Plain nonfat Greek yogurt okay for birds?

[Monica]

Jen, that's correct.

Yogurt has very little lactose in it to begin with, because it's often broken down in the process of making it.


My mother enjoys making home-made yogurt. She typically buys a small container of greek yogurt and uses either whole milk or 2% milk. Heats up the milk to the right temperature, ads in the yogurt with live cultures, then continues "cooking" for another 8 hrs? She used to use a yogurt maker which keeps the milk at the right temperature, but has since switched to a modified ice chest with heating pad, which keeps the milk/yogurt at the correct temperature for the required time. She uses large glass containers from the dollar store, and 1 gallon of milk creates about 4 containers of yogurt? If she wants to remove the whey from the yogurt and make greek yogurt (which she often does... whey is sour/bitter, and removing it from the yogurt makes the yogurt much less sour/bitter tasting), she gets a colander, lines it with cheese cloth, and sets that over a plastic container. She most often covers that with a plate, and when she wants to remove the yogurt, she either scoops it out or flips the colander over onto the plate and peals the cheese cloth off.

You'd be paying about $2-3 (max $5?) for the gallon of milk, and $1-$3 for the small container of yogurt... plus the supplies if you don't already have them.

[Tangle Elf]

Dairy products are not a natural food for birds and they will have trouble digesting them. I give mine lactose free yogurt which has the lactase enzyme added which is needed to process the lactose (milk sugar). I am assuming the lactose is the reason it is hard to digest.

Lactose is very hard for birds to digest as they lack the enzyme that breaks it down. Yogurt and hard cheeses have very little lactose in them. It's broken down during processing.

[OldBirdLady1983]

I was thinking that Dairy products weren't good for parrots. I love greek Yogurt and eat it myself all the time and I try to keep from giving my birds any of it but now my dogs is another whole story LOL!

[ParrotsforKeeps]

True yogurt should not have much lactose, if any, as the bacteria used to make yogurt digest it. So I would say "lactose free" yogurt with added lactase is not needed. Hard cheese, or any cheese made with enzymes, is the same thing- the enzymes are breaking down the lactose.

That said, and as someone that is lactose intolerant (runs in the family), I have seen studies suggesting chickens, at least no only manage but do well with 5% lactose in their diet (chicks grew better).... the good bacteria in their gut break it down. Obviously, though, that is dependent on having enough beneficial gut flora.