DENTAL STIX FOR DOGS

We have several healthy dog treats that are incredibly good at cleaning teeth.  Aside from bones (that only the big dogs can often open to scrape residue grain dog food off their teeth.

Bones are great for many big dogs, and yes small dogs can really benefit from treats that have a combination of bone and a lot of meat, so that they get the meat nutrition AND the teeth cleaning by ripping the meat off the bone.  Such as Roo ribs and kangaroo lumbar bone treats.

Dental stick – Why is it important to have healthy nutrition ?

Simply put, because everything that a dog eats SHOULD be a benefit, Not just a filler – particularly if its adding Kilo joules to your dog’s diet.

Why is that?  If you consider that most of commercial dog food includes 70% grain or vegetables (to keep corporation margins up), and those NON-MEAT products are mainly carbs with lesser quality proteins, then your dog might already have borderline meat protein intake that it can properly use in its carnivore-based body.

If you then add a dog treat, or a dental stick that is also grain or vegetable based, you are missing the opportunity of readdressing that animal protein deficit.

Artificial Dental sticks often have sizeable calories/ kilojoules per stick (first two ingredients are flour or starch based), but they don’t have animal protein until way down the list if at all.

They often have ‘natural poultry or beef flavour’ which can mean anything and is Far from a quality9 100% animal meat protein your dog actually needs.  Its like the difference between you buying an orange juice made from real oranges OR orange drink (made from NOT oranges or with a tiny amount of actual real oranges in them.

The orange drink is cheaper but of very little nutritional value to you.

Why would you feed your dog anything that doesn’t serve as nutrient and functional (teeth cleaning for instance) value?

OUR top dental stix – dog teeth cleaning recommendations

Kangaroo bones,  Roo ribs, Kangaroo lumbar bones
This all depends on how careful your dog is with eating bones. If they crunch down and break them open, do they swallow the bone pieces carefully? If they are a small dog they can chew the meat off the Kangaroo lumbar bone (a healthy alternative to lamb neck) or the kangaroo ribs – and leave the little bones whole.

The point with this is that they both get their teeth expertly cleaned AND healthy organic natural meat nutrition!  SINGLE INGREDIENT!

Kangaroo tail tips

Roo tail tips  are a relatively new item for us from 2020.  They have really risen to prominence since the Australian bully stick market has become extremely poor on supply for various reason.

The amazing thing of course is that kangaroo tail pieces (the meat on them) are actually far better in fat content and type, and cleaner meat protein (kangaroo versus beef).  Added to that they have the bone in the centre that is one of the safest bone options around. Again, big dogs will probably chomp and swallow the bone will smaller dogs might just chew the meat and clean their teeth and leave the bone segments whole.

Fish skin dog teeth cleaning options

Perhaps one of the biggest overlooked teeth cleaning options but for medium and smaller dogs on a very calorie-controlled diet, one of the best solutions ever.

The main teeth cleaning options we would recommend are the tightly twisted fish skin options of Ling fish skins and Salomon fish skins.  Salmon skins will have a higher oil content so pancreatic dogs will lean towards the ling skins.

Mackerel skins can be a good option, but the twist is less tight (meaning that they might not last as long, and mackerel like Salmon will have higher fish oil content (good for most dogs, but not for dogs requiring extremely low-fat treats.

ROO JERKY, Beef Jerky, Chicken Jerky

100% meat jerky treats are an old favourite among many dog treat owners. That is because they clean teeth and are the highest quality meat proteins available for your dog.  They are not all STICK shaped, but they do the job just as well as any artificial Veggie composite stick.

Highest recommendation for low fat diets would be the kangaroo jerky LONG strips, the fat content is likely to be between 4 and 8% but the long strips mean the jerky holds together well.

Beef jerky (Beef jerky regular, Beef Jerky PRIME, or Beef Jerky Natural) is another 100% option (again having natural long meat strips (not cut up and recombined meat scraps) but can have natural fat content around 10%.  Chicken breast has a similar fat content but usually comes with a small amount of soy additive and glycerin – so for the purist out there, Kangaroo and beef jerkies are the single ingredient MEAT JERKY ‘go to’ for dog teeth cleaning.

Pork dog teeth cleaning treats: Pork twists, pigs ear strips

These are for the most tenacious chewers.  They last the longest.  Giant Chewers select Jumbo Pork Rolls,  for small and mid dogs we recommend regular pork twists.

The only reason that they are low down on the list here is that pork fat tends to be higher in the saturated fats and not everyone likes that.

LONG CHEWING DOG Teeth cleaning options

If you don’t see anything you like with the above, please remember that we have created a whole LONG CHEING dog treat category just for the BIG CHEING dogs out there.

Inside of this page, you will see the treats that we sell that last the longest. NOTE these are animal-based treats with the primary function of lasting a long time, not necessarily adding a lot of nutrition to their efforts as they chew.

For instance, cow hooves have low nutritional value, are very low kilojoule but are not suitable for all dogs – most mid to small dogs give up on this treat since they cant rip it down or get a feed out of it.

Why do Artificial dental sticks exist?

Large corporation profits.

While the human race is racing to the healthiest most natural options we can consume, we still are conned by fast and loose advertising aimed at convincing us that something plant based and ground up in a factory is the healthiest best thing for out dogs?!

Some products even say that “Some dog food formulations help reduce plaque and tartar”  An incredible bold statement considering that those ‘formulations’ are grain or vegetable based and are typically high in Carbohydrates (sugars) that you would not feed to your kids.  It is the granules and carbs in commercial dog food that stick to a dog teeth in the first place from these manufacturers that cause the same kind of corrosion and cavities that humans get after eating sugars.  They are just making more profit for themselves.

In fact google ‘dental sticks’ or ‘dental stix’ or some other brand twisted versions and look for BAD reviews about these products, and  you will find that MANY experts agree that almost All of the ingredients in highly processed sticks are of poor quality or can cause allergies/ diabetes etc.  That is why the majority of our treats are SINGLE INGREDIENT without additives or colouring. SO why shouldn’t your dentals stix be the same ?

The top two ingredients in these top selling artificial stix are typically grain based. The very thing that dogs are overdosed in dog food with, because they are a CHEAP FILLER. Completely unnecessary in dog food let alone a healthy treat.

We sell SINGLE INGREDIENT ANIMAL based products. Because that’s what dogs evolved to eat. Most ‘artificial dental sticks” have up to 30 ingredients!  Many to mimic the taste of actual animal products to make these things appealing to your dog, so they will digest more filler and make a company rich. I Could negate every ingredient one by one, but as said, there are so many blogs doing that already, there is little need to replicate their efforts.

However, if you were to be told by a vet that you need some kind of ‘dental stick’ to keep their teeth clean …  perhaps you might consider an actual healthy alternative, on THIS PAGE.

Read less