So a friend gave me Evanger’s Roasted Whole Chicken Drummets wet dog food. It made her dog sick. My lab is old iron gut but I was weirded out by giving cooked chicken bones. I did some research on this brand and am not comfortable feeding to my dogs which includes a 16 year old Eskimo dog.
My house keeper has a micro mini pig that isn’t really micro or mini. Can I safely pass on the 9 cans of dog food to her to feed to her pig? I know different species can tolerate different things. If you had a beloved family pig would you feed this food to them?
I don’t know about “specialty” pigs but regular farm pigs eat anything – including bones & hair - I’m being serious - it’s why you never want to fall down in the pig pen (or into it) when feeding them:)
I’d check with her first to make sure her pig’s already eating animal protein. From what I’ve been told, that’s what makes pig poop smell so bad. She might not be expecting a bad change in odor if her piggy’s currently on a veggie-based diet.
But yeah, pigs will eat anything and everything.
I’m sorry, as a veterinarian, can I just ask, what drives this thought process? It made one pet sick already, you are uncomfortable feeding it to your own pets, but you want to give it to a friend’s pet. I am not being snarky (much), I just literally do not understand.
Two outcomes: 1. Pet pig eats food they’ve never had before and has no issues. All clear. 2. Pet pig eats food and the diet doesn’t agree with them, maybe it’s just the sudden diet change, maybe the diet actually contains a contaminant, or maybe the bones prove to be difficult to digest and cause a perforation or severe GI trauma. Pig is sick. Pig either recovers without help, or requires a vet bill, either cheap or expensive, or in the worst case scenario, pig dies.
All because of a food obtained for free that would have been easier to throw away then keep passing down the line until you found someone willing to test it on their pet.
If I had a dollar for every sick pet I saw because the neighbor gave them a bag of dog treats after it made their own dog vomit, well, I’d be a lot closer to paying off my vet school debt.
Off my soap box.
My vote: trash it. Pigs and dogs don’t need bones in their diet, especially from a product that made another household sick. I’m risk adverse because my job exposes me to all the times this “nice” gesture goes wrong.
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I wouldn’t. Actual hogs, possibly. Pet “micro mini pig?” No way. Those little suckers battle obesity in the first place, and they usually eat kibble just like dogs, I would not want a pig with diarrhea in MY house :eek:
However, if I were gifted that dog food, I would most likely give it to my chickens. I like animal protein for my chickens, and in relatively small amounts, I don’t think it would hurt those garbage guts.
My thought process is that just because it didn’t agree with my friend’s dog doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be fine for another species. I have been at two farms with feeder pigs and they got fed scraps from everything. Heck at the one farm a few of the pigs would crunch on the concrete at the bottom of the silo.
I am uncomfortable feeding it to my pets since everything I have ever read is that you should not feed dogs cooked bones. I understand that people that feed their dogs homemade food do feed bones but not cooked bones only raw.
I actually did feed part of one can to my dogs but picked out the bones. Both dogs were fine with it. However later when I was reading up on feeding cooked chicken bones to dogs I saw the FDA reports on this company’s old facility. As far as I can tell they have changed packing plants. It was not worth my time to pick bones out of the remaining cans to feed my dogs especially after reading issues this company had with inspections in the past.
Different species have different tolerances for different things. I would never feed my horse one of the round bales that are stored in the plastic bags. The cows that it is baled for do just fine with it.
I wouldn’t feed road kill to my animals but nature has a number of animals and birds that are well developed to eat dead animals including after it has been out in the heat for a few days. Most of my dogs wouldn’t tolerate eating old road kill but the local coyote probably would do just fine. I believe wild pigs/hogs will eat carrion.
My lab I can give him anything and he is fine with it. My Eskimo dog I need to be more careful with adding new things to his diet or switching his food. For all I know her dog is more like the Eskimo dog than the lab. My flat coated retriever couldn’t eat anything with lamb in it. Just because it didn’t agree with that one dog doesn’t mean that it is bad just that it didn’t agree with that one dog.
If I had access to feeder pigs I would be 100% comfortable feeding it to them. The people I know that had feeder pigs didn’t seem too concerned with what they fed them and if it was kept refrigerated or not. They all thrived and were never sick from that diet.
However I don’t know anything about pet pigs. I don’t know if they are more or less hardy than regular pigs. That is why I was asking.
Mind you this “micro mini” pig is over 60 pounds. She lives outside and has access to a heated shed. She used to live in the house but got to be too big for their small house. She is neither micro or mini but that is what the breeder sold her as to my housekeeper’s daughter. Daughter moved so could no longer keep pig so now her mother has it.
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“Mind you this “micro mini” pig is over 60 pounds.” “She is neither micro or mini but that is what the breeder sold her as to my housekeeper’s daughter.”
That is most certainly micro mini. Slaughter weight for eating pigs at about six months is between about 225 and 250 pounds. If allowed to grow to actual skeletal adulthood (which rarely happens commercially, most breeder pigs are “teenager” parents; sexually mature but not really fully grown), they are 500-600 pounds, or more. The “largest hog” winners at state fairs are often over 1000 pounds. World record hog size is over 2,000. Even wild boars, unaffected by genetics and nutrition pushing growth artificially, will grow to be 400-800 pounds if they have a good forage area and a little luck.
All micro mini pigs will grow up to not be micro or mini, it’s a scam. Well, you can sure keep them small, if you literally keep them starved. Which some breeders will tell buyers to do. I hate hate hate the micro mini pig thing.
That is exactly what this breeder told them to do. Feed only organic and only such small levels .
Yeah, it’s animal abuse. I’ve seen listed something like 1/4 cup of special pet pig kibble per day, downright starvation.
The breeder told them she would be well less than 30 pounds. I understand that she if not a full sized regular eating pig but that she is much bigger than the breeder told them she would be. Better yet the daughter bought the pig when she was living in the Bronx. Which was actually fine when she was on the first floor and piggy was a piglet. Not so much when she got older and bigger. Then daughter broke up with boyfriend and moved into an upstairs apartment.
Ding-ding! I’ll put a vote in for this, too. Yeah, if I had feeder pigs I’d throw them my castoffs and leftover dog food. Pet ≠ Food animal. Very different species, treated very differently. I don’t try out random foods on my pets personally, especially not a food intended for a different species.
YMMV.
They make food for miniature pigs, just like they make food for dogs. You don’t need to feed them each other’s food.
(I will add, not enough people understand mini pigs are not apartment pets. They need to root and really need sunlight.) Glad this pig got out of big city life. Hope it’s getting the outside time it needs. Weather permitting. Spring can come any day now…)
Evanger’s is garbage. I would not feed anything that food. Lookup the history on them- lots of scandal, false labeling, and food safety issues. The owners are complete crooks!
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