way to go.

The caveat when giving any bone or dog treats to a dog is to know how they approach eating and to reduce choking hazards as much as possible if they are a fast eater.

Some of our most popular bones are the kangaroo bones, and that is because of the variety and low fat levels. For instance the Kangaroo clod bone is THE hardest bone we stock, so if you have a very hard chewer you may consider giving them this option.

Then again, if you have an older hard chewing dog and you are concerned they might try too hard to crack these open, and damage their teeth, you may decide to feed them the other kangaroo bones below.

HIGH MEAT dog treat bones – for nutrition and teeth cleaning !

Having a medium sized retriever dog myself, this category of bones holds the most interest to me.

Almost any puppy will be interested in chewing on any bone, or anything, but they often don’t get any nutrition benefit from their endeavours.  Mostly people buy bones to use as a chewing preoccupation, and even to blunt those razor sharp puppy teeth a little.

HOWEVER if you want any sized dog to get some nutritional benefit from the bone (the meat, not the marrow) AND teeth cleaning, then bones with a good proportion of meat on them, and a bone that lends itself to teeth cleaning is important.

ROO HIP BONE –  This is like a lamb loin chop of roo bones. There is good meat on it as well as a small enough bone that might provide most dogs with some crunch time.

Kangaroo TAIL PIECE –  We sell these in lots of ten, because they are a perfect little cube of condensed nutrient and teeth cleaning all in one that you will want to use many times over. Both the roo hip bone and the roo tail piece meat is of course the low fat option typically 2-4% fat (and good non saturated fats too).

Lamb Neck–  This is probably the traditional big meaty bone that most people think of when they think of meaty bones. In fact its the whole reason that I wrote this article based on inspiration after visiting my vet. Vets traditionally recommend compressed green vegetable matter that they sell at high mark up to clean a dog’s teeth, or a very expensive ultrasound dog cleaning service while your dog is under general anaesthetics.

But my ‘old school’ vet actually said that one of his preferred methods was getting a butcher to cut a raw lamb neck down the middle and feed that to a dog.

The ‘honeycomb’ structure of the lamb neck bone acts as a good surface for scraping tartar off a dog’s teeth, without then needing to break a thick hard bone open to get any cleaning value. Do note though, that lamb meat is more likely to be near 10% fat level as compared to Roo tail pieces (2-4% fat level).

As many vets recommend against raw meat feeding, and you might not like raw bones dragged through dirt in your hard, or across your kitchen floor. That is why our dried lamb necks and roo tail pieces ARE such a great option. 

You can always snap them in half if you want to limit the amount of meat your dog is ingesting.

Dog bone dog treat Nutrition.

The best method you have of getting calcium into your dog’s body is by them eating bones or crushed bones. Dogs evolved to hunt, kill and eat animals and the calcium in bones is in the PERFECT formulation for them to maximally extract the calcium for using their own body growth, maintenance and bone care.

You may ask how can this be where “dog Food” has a stamp that says it is whole and complete. The fact is that dog food has some very loose food trials and a table of numbers to meet regarding minimum levels. The tables never include the source of the vitamin or mineral or in particular the protein, and unless it is meat, it has low BIO AVAILABIITY.

BIO AVAILABIITY (meat based food for carnivore dogs) is all about how easily the mineral is utilised by the dog’s body (for maintaining bones and teeth and other organ functions). Calcium also is vital for correct heart function and muscle contraction.  Zinc and Boron are also important minerals that work in conjunction with Calcium – but let’s stay on focus with calcium at the moment.

Calcium is a primary mineral (element) required for dog and human health. As omnivores humans can get calcium from meat and vegetable sources much more easily than dogs – who are still essentially carnivores.

The aaffco tables show that most minerals and vitamins have a minimum and maximum desired amount, however if you give your dog appropriate levels of dog food (and or meat based treats) and one moderate size bone per day, you will not be breaking any rules.

How bones support mineral levels in your dog’s body

When the bone chemistry within your dog is working properly it releases and absorbs minerals depending on the needs of the systems around it. As said, heart function, nerve impulses, digestion and sleep patterns are regulated by how the bone regulates the minerals it releases.

This calcium ‘mineral bank’ is vital for the body functions and if it gets depleted, your dogs own bones can become brittle.  NOTE this should not occur with what dogs receive in commercial dog food. However a REAL bone source of calcium really confirms that they will access the minerals properly.

You may know that “chelated” minerals are better than not. Chelated means that the chemical composition involves being stabilized by a metal ion by binding it to other chemical substances such as amino acids (from the meat protein) or organic compounds. Because bones that domestic dogs eat are NATURAL, the minerals in them are ‘chelated minerals’ that are readily absorbed into their bodies (the whole point about BIO AVAILALBITY). They are the RIGHT formulation of calcium etc.

WHAT are bones made of?

We give an example in the  appendix below.  Basically a 100g dried beef marrow bone has 10% protein in it and 9% fat,  1.5% water.  The carb levels are low.  While vitamins are low level, the minerals are a good representation of what dogs need.  The main minerals you should know about are calcium, magnesium, zinc and manganese.

Roasted Beef marrow bones (this is a guide from another site NOT our work):

Reference

bone nutrion data =   http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2603988/2