Feeding eggs to pets

We buy, what I consider to be, very good dog food (Hills Science Diet) for our livestock guardian dogs.  My sister actually works at Hills Science Diet in Kansas.  Providing a healthy diet to pets is important BUT it's also great to give a treat every now and then.  Eggs are a great treat for dogs and cats.

Yeti having some scrambled eggs on top of her dry dog food

Eggs provide an excellent source of fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and protein.  Essentially the entire egg, including the eggshell, can be nutritious for dogs.  The most important thing is to cook the egg and NOT feed it to them raw.  They might get Salmonella poisoning from consuming raw eggs.

It is best to cook and feed the entire egg to dogs.  Feeding only the egg whites can lead to a biotin deficiency.  There are also lots of great minerals in the egg shell.  Just make sure to chop it up really well. The best ways to cook eggs to feed to dogs is either to hard boil the egg or scramble the eggs.

Cooked egg whites are the best way to feed eggs to cats.  With cats, it's important to keep in mind that egg yolks contain fat and not all cats need more fat in their diet.  I know our house cat sure doesn't need any extra fat in her diet!  I tried to feed some eggs to our barn cats but they did not seem interested and did not eat them.

Beck, our house cat, helping me type up this blog...

I have even scrambled up extra eggs we have and fed them back to the chickens and ducks!  They love them especially the ducks!  Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of extra eggs right now.  They are being sold almost before they are laid!  Of course, I save all the eggshells and feed them back to the girls for a little extra calcium boost.

It seems that feeding a raw diet is all the rage now.  I have not done much research about this.  I just have not had the time.  I barely have time to make it to the pet store to buy a bag of food.  However, I get the feeling that some of our pets are doing their own part to eat a raw diet...

~Denise