Feeding cooked chicken to the dog

[Grannylipstick]

My mum likes to cook her dog a chicken then freeze it in small bags. (dog is a tiny yorkie ). She takes the bag out each day and gives it to the dog with her dried biscuits. I thought any meat brought out of the freezer had to be re heated to a certain temperature to kill off the bacteria. Or is this just for humans ?

food hygiene regs for human aside .....dogs stomachs are designed to cope with a lot more than humans. They cope quite happly with raw meat including chicken. Our raw chicken / turkey taken out of freezer and is just allowed to thaw before being fed to the dogs. We do get it very fresh frozen so that any bacteria are mimimal as are in suspended animation because of the freezing.

We humans can actually eat just defrosted cold chicken as long as its not got "warm" sitting for a while out of the fridge. (Once it has then yes, it does need to heat to 75 degrees to kill bugs.) Ickle yorkie will be fine

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In my experience of what our dogs have ingested over the last few years I can honestly say that a bit of defrosted chicken is fine .

Mouldy/decomposing squirrel anyone?

Does you mum give a complete food or arethe biscuits just a mixer ? The reason I ask is I was told you have to make sure dogs have a complete food for the vitamins & nutrients & that chicken (cooked or raw) is nutrient poor & dogs are likely to not do very well if it's their sole source of nutrition (like my dog before I got her).

Mine have munched on freshly caught rabbits and birds, plus the odd bit of far-from-fresh-some-kind-of-mammal that they'd buried. All this is raw and only when someone let's them get out.

I'm sure the chicken your mum cooks is much safer than what the dog would find if left to it's own devices.

One of mine did get a nasty parasite, but it was from eating raw wild animals.