Chicken and Turkey necks

So it seems my cat is turning her nose up at her regular chicken wings in her home-made raw batches I've been making. I thought I would give turkey necks a try, and she loves them! However I've heard we can't rely on necks due to the hormones in them. I want to keep giving her bone, but she won't each chicken wings/tips anymore. She loves dehydrated chicken necks, and the turkey necks I put into her most recent batch. 

What are your thoughts on using chicken and turkey necks for bone content? 

Thanks

I tried giving Hecate a raw chicken bone once, because I'd read that cooked bone splinters and can cause issues. She tried to eat it whole. I haven't tried that one again. She loves getting tendons when I'm boning chicken legquarters, though... I'm wondering if the bone would be safer if I cut it up somehow?

Thirteen and Atticus, my two domestic shorthairs, loved chicken necks.  It's the staple of our bone content.  They will eat quail breast bones (the ribs) too if I cut them up; however, turkey necks are too big for them.

I haven't heard anything about hormones but I source from a small, ethnic store that gets it's chicken locally.  No hormones!

Are you referring to the thyroid gland? I started this thread about it, after my vet raised a concern, saying she's seen hyperthyroidism develop from raw diets. She attributed the risk to the tissue surrounding necks. I don't really trust her take on nutrition, since, after learning I feed homemade raw, she recommended a homemade cooked diet instead, involving grains such as rice. She very well could be falsely attributing her observations to raw, but I can't discount her experience and the possible connection entirely, and wanted to take any risk seriously and explore it.

Some interesting info in the thread -- ultimately limited, but mschauer attributed the risk of thyroitoxicosis to consumption of the actual thyroid gland (with toxicity developing after 24 hours of freezing, according to the study), and not neck tissue.

My initial thinking when my vet brought this up was that this would most likely a risk with commercial raw grinds, because you have no control over the bone source, and it could just be like 100% neck, leading to an excess of surrounding tissue, and thus a build up of toxins over time. I don't know that this line of thinking holds up, however. If it's just the thyroid gland itself that may develop a high enough concentration of toxins to cause concern, then it could be a concern with products used in both commercial and homemade diets. Then again, I know Dr. Pierson's whole ground rabbit sourced from wholefoods4pets contains the thyroid, and she's been feeding this successfully for years   

I've continued to feed chicken necks for bone. Not exclusively, but they're my favorite / preferred bone source because they're easy, I can easily get them from haretoday and I have an accessible local source, and my cats take to them more than any other bone-in meat. Also I read that they're safer to ingest than other bones. idk though, I'm confused by this whole thing and feel like it's quite inconclusive, so it's hard to know what to do, but whenever I delve too much into exploring it -- like now -- I start thinking I should stop feeding necks because any amount of risk is not worth it. I also buy haretoday whole ground rabbit, the only product I buy with a thyroid, just to give my cats some whole carcass action beyond small rodents, and I've felt okay because I feed it so infrequently, then I remember that study and have renewed concern about feeding it in any amount. Sigh. It's hard not having very much conclusive data to go on. 

oh yeah, the whole ground rabbit is totally not the only thing i feed with a thyroid gland, since all the small whole (not ground) prey that i feed obviously have their thyroid, and all organs, intact. i feed small whole prey a few times a week (but if it weren't 7362856328 times more expensive than other meat, it would be their whole diet because it's the easiest thing ever, and it's the ultimate cat food -- they have the best time pretending to kill it, so it's more than just a meal -- win win). but i digress. 

I never thought about it until that article about thyroid glands being left in poultry necks was posted, but that makes a lot of sense.  I've been a little hesitant about necks ever since.  For what it's worth...my cats' favorite bone-in treat is chicken ribs.  They won't touch wings and are iffy about necks, but these never fail.

I just buy bone-in chicken breasts and cut the filets off for myself, leaving a generous amount of meat still attached to the bone.  Then I cut each one across into thirds.  Each third makes a perfect "meal" for a cat.  It works out great because I get boneless chicken breasts plus some cat food for less than the price of chicken cutlets!

I'll have to try sharing bone-in breasts with them -- I like that idea. Thanks!

I thought the issue of thyroid gland actually being present was a concern with beef gullet, but not poultry necks... do I have this wrong? Because with everything that is sort of unclear, this piece seems that it can be established definitively.