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Sue
Moderator
Geregistreerd op: 13-1-2005
Berichten: 48764
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Birds would never be in a situation in the wild where they would drink milk. For this reason, birds do not possess the digestive enzymes necessary to process milk. Parent birds regurgitate food to their babies in the nest. Although you might have heard about pigeons feeding their babies crop milk, this is actually sloughed cells from the crop and secretions and is not a milk product at all.
Milk sugar is called lactose. Mammals have a digestive enzyme, lactase, to digest milk sugar. Birds simply lack lactase and cannot digest milk products containing lactose. Birds will develop diarrhea when lactose in the diet reaches between 10 and 30 percent. Products that contain a significant amount of lactose are dried skim milk and dried whey. Humans may also suffer from an inability to digest lactose, and this is called lactose intolerance.
Some milk products contain little or no lactose, and these may be safely fed to birds. And actually, these products (cheeses and yogurt) are a good source of calcium for birds. Some owners have asked me if they can feed birds items containing lactose if they also give them one of those products for humans to aid in the digestion of milk sugar. Unfortunately, that is also dangerous, as one of the by-products of lactose digestion is galactose, which is also toxic to birds. |
Zondag 31 Juli 2005 7:53 am |
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Tijden zijn in GMT + 1 uur. Het is nu Maandag 28 Mei 2012 3:48 pm
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