Organ dog treats

[Stocker]

I put a deposit down on a pointing lab gonna get her in April, my son is about the right age for a hunting companion. I really wouldn’t want to do anything to harm it once we get it so here’s the question.


Over the years I always keep the liver and lungs from deer or any other animal I take, dehydrate them and make dog treats. This question isn’t coming from me because I personally don’t think it’s a problem, but someone told my wife to watch out for parasites doing that. Any validity to that? I guess I could boil it, but to me that seems unnecessary.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Yes, valid. Many parasites of wild game animals have a two-stage lifecycle, completing part of the lifecycle in an ungulate host, and part of it in a predator (commonly coyotes, wolves, or dogs). Potentially this includes several species of tapeworms, flukes, Trichinella, hydatid disease, etc.

Cooking would be best. Freezing for a couple of weeks will also kill most, but not all parasites. And certainly if an organ seems abnormal, I would not feed it to my dog.

I don’t think most people live in areas with widespread hydatid disease, but I would not mess around with feeding my dog organs from any animal I suspected of being infected. That one people can contract from their dog. I also wouldn’t feed them parts from other meso-predators or large predators…too much disease overlap.

 

[thomas89]

I have dehydrated elk liver before for the dogs. They love it. @Hunting Wife just gave me another thing to think about in the middle of the night.