Puking up bones?

[tasham]

So far the raw feeding has been going okay. We're about 3 weeks into it. My boys are almost 11, 2, and 4 months. Baxter, the 11-year-old, and Charlie, the 4-month old are the ones having a bit of a problem. Baxter has never had raw bones and he's older, so I've noticed that chewing them is a little harder for him than Cyrus, the 2-year-old who makes chewing bones look like nothing. Charlie, the puppy, is also having some issues obviously with chewing up larger bones.

We've been feeding them mainly chicken legs and wings. Charlie is getting the wings, since they are smaller bones to chew, but even those he has a hard time chewing up completely. Baxter gets wings and legs, and when I feed him legs, I have started chopping them up with a butcher knife to make them smaller pieces and easier to eat. However, the last few nights he has been puking up several hours after he eats and there are large pieces of hard bone in there. I don't think he's able to digest them very easily or something.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? I don't want to make him sick and wonder why he's not digesting these bones. All the rest of his food comes up with it as well, so it's just sitting in his stomach for hours until he finally purges it. I noticed the size of the bones are about the size of a large gumball. Are those too big to digest? Is he not chewing them up into small enough pieces?

Charlie did this last week and puked up an entire chicken wing (baby chicken wing). He has done okay since then because I've started holding the piece of meat in my hand so he can chew it into bites instead of swallowing large pieces. Cyrus, the 2-year-old, even has thrown up a couple of larger sized bones that are very hard. He's only done this once or twice and seems to be able to handle most everything else, but I just don't know if I'm doing something wrong.

What do I need to do so they don't puke these up?

[ehayes21]

Wings are probably the densest bone on the chicken's body, on top of that they don't have very much meat so they probably are your culprit. My suggestion is to ditch the wings and start feeding other parts of the chicken that have softer bone and more meat, like breasts and leg quarters.

[gmacleod]

I would agree - dump the chicken wings and feed a more easily digested and meatier part instead. The only real use for chicken wings is teaching adult dogs who're used to hoovering kibble, to chew (i.e. have a useful shape that enables you to hang onto one end without getting your fingers munched). If you don't have a gulping problem that means you need to intervene, you have no use for chicken wings

[tasham]

Thanks ehayes and gmacleod! I had no idea chicken wings were the culprit. I found some whole chicke breasts at the grocery store and decided to try those today. Baxter ate one much easier than the legs and took his time eating all of it. I will stop giving them the wings and start on the meatier parts. Thanks for the help!