Alaska Fish & Wildlife News
October 2016

Can My Dog Get Sick From Raw Game Meat?

By Staff

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Moose hunter Kim Titus with moose meat from a successful hunt. Kim Titus photograph.

Eating raw meat from game animals can brand pets sick. Dogs can become all the diseases and parasites that spread between game and their predators and scavengers similar wolves and foxes.

It is important to note that it is non legal to feed game meat to pets, with the exceptions listed below. In addition, as found on page 17 of the Alaska Hunting Regulations, game meat may non be used as bait or nutrient for pets and livestock.

Notwithstanding, you MAY use the post-obit as allurement or nutrient for pets or livestock:

• the skin, guts, heads, or bones of game legally taken or killed by vehicles, subsequently the salvage of edible meat,

• dark-brown bear meat (EXCEPT taken under a subsistence brown bear management let),

• black bear meat taken June 1 – Dec. 31 (as long as the black bear hide is salvaged), and

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If a dog is sick and not eating, a veterinary visit is warranted for reasons other than deworming. Ken Marsh photo.

• the skinned carcasses of furbearers and fur animals, and the meat from small game (other than birds) and unclassified game.

Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, a wildlife veterinarian with Fish and Game, noted that if someone suspects their canis familiaris has eaten raw game parts (muscle, liver, lungs) that can comprise common tapeworm cysts they should have the dog dewormed past a veterinary for tapeworms. She does not recommend over-the-counter products.

"Tapeworms aren't very serious for the domestic dog as much every bit the types in the liver and muscle but it will cost you money feeding the worms."

The one in the lungs is transmittable to you (cystic hydatid disease) through the dog'due south feces. Deworming is even more than of import if a dog eats a rodent because they tin can and then pass the most dangerous tapeworm, Echinococcus multilocularis on to you (alveolar hydatid affliction).

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It's not legal to feed game meat to pets or livestock, withal it is legal to feed pets the the pare, guts, heads, or bones of game legally taken - afterwards the salvage of edible meat. This can introduce parasites. Ken Marsh photograph.

Beckmen added that if a domestic dog is sick and not eating, a veterinary visit is warranted for reasons other than deworming.

Freezing meat does kill tapeworms, merely non the most common worm in comport meat, Trichinella, which is a species adjusted for life in the cold north.

More on diseases and parasites is available at the ADF&Thousand website

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