How to keep chicken out of your dog's treat jar

Chicken-free dog treats are treats with no chicken anywhere in the ingredient list, so the check is the whole list on every bag. That means chicken itself, plus chicken fat, chicken broth, chicken meal and the broader word poultry. Read the back of the bag rather than the front, and read it again each time a new bag comes home.

What names does chicken go by on a treat label?

Chicken does not always show up as the one word you are scanning for. The front of a bag can say beef or peanut butter while the panel lists chicken fat to keep the treat soft. Or it lists chicken broth, which is there to make the treat smell like dinner. The panel is the only part of the bag that settles the question.

Here is what to look for:

• Chicken, chicken meal, chicken by-product meal and dehydrated chicken, which are all chicken by any reading.
• Chicken fat, chicken broth and chicken stock, which are chicken in a quieter form and often sit low on the panel.
• Poultry, poultry meal and poultry fat, which are a maybe, and a maybe counts as a yes until the maker tells you otherwise.
• Any flavor or glaze that does not name its source, which is a question for the maker rather than a yes or a no.

The words that matter are rarely in large type.

Is a single ingredient treat automatically chicken free?

Only when that one ingredient is something other than chicken. A bag that lists dried chicken breast and nothing else is every bit as single ingredient as a bag of dried beef. The phrase on the front tells you the count, not the animal, so turn the bag over and read the one word. Our guide to single ingredient dog treats explains how to read that short label and what it leaves out.

Coatings and flavorings still count. A treat that is mostly sweet potato with a chicken glaze over the top is not chicken free, even when the front of the bag never says the word. Some treats are not meat at all. A few of ours are made on a Greek yogurt or cheddar cheese base, and those bags get the same read as any other.

What can a chicken-free treat jar hold instead?

Shopping for chicken-free dog treats gets easier once you sort the shelf by base ingredient rather than by whatever the front of the bag is promising. Red meat is one group. Fish is another, and usually the one you smell before you see. Egg treats and cheese or yogurt based treats each have a texture of their own.

For our own box, the proteins change from month to month and no fixed list exists, so we are not going to describe a jar we cannot promise. What we can say is that every treat in the lineup is one we make, and that some use a yogurt or cheese base in place of meat. If you would like the jar to change on its own, the guide to rotating dog treats walks through a loose plan for swapping bases without a spreadsheet.

How does a skip list work in a monthly treat box?

When you start a Modified Monthly box, you pick dog or cat and name the proteins to leave out. That note guides what we choose for your box each month. It does not change what is printed on a bag, and the label on each bag is the final word, so the habit from the sections above carries straight over. Open the box, read every panel, then open the first bag.

Contents vary by month and new treats sometimes turn up, which is why the note matters more than a glance at a photo. We do not give feeding advice. Some owners leave chicken out on their vet's advice and some do it by preference, and the note works the same way in both cases. Whatever comes in the box sits alongside your dog's regular food as an extra, for intermittent or supplemental feeding and not as a diet.

How do you keep chicken out when other people hand out treats?

The jar at home is the easy part. Chicken gets in through the dog walker's pocket, the sitter's kitchen, the pet store counter and your mother's purse, and none of those people are reading ingredient panels for you unless you ask them to.

So write the list down and hand it over. A photo on your phone of the names in the first section works, and so does a card clipped to the leash. Think of it as the note taped to the dash of a borrowed car: whoever is driving needs to see it before they touch anything. When someone wants to give your dog a treat, ask to see the bag first.