Hey guys, I had a question regarding feeding my husky.

He is almost 1 year and have been on kibble ever since, he is currently on Acana, 2x a day and loving it.
I wanted to know if it's ok and SAFE to once in a while give him some raw foods like chicken wings/legs, red meat and raw eggs.
My main concern is will he have an upset stomach or other health issues if he is getting mainly kibble plus some raw each week?

Unfortunately being a college student I cannot afford to feed him a complete raw food diet everyday, but I can and would love to add in some raw foods a couple times a week for him.

I am a complete beginner to feeding raw and would love some guidelines and suggestions to follow when I do give him occasional raw foods.

Thanks for your help!!


-P.S. Just to clarify, I mean giving only raw foods during a separate meal, not with kibble.... Also this is meant as a treat, like a single chicken bone, and not a MEAL REPLACEMENT.

I dont give mine raw chicken or pork, but they get raw beef and fruit, and scraps of deer and moose and elk during hunting season. And sometimes i go to the bison ranch and processor and pick up bison femurs. I wish i could afford to feed raw but i have too many dogs. When i find a fresh kill sometimes i bring it home and throw it in the backyard for them. I almost brought home a cow that got hit by a car yesterday but i didnt have help loading. During rabbit season they get whole prey along with kibble

I feed kibble daily but when I cook i get extra and give them some while i cook. My dogs like wagyu almost as much as me. I supplement the kibble with raw but more because they are spoiled then because they need it
I have only had gi issues because of raw once and either the meat was bad or they over ate.

When it comes to raw, i spoke with 3 vets (uncle, aunt, and vet that sees my dogs) got 3 different answers. Which is funny because i would assume my aunt and uncle would have similar opinions but they dont.

We used to give our dogs raw chicken legs as a treat now and then. Always seemed like they threw them back up. They've had them where they didn't, but I decided it wasn't worth it to have them vomit their food back up... although it does happen occasionally with the kibble too.

We do give them raw meat (ground patties) and also eggs now and then. Never had a problem with that.

@dvflyer yours throw up raw chicken? Mine did also the first and only time they got raw chicken. Its the only thing that gets them, raw mammals are fine but i shy from poultry raw aside from the magpies spider snags out of the air. i am very against my dogs killing things but if they eat it i dont feel as bad.

Lost- Yup. Not every time, but when the puppies were a few months old or so, we started giving them raw leg quarters chopped into thirds. This is what we did with our Aussie for years with essentially no issues.

I noticed they seemed to throw up the chicken pieces more often than not. Mika more than Max, but I got to the point where I figured it wasn't worth trying to figure out and now feed them only kibble with the occasional treat as mentioned above.

I haven't tried anything else except for a raw frozen fish once which they didn't seem to have a problem with. For some reason, I started to think of them eating the small bones in the fish and that was the last of that.

Watch out for salmon and trout. Ive read they can be toxic at high levels but cooking them helps with the toxicities. This time of year they get more fruit then meat to supplement the kibble. I feel like frozen melon chunks make up for no ac.

Lostmaniac wrote:

Watch out for salmon and trout. Ive read they can be toxic at high levels but cooking them helps with the toxicities. This time of year they get more fruit then meat to supplement the kibble. I feel like frozen melon chunks make up for no ac.

That was the other thing with the fish. I grabbed a pack of trout (whole- gutted) from Costco and then read the stories. Something about the parasites. If you freeze them for a couple weeks, that's supposed to take care of it. I froze them for a month. After they ate them, I got too worried about it (and the bones) and figured that was it.

Frozen melon chunks are a good idea.

... and if it's frozen (anything frozen) my dogs dogs don't even bother with it. I've tried frozen fruit - nope; frozen meat - nope; ice - nope. Once it thaws out, they might ... Silly dogs!!

Freezing it for awhile or smoking it seems to fix the issue with salmanoid fish i just view it as a potential vet bill and forgo it unless its cooked. Boy does squirt like sushi though. And @aljones your dogs are odd if they dont like ice

Used to they would say freeze meat 3 months if it's wild game before feeding. Wild pork should be cooked. Tame pork does not need to be. As long as you are not feeding more than 20% raw you do not have to add organ meat and balance it. If you are feeding over 20% of his intake raw then you need to do the full 80-10-5-5 or 80-10-10, where you need to add organ meat and bone. I do half and half raw and kibble for expense purposes. There are some meats that don't sit well in larger quantities, though they are usually rich meats like pork. Start slow with pork and duck. A lot of dogs also like to woof their raw down so either feed in large enough chunks they have to chew or cut in small enough chunks that if they don't chew then it won't matter too much. Dogs that don't chew well do tend to puke it back up. You will have to find what works for your specific dog. Some dogs do better with raw as a topper mixed with their kibble and others do well if they get raw for one meal and kibble for another, if moving to a partial raw diet.

In a nutshell it is completely safe and healthy to give your dog raw (barring any unsafe raw meat handling on your part).