Hi Karen, 

I wasn't meaning to argue in favor of kibble in general, but against 
industrial chicken whether kibbled or raw. 

So few people are familiar with normal chickens that they don't realize how 
abnormal the industrial chickens are, and this concerns me greatly for many 
reasons.

With the raw feeding topic, too often I've seen a simple equation of 
industrial sourced and processed chicken with whole wild prey, which of 
course you are not doing. Aside from the gut/bone/meat ratios issue, there 
are two different problems with grocery store chickens, one is the way they 
are raised and processed (continuous low level antibiotics and other 
substances to improve feed conversion, unusual bacteria including pathogenic 
strains in the environment, etcetera), the other is their genetic lines 
themselves being so biologically abnormal.

For people who want to feed raw and can't raise the food animals themselves, 
I'd like to suggest some options that some may not be aware of, that are 
alternatives to buying meat at the grocery store. Almost no matter where you 
live, there are likely to be a few local people raising animals and 
butchering for their own use. Some of them may have far more naturally raised 
animals than the industrial system products (though small scale does not 
itself ensure a better more natural rearing system, or humane treatment, or 
avoidance of antibiotics and other chemicals). People who do their own 
butchering don't always have enough dogs to use up everything, and will often 
have some leftovers from butchering that they might be very glad to give away 
or sell inexpensively for raw feeding dogs, since they otherwise would end up 
having to bury or pay for disposal. 

Another suggestion is to link up with people who breed some kind of small 
animal such as rabbits, pigeons, or chickens, to find those who do not 
utilize their own culls. 

People who breed chickens are almost certain to have to cull significant 
numbers of perfectly healthy young (and old) stock, but some chicken breeders 
either don't like to eat chickens, or don't like to process them and can't 
find anyone locally to do small lots for them. It is apparently not at all 
uncommon for breeders to kill the culls and just bury them! I imagine they'd 
be glad to have someone take the killed chickens instead of having to bury 
them. This wouldn't require butchering per se if you want to feed the bird 
whole. If the feathers ought to come off (I'm not sure) it is fairly quick to 
skin instead of plucking.

Gina