Pigeon Farming-Nutrition and Feeding by Pigeon Milk

Pigeon “Milk”  

The pigeon, dove and African Sand Grouse are the only birds which feed their young on a substance called “milk”. A few birds feed their young through a process called regurgitation. The process of regurgitation is feeding of a partially-digested food. Pigeon milk is a thick, creamy, semi-digested substance high in protein and fat, but low in carbohydrate. Pigeon milk is not a secretion, but a creation of both the male and female. It is a strange phenomenon of nature, a thick cream-colored material that appears like a curd in the crop.

How And When It Produces In The Crop

            Prolactin (secreted by the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland) in pigeons causes the crop to produce “pigeon’s milk” a milk fluid rich in calcium. Which is in many ways similar to the milk of the mammals. It contains fatty tissue cells ahead from the epithelial lining of the crop. Each pigeon crop has 2 lobes which develop in the parents’ crops, beginning on the eight day of incubation, for formation of  the milk. On the 18th day of incubation, the cell begin to develop fat globules and break down (desquamate). The white masses of dead cells become the pigeon milk and the process of formation of the milk lasts for about 7 days. By the seventh day, the milk is nearly gone and a high grain milk mixture is present. This grain milk mixture first appears on the third day. Pigeon milk has the following composition:

Water  72.4 %             

Crude protein  16.0 %

Fat       10.0 %            

Ash      1.60 %

Carbohydrates : Not detected