Is Bone Meal Good for Your Dog?
You’ll find several vitamins and minerals in bone meal that are important for your dog’s health. The most important of these are phosphorous and calcium.
Phosphorous is essential for healthy bones and teeth, and it’s also vital for keeping your dog’s cell walls healthy. It’s a core component of both DNA and RNA, and it’s used to provide energy at the cellular level.
Calcium is important for healthy bones and teeth as well, and it’s a vital component of the transfer of information between cells and nerve impulses. It also helps with blood coagulation and muscular contraction.
If your dog doesn’t get enough calcium or phosphorous in their diet, they’ll start to cannibalize their own bodies to make up the difference. This can lead to weakened teeth, brittle bones, and a whole host of other health issues.
Your dog can get all these benefits just from gnawing on bones, of course, but that’s not without its risks. Your dog could break a tooth on an especially hard bone, or if they swallow a large chunk, it could become a dangerous obstruction in their digestive tract.
How Much Bone Do I Feed?
How much bone I add depends on what else my dogs are eating that week. I balance my dogs diet over time instead of daily or in every meal. When making raw meals, I start with a base of 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, and 10% organ meat. I then add additional ingredients based on my dogs individual needs. Learning which nutrients my dogs need in their diet has been helpful.
Which Raw Bones Do I Feed to My Dogs?
Finding the right bones for my dogs took patience and today, my dogs eat duck necks, duck frames, lamb necks, rabbit, and beef knucklebones.
Green tripe is a superfood, and raw feeders are such fans that there are some that feed a diet of only green tripe to their dogs. Green tripe is the stomach lining of ruminating animals (cows, lamb, bison, etc.) and its filled with all the yummy gastric juices that make humans cringe, and dogs salivate. Our dogs LOVE green tripe, and I love feeding it to them.
Not only is green tripe great for a dogs digestive system and, therefore, immune system (yummy gastric juices), its a great source of Omega 3s, and offers the perfect ratio of calcium and phosphorus (1:1). So on weeks when the dogs are not eating a lot of bone (if any), then theyre going to eat green tripe daily. Otherwise, our dogs eat green tripe about three days a week either as a full meal or mixed into their raw meals.
Another option is seaweed calcium. I add this when I completely spaced and didnt add bone to a meal. This rarely happens, but its nice to have seaweed calcium on hand just in case.
The brand that I prefer, Animal Essentials, sources its seaweed calcium from Iceland where the waters are cleaner. Each batch is cleaned, heat-treated, and tested for purity. The calcium found in this product is 70% bio-available, which means that our dogs are absorbing and utilizing most of the nutrients.
Homestead Bonemeal Dog Treat.Plenty of Vitamins and Minerals for the Fur Babies.
Dr. Peter Dobias, DVM has 30 years of experience as a veterinarian. His love of dogs and passion for natural healing and nutrition led him to writing, teaching and helping people create health naturally, without drugs, chemicals and processed food.