I feed our boy a diet of raw meaty bones and various animal body parts (whole and minced). My supplier recently started supplying beef trachea. They seem to be a low-calorie, chewy item so I have bought them so that my boy can chew on something without the concern of gaining weight . He gained weight after starting epilepsy meds -- a known side effect. We're now working on bringing down his weight, with success. I am writing to find out if anyone has experience feeding trachea and whether there is a risk of feeding thyroxine if thyroid gland tissue is still attached. And whether feeding thyroxine inadvertently can have serious health effects. I only became aware of this after reading this article: https://thesciencedog.wordpress.com/...29/got-gullet/ My supplier's response is that if you feed a dog any one body part (eg only liver or only trachea) you will run into problems. But part of a prey model diet, it should be okay. He also says there is no thyroid attached to the trachea, but I see lots of tissue and am not wholly convinced it is lung or connective tissue but rather thyroid tissue. I will stop including trachea in my boy's diet because of my lack of ability to distinguish between thyroid glands and other tissues. Does anyone have any experience with this? Does thyroxine survive when the thyroid gland is frozen? (I have read it gets more toxic when frozen -- I cannot understand why this happens or what "toxic" means in this case.) I also wonder what happens in pellet food -- is trachea with thyroid ground up into the mix? And does thyroxine survive the processing or is it denatured by the heat?
Hi there. There is a very good article by Kohler, Stengel and Neiger in the Journal of Small Animal Practice March 2012, pp 182-184 where dietary hyperthyroidism in dogs associated with feeding raw trachea is discussed. Thyroxine in bovine trachea survives gastric acid hence if the dog eats raw trachea it is likely to eat raw thyroid gland and hence get significant doses of thyroxine to the extent that toxicity can be seen clinically. Thyroxine should survive when the gland is frozen. I say this because when assaying thyroxine in canine serum, concentrations seen in samples before and after freezing are virtually identical. The processing of food to form kibble does, as you rightly point out, denature the thyroxine hence no problems. Hope this helps.
Thanks, Lochan, for pointing me to that article. There are several items in the article that interest me among them: - "Falsely increased thyroxine concentration can be measured if the sample is stored constantly at high temperature for at least 5 days". They don't specify what a "high temperature" is although possibly that can be found in the cited study. - "Thyrotoxicosis factitia, as this is called in human medicine, has been reported in people eating hamburgers containing ground beef thyroid or eating excessive amount of sausages containing thyroid hormones". I wonder if those were well cooked hamburgers and sausages, ie heat applied. What it has highlighted for me is that, no matter the diet -- raw or pellets or home-cooked -- you need to ensure balance. Beef trachea was attractive to me because it is so cheap. No wonder: it may not be sold for human consumption due to the attached thyroid gland. I assume that animals in the wild who eat thyroid glands don't suffer dramatically. Or maybe they do? Maybe they avoid it? My dog refuses to eat raw liver. He didn't refuse the trachea, though; he relished it!
No idea about the question! But thanks for the link to Linda Case's blog. That's bookmarked for regular reading. I enjoyed her book.
