# Can a dog survive on just Chicken???



## Donna5503 (Mar 13, 2009)

Lately....all my dog wants is Chicken!????.....


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## Best*In*Show (Mar 14, 2009)

Ruby only wants cooked chicken or turkey right now, so I'm having to scramble to figure out how to meet her needs. Hopefully she'll get more adventurous as she gets older.


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## reynosa_k9's (Dec 14, 2007)

All my dogs are raw fed. One of them, Yansa, was 50lbs underweight and very sick when I first got him. He had no interest in food at all. I would fuss and fret over the big lug for weeks. All my others got what I gave them and that's that. They didn't like it? They got nothing then. Yup, I was hard core with them. Finally I took the tough love approach with Yansa too. I admit I wasn't as hard on him as the others as I would give him a choice of meats. However, if he didn't start eating within 3 minutes I took it away and didn't look back. Many folks will say to give them up to 15 minutes to eat but I know Yansa and I knew if he didn't start right away he wasn't starting at all. For months I still worried over him and his weight though. He did eventually figure out I wasn't giving in and he finally started to eat and he is up to where I want him on his weight now. Whoooohoooo!!!!! 
For a lot of new raw fed dogs some owners will cut the meat a bit to give the dog something easy to bite into. The big chunks sometimes throw the little ones off until they get the hang of things.
A dog does need more than just chicken. You may need to take the tough love approach there.
There's a wonderful Yahoo group with lots of info on raw feeding. You should check out the stickies for this forum and links contained there. 

Jihad
and the pound puppy crew.


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## misty073 (Mar 31, 2009)

We feed raw. I switched my daughters Yorkie over about 2 months ago because he had these weird scab things on his ears. My daughter took him to the vet, they gave him some antibiotics and said if that didnt work it was probably allergies so put him on a hypo allergenic dog food. They didnt work so I did some investigating and wasnt over impressed with what I read about dog food (she has always used a good quality dog food too) so I looked into the raw and we switched.


We now have a Jack russell pup and both are fed raw, but we buy a pre packaged mix from the butcher and its all chicken. (with other ingredients) but when we tried the beef her yorkies ears didnt get better, they are alot better with the chicken (about 99% clear but he hasnt been on full chicken for very long) 

So when I read this post I was also wondering...is it ok to only feed one kind of meat?? I really cant stand the smell of the beef mix so because we are feeding one dog just the chicken (I am thinking he is allergic to beef?) both dogs have the same diet (for now until our daughter moves out with her dog LOL)


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## briteday (Feb 10, 2007)

I think it's ok to feed only one kind of meat...the dog will survive but maybe not thrive. Variety of food creates a nice balance of all vitamins and minerals, especially trace minerals. If I were to feed my dogs only one species I would definitely add a good supplement like Missing Link. And yes, my dogs and cat are raw fed too.

But I think the OP is talking about feeding cooked chicken, meat only. That would be a recipe for nutritional disaster. The diet lacks calcium, vitamins A, D, E...and so forth. A bad homemade diet is worse than a good kibble. 

No healthy dog will starve itself. It's the owner who needs to buck up and feed appropriate food. The dog will come around when it's hungry enough. We have foster dogs in our home routinely and some of them take as long as a week to eat when they get here. But I haven't lost one yet.


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## Donna5503 (Mar 13, 2009)

Yes I was talking about cooked chicken .....I give him cut up veggies (like carrots, broccoli, string beans) and boiled/baked chicken ( I remove the skin -- only leave a little) I mix the veggies & chicken together & put it in one bowl....then I feed Blue Buffalo Dry Food...and I put that in another bowl.

For the last couple of days he would only pick all the chicken out & leave the veggies and not touch the dry food.

Last night we grilled pork chops -- so I thought I might try some pork -- I cut it up very small and mixed it with carrots and celery and a clam chowder broth (I had made Clam Chowder the night before)----he gobbled it right up. He kept licking the bowl (I think he liked the broth -- the base of the broth was tomatoes) ---and he ate his kibble.

He confuses me very much --- but I love him dearly....

Every other dog I've owned ate everything I gave them --- no matter what it was!

PS---This morning my husband gave him some of his Cheerios & milk -- because he kept staring at him eat it --- and he gobbled it right up --- Is a little Milk & Cheerios good for a dog once in awhile???

PSS---I tried Raw & he wouldn't take to it AT ALL!


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## Kathyy (Jun 15, 2008)

I feed my dogs home cooked and raw. If I had this picky eater *I* not being a kibble person might do the cooked chicken and veggies with kibble BUT soak and mash up the kibble so the dog couldn't pick out the 'good' stuff. Watch the salt though, dogs don't need much. If you like go ahead and spike the kibble with real food. Substituting 25% of the kibble for real food enhances the diet and makes both you and the dog happy. Here is a guideline for you. i wouldn't go as high as 50% real food though.
http://http://www.dogaware.com/dogfeeding.html#addfood


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