Discovery Brings Us One Step Closer To "Milking" Pigeons 190
Are you tired of boring old milk in your cereal? Is the half and half in your coffee leaving you flat? If so, the recent discovery of the gene responsible for pigeon crop "lactation" might be the good news you've been waiting for. While mammals are the only animals that produce true milk, a number of birds produce a nutritious, liquid "crop milk" for their chicks. From the article: "The idea of drinking pigeon milk may bring a shudder to every sane and rational person in the world, but it's actually quite nutritious. Although it's high in fat, to help the young squabs develop fast, it's also packed full of antioxidants and immune-system-boosting proteins."
But... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I only drink human milk. It can be tough to find, but you can find pretty much anything on Craigslist.
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There is no way anyone (FDA, USDA, etc) is going to let that go on for very long. What with them shutting down dairies for selling unpasteurized milk or cheese, or fining a family over $90,000 because they sold more than $500 worth of rabbits in a year, I'm surprised they haven't been shut down already.
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Guys? I'm too fearful to click on that link
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It's NPR, it can't be that bad. (Of course I'm too scared to click the link as well...)
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Spycam videos of cows going to the bathroom? Pervert.
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Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)
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It makes sense on a bunch of levels: For starters, each cow / hog / bird is more important to a smaller farmer than a big one, because each one represents a higher percentage of the total business. Also, the farmer (who, as you pointed out, is the owner and is on the scene working) has the time and attention to really devote to getting his farm in the best possible shape. Lastly, the smaller operations generally are much better about ensuring the proper amount of land for each animal, and preventing overgra
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Thousands of adult cows [...]
That must be a hell of a large family. The family-run dairy farms I've visited—including my aunt and uncle's when they still had one—had at most dozens of animals.
Maybe you meant "family owned".
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I can send you 24 hour surveillance videos of my cattle
I can't tell from your post - are you a farmer, or a member of congress?
April 1st? (Score:2)
I actually checked the date to be sure.
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Excuse me? (Score:5, Funny)
How about working on a way to keep them from crapping all over my balcony? I've begun calling it the poop deck.
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Place a milk jug on one of those Got Milk? posters on your balcony. You'll soon find some milk from an alternative source to use for delicious cereal, coffee and baked goods.
Reply to my post and let us /.'ers know how it tastes. Since you almost have first post, you should have first taste.
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Disgust is Irrational (Score:2)
"The idea of drinking pigeon milk may bring a shudder to every sane and rational person in the world"
There is nothing rational about that shudder. The disgust comes from our outdated and inaccurate instincts that come from a time before we understood infectious disease (like when we where Homo habilis).
Only sane and rational people can push past the shudder and have a drink. Unfortunately that significantly limits the market for this.
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What the hell are you talking about? It's totally rational to expect that vomit from a filthy wild animal is itself filthy and therefore not something worth ingesting.
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All animals are filthy. Yet we still eat a number of them.
Veggies and fruits are probably filthy too, on some level.
So I guess Jules was right, it all comes down to personality.
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I have worked in a chocolate factory (Score:2)
Holland, Zaandam, were most of the worlds chocolate is processed. At the end of the process molten chocolate is stored in large vats, sometimes somebody taking samples forgets to close the tap or it is filled while open and it poors onto the floor. The floor everybody walks on and where dead bugs collect. But chocolate is expensive so what do you do with the spilled chocolate? Scoop it back up and poor it back into the system, dead bugs and all.
Enjoy your chocolate turd with real crunchy bits.
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Considering the size of pigeons, and the amount of milk you can get out of one, as well as the time it will take to hook one up to get the milk, I imagine the price will be pretty high in order to pay for the retrieval of the milk, which will further reduce the demand.
Note: The summary says 'Although high in fat' indicating that's a point against it. Fat is a nutritional positive. It makes you feel full which will limit the amount you eat to feel full. Your body uses fat in very important ways. Your body do
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Your body does store fat in fat cells - that's why they're called fat cells :p
Of course, your dietary fat doesn't just get magically put there without being converted to blood sugar first. I eat a low GI diet. Wholemeal carbs are fine. It's only refined carbs that you should avoid.
Obligatory movie reference for milking (Score:2)
"Hey, I hope you don't mind, I got up a little early, so I took the liberty of milking your cow for you. Yeah, it took a little while to get her warmed up, she sure is a stubborn one, whew."
"We don't have a cow. We have a bull."
"I'm gonna brush my teeth."
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I was thinking more of the scene from "Meet the Parents" where Greg explains how he milks a cat.
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Simpsons, where they milk rats to sell to the school
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Shudder? (Score:1)
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Your relative, my friend, must be the biggest winner in the redneck gameses history!
