Chicken Hearts for Dogs

Chicken hearts are muscle, not a gland, and dogs can eat them raw, cooked or freeze dried in pieces sized to the dog. The only real question is how many hearts fit in one mouth.

Heart is a muscle, not a gland

A heart is a muscle that never stops working, and it feels like one: dense, springy and firm, closer to a chicken thigh than to anything soft. It is sold with the organ meats, but it eats like meat.

USDA FoodData Central lists raw chicken heart at about 16 grams of protein and about 9 grams of fat per 100 grams. Those figures describe a food, and they do not make a promise about what it does for a dog.

Before cutting a raw heart, look at the top. Many have a small cap of pale fat and a few stubs of tube where the vessels were attached. Trim them with kitchen shears and the rest is a clean, dark red piece of meat that slices like a tender steak.

Liver is a different story, with its own site: livertreats.net.

Raw, cooked and freeze dried chicken hearts

Raw hearts come from the meat counter, usually in a tub, and they are the quickest to prepare: rinse and cut. They are also the ones that need the most care at the kitchen sink. Our raw feeding notice says raw animal products can carry bacteria such as Salmonella and Listeria, and it asks you to wash your hands and every bowl and board that the product touches.

Cooked hearts are simmered in plain water until firm and gray all the way through, then cooled and cut. They shrink and toughen as they cook. Leave out salt, onion and butter.

Freeze dried hearts are raw hearts with the water removed. They are hard, light and a darker brown, and they rattle in the bag. They crumble where raw ones squish, which makes them easier to carry in a pocket.

Whichever form you buy, raw hearts go in the refrigerator or the freezer, and the usual way to handle a tub is to split it into small bags, one portion to a bag, and freeze what you will not use soon. Thaw one bag at a time, in the refrigerator, on a plate that no other food touches.

Size of one heart and how to portion it

A chicken heart is about the size of a large grape, and USDA FoodData Central puts one raw heart at about 6 grams. The easy way to know your own is to weigh three on a kitchen scale and divide by three. Write the number on the tub, and the next time you open one you will know how many portions it holds. A freeze dried heart weighs a small fraction of that number, because most of the weight in a raw one is water, so count freeze dried pieces by eye rather than by the scale.

That small size is the trade off. A chicken heart is small enough to hand whole to a big dog, and too big for a toy breed, which needs it halved or quartered. A dog over 50 pounds can have one whole, a dog under 15 pounds a quarter. Slice along the length with kitchen shears or a small knife, and wipe the board.

VCA Hospitals describes treats as a small share of what a dog eats in a day. A few hearts is a treat. A cup of them is a meal that you did not plan.

Offer a new food in small amounts at first, as the raw feeding notice says, and stay with the dog while it eats.

Chicken, turkey and beef hearts compared

The animal sets the size. A turkey heart is larger than a chicken heart, and a beef heart is large enough to be sold sliced or cubed. The texture is the same family, firm muscle that breaks along the grain, and the cut you give a dog gets bigger or smaller to match.

Sniff and Shift freeze dries beef heart, a single ingredient, with beef from Pennsylvania farms, in small batches in Malvern, and it comes in 1.5, 3 and 6 ounce bags. The dark red cubes are dense, and they break into smaller pieces along the grain. More on that is in beef heart for dogs.

Dense cubes crumble less than softer organ treats, and that matters in a training pouch. A heart cube kept in a pocket for an afternoon is still a cube.

The trade off against chicken is cost in time. A chicken heart needs no cutting for a big dog and a whole bag of them goes into a tub in the freezer. A beef heart needs a knife, and the freeze dried cubes need nothing at all. Pick the form that fits the way you shop and the way you feed.

Where heart fits in an organ mix

Heart is an easy organ to start with, because the texture is familiar and the smell is meaty rather than sharp. Some people build a rotation from heart, tripe and other organs. Introduce one at a time, so that when the dog loves one or turns it down you know which it was. A note on the refrigerator door, with the date and the name of the new food, is all the record you need.

A dog that is used to one kind of heart will usually take another without fuss, since the taste and the texture are close. That makes heart the easiest organ to swap in and out. A dog that turns down tripe may still take heart, and the reverse happens too.

Tripe, a stomach, is a different organ altogether; green tripe for dogs covers it. The full range is in organ dog treats.

Common questions

Can dogs eat cooked chicken hearts?

Yes. Simmer them in plain water until firm all the way through, let them cool, and cut them to suit the dog. Leave out salt, onion, butter and seasoning.

How many chicken hearts can a dog have?

A few as a treat. VCA Hospitals describes treats as a small share of the day's food, so count hearts in addition to meals, not instead of them.

Do chicken hearts need to be cut up for small dogs?

Yes. A heart is about the size of a large grape, which is too big for a toy breed. Halve or quarter it along the length.

What does a freeze dried heart look like?

It is dark and dense, light for its size, and it crumbles instead of squishing. It breaks along the grain of the muscle.