Can dogs eat raw chicken?

Chicken is often the first protein people try when they switch a dog to raw. It’s widely available, most dogs like it, and it’s usually cheaper per kilo than red meat. Here’s how to feed it raw, as mince or with the bone, and how much a day.

Raw chicken and bacteria

Raw chicken can carry bacteria, including Salmonella and Campylobacter, and New Zealand Food Safety’s Campylobacter advice names raw chicken as its most common food source. That’s true of the chicken you buy for your own dinner as well, so handle it with the same care you’d take with any raw meat:

• Keep it frozen until you need it, and thaw it in the fridge, never on the bench.
• Wash your hands, the bowl and any surfaces it touched after every meal.
• Use a separate container and utensils, or put them through a hot dishwasher cycle.
• Pick up any food your dog leaves rather than leaving it out for hours.

Take extra care if there are babies, older people or anyone who is unwell in the house, as they’re more at risk of getting sick from these bacteria.

None of this is extra work once it’s a habit. It’s the same routine as cooking a chicken for the family: thaw it in the fridge, keep it apart from food for people, and wash up afterwards. One thing to skip: don’t rinse raw chicken under the tap, because the splashes spread bacteria around the sink.

Can dogs eat raw chicken mince?

Yes. Raw chicken mince is a handy way to feed chicken, because there’s nothing to cut up or portion by the piece. It goes in the bowl as it is, or mixed through another food, and it suits small dogs, older dogs and cats as well as big dogs.

What matters is what’s in the mince. Supermarket chicken mince is usually breast or thigh meat with no bone, made for people. Pet chicken mince, like ours, is minced with the bone, which changes what it covers in the bowl. Our guide to pet mince versus supermarket mince compares the two on price and what each one includes.

If you’re using plain supermarket mince, keep it plain: nothing seasoned, marinated or mixed with onion or garlic. Our raw chicken dog food page has the mince and every mix with chicken in it.

Raw chicken bones

Raw chicken bones are softer and less brittle than cooked ones, and plenty of raw feeders give chicken necks, wings or frames as their dog’s bone. Cooked chicken bones should never go in the bowl: cooking makes them brittle, and vets warn that cooked bones splinter.

As with any bone, supervise your dog and take it away once it’s small enough to swallow whole. Our guide to which raw bones dogs can eat has more, and our guide to chicken necks for dogs covers that one cut in detail.

Minced with the bone

If you’d rather not feed whole bones, chicken mince that includes the bone is an easy way to get some bone into the diet. Our Chicken Mince is 100% NZ chicken, minced with the bone, with no other proteins added.

The bone is already in it, so the main thing to add is some organ. Many owners do that by mixing it with Balance Mix, one part Balance Mix to two parts mince. Balance Mix has chicken mince in it too, for the bone it brings, so the two sit together well.

In practice that looks like this: the night before, move two blocks of Chicken Mince and one block of Balance Mix from the freezer to the fridge. Next day, mix them in a lidded container, keep two to three days’ worth in the fridge, and pop any extra straight back in the freezer.

How much raw chicken to feed

Feed raw chicken as part of the usual daily amount, which is about 2 to 3% of body weight for most adult dogs. A 20 kg dog eating 2.5% gets about 500 g of raw food a day. If chicken is the only protein, use the 80/10/10 guide (80% muscle meat, 10% bone, 10% organ) to round it out. The raw dog food calculator works out the amounts for your dog.

Here’s how that looks at 2.5% for a moderately active adult dog, the figure the calculator uses. It plans about 90% of the food as mince or a blend and about 10% as raw bones, and a 10 kg box of Chicken Mince comes as blocks of about 500 g:

A quieter dog sits nearer 2% and a working dog nearer 3%. Split the day’s amount into two meals for an adult dog. With Chicken Mince the bone is already minced through, so extra bones are optional; fed as the whole diet, a 10 kg box lasts a 20 kg dog about 20 days.

With a small dog, a block goes further. Thaw it in the fridge, keep what you’ll use in the next two to three days in a sealed container, and pop the rest straight back in the freezer. Raw meat thawed in the fridge can be refrozen.

Other proteins to rotate in

Chicken makes a good base, and plenty of raw feeders rotate other meats through the week. Beef Mince and Goat Mince (when we have it) are single proteins, and Wild Mix combines horse, goat, venison and alpaca with no chicken or beef, so all three suit a dog that needs to stay off chicken. Our guide to novel proteins for dogs covers the less common options.

A simple week for a chicken-fed dog might be Chicken Mince and Balance Mix most days, a beef or veal bone a couple of times, and a different mince or mix once or twice for variety. Changing one thing at a time makes it easy to see what suits your dog.

Common questions

Is supermarket chicken OK for dogs?

Plain raw supermarket chicken is fine. Avoid anything marinated, seasoned or cooked, and remember that boneless supermarket cuts don’t include the bone or organ parts of the diet.

Can I feed raw chicken to my cat?

Yes. Chicken Mince suits cats too. See can cats eat raw meat for amounts and how to switch.

Is raw chicken mince good for dogs?

It’s a popular everyday base with raw feeders. It’s a mild meat most dogs already know, and mince with the bone in it covers more of the bowl than meat alone. Add some organ, and rotate in other proteins over the week.

Can puppies eat raw chicken?

Chicken Mince is one of the foods our calculator suggests for puppies. Puppies eat more for their size and the amount changes as they grow, so use our puppy feeding guide for amounts by age.

How long does thawed raw chicken keep in the fridge?

Use it within two to three days, kept covered in the fridge. Our guide to thawing and storing raw dog food has the routine.

Should I switch slowly to raw chicken?

If your dog is new to raw, yes. Mix a little into their current food and build up over a week or two. Our switching guide has a day-by-day plan.