Can dogs eat satsumas?

The detail

This page covers the small citrus family together: satsumas, clementines, tangerines and mandarins. They are close enough in sugar, acidity and size that splitting them would give four identical answers, and the full-size fruit has its own page on oranges.

The flesh is the safe part. A whole satsuma is roughly 75g of flesh carrying around 7g of sugar, which works out at under a gram per segment, so the segment is the unit to think in.

Acidity is the second limit. Citrus is sharper than most fruit a dog meets, and several segments at once is a common route to loose stools by the evening.

Plenty of dogs simply do not want it, and that is a fine outcome. Nothing in a satsuma is something a complete dog food has left out, so a refused segment costs your dog nothing.

Satsumas, clementines, tangerines and mandarins

One answer covers all four. They are all small, loose-skinned mandarin types, they sit within a gram or two of each other on sugar, and a dog cannot tell them apart.

Clementines tend to be the sweetest and satsumas the least seedy, which changes the preparation slightly and nothing else. Flick out any pips, hand over a segment, and keep the count to the table above.

Full-size oranges follow the same rules with a slightly larger segment, and our oranges page has the detail on those.

Peel and pith

The peel comes off and goes in the bin. Citrus peel holds concentrated oils that upset dogs' stomachs, and it digests badly enough that a swallowed strip can block a small dog's gut.

The white pith is the same idea in a milder form: bitter, stringy and worth pulling away. Most of it comes off with the peel on an easy-peeler anyway.

If a whole peel disappears, watch for vomiting, a hunched posture or refusing food over the next day or two and ring your vet if any of that shows up. Peel left on a coffee table or a sofa arm is the classic way this happens.

How many segments

One segment for a dog under 10kg, two for a mid-sized dog, three at the outside for a labrador. A satsuma splits into about ten segments, so a whole fruit is several treats rather than one.

Feed them singly rather than as a handful. It slows the sugar down, and a dog that dislikes the sharpness will tell you after the first one instead of the fifth.

Treats of any kind should stay inside about a tenth of a dog's daily calories, and two satsuma segments is roughly 6 calories, so the segments are rarely the thing that tips the budget. The sugar and the acidity are the reason for the low count, not the calories.

The sugar and the acidity

Around 7g of sugar in a satsuma is not much for a person and is a fair amount for a 6kg dog. That is the whole reason this page sits at amber rather than green.

The acidity does the rest. Citric acid is harsher on a dog's stomach than the fruit sugars in a banana or a strawberry, so overdoing satsumas shows up as loose stools rather than anything dramatic.

Dogs with diabetes, pancreatitis or a weight problem should have none. Cucumber and carrot give the same crunch and interest without either issue.

Citrus essential oils are a different thing

Satsuma flesh and citrus essential oil are not the same subject. VCA Animal Hospitals lists citrus oil among the essential oils that are poisonous to dogs, and states that both ingestion and skin exposure can be toxic.

The Pet Poison Helpline names orange, lemon, lime, bergamot, mandarin and grapefruit oils in its list, with drooling, vomiting, lethargy and skin irritation as the common signs. Keep diffusers, oil bottles and citrus cleaning sprays away from your dog, and ring your vet if there has been contact.