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I have a relative who breeds pigeons. They are not even close to those infected zombies you see in a city. In fact, they are much closer to a chicken in size. And they are delicious.
I agree with the delicious part. A lot of restaurants where I lived in China (south, near Hong Kong) served Pigeon, and it was REALLY tasty.
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Yep.
Pigeon Pie [bbc.co.uk]. Not made with the flying rats you see in towns.
Uncoscionable! (Score:1)
Human milk is the only ethical milk.
And it'd be a great way for gals to make a few bucks on the side.
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a great way for gals to make a few bucks on the side.
They moved them?
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a great way for gals to make a few bucks on the side.
They moved them?
That made me laugh out loud. Nicely done!
(And also evidence that you need to get out of your mother's basement more.)
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I raise doves (Score:5, Informative)
Doves and pigeons are very closely related and some of the few birds that produce crop milk.
Very specifically, crop milk is the sloughed lining of the interior of the crop. Pigeons and doves will stop eating a few days before they lay and fill their crops with seeds, insects, and sometimes fruits or berries. They will keep these foods items in the crop, grinding them over and over with the gizzard while the skin cells lining the inside of the crop get irritated and engorge with fluid. Once the chicks start feeding, which is very soon after hatching, the cells detach, burst, and mix with the well ground food items.
The resulting mix smells horrible and is my least favorite part of dealing with my birds.
So, yeah. Cooing Farms Crop Milk will never find a place in my refrigerator.
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Neither of the terms "dove" nor "pigeon" are rigorously defined in biology. In colloquial speech even less so.
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I raise Zenaida asiatica and the crop milk comments apply to all of family Columbidae.
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Simpsons did it. (Score:2)
I was promised dog or higher!
Um, eeewww! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather drink human breast milk. At least the source is more appealing.
For suitable definitions of "milk" (Score:2)
Crop Milk = Fermented rotting pigeon barf (Score:2)
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You could give a horse a blowjob to completion
LOL.
As opposed to what? Just teasing the horse? I'm pretty sure if you broke through whatever mental and social barriers there are to blowing a horse you are going to do it to "completion".
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skim pigeon milk (Score:2)
The fact that it's high in fat shouldn't be a problem: just produce a "skim" version of it.
Nintendo were onto something (Score:2)
In "Animal Crossing", Brewster the barista is a pigeon, and his special coffee contains a dash of pigeon milk.
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Penguins! (Score:2)
Boosting Immune System? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why and under what conditions would you want your immune system response to go up?
Overactive immune systems do kill people. Inflammation is often an overactive immune system in action. In the lungs it can lead to quick massive pneumonia with aggressive flu virus.
Just exactly how would a person know if their immune system is already "too high"?
The media overuse of the marketing phrase "improved immune system" does a disservice to average consumers.
I can see the slogans flying now... (Score:2)
"Pigeon...the other white milk!"
After all, they're going to have to work pretty damn hard to get anybody to buy this crap, er, I mean crop.
Crunchy Frog (Score:2)
Inspector: LARK'S VOMIT?!
Mr. Hilton: Correct.
Inspector: It doesn't say anything here about Lark's vomit!
Mr. Hilton: Uh, it does at the bottom of the label, after monosodium glutamate.
Inspector: I hardly think that's good enough! I think it would be more appropriate if the box wore a big red label "WARNING: LARK'S VOMIT"!
Convertible owner's bargain... (Score:2)
Tell you what...let's make a deal...
I'll drink the pigeon milk, if I can milk the pigeons by kicking the hell out of them. Deal?
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The Glastonbury Festival is held on what is for the rest of the year a working dairy farm. The festival peopled by a mixture of mainstream music fans and old-school hippies, including, of course, a number of militant vegetarians and vegans.
Every morning, a truck circulates the campsites selling pints of milk. One year, upon the tailgate of the truck, was sprayed "MILK: RAPED FROM COWS".
To this day, I don't know whether it was written there in earnest, or in jest. It could so easily be either.
But yeah, balki
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Yea lets free the cows... Oh wait they have been bread over thousands of years to produce more milk, by us not milking them they will die a slow and painful death, from udder infections.
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No I will not.
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Drinking something that your ancestors have drunk for thousands of years but balking at something new is not irrational. Boring sure, but rational.
Once it is shown to be safe - which depending on your level of trust might mean waiting a few generations - it would be irrational. Well maybe once it is shown to have some benefit over the traditional item too.
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It gets better: rennet [wikimedia.org], the enzyme used to make cheese, is extracted from these slaughtered calves' stomachs. So if you're against the production of milk due to it causing the slaughter of newborn bovine then stop eating cheese, too. I'll assume that if you're the type to do this, though, that you've already avoided veal on principle.
As for me, I drink milk, I eat cheese, and I avoid veal only because it costs too much. I'm fine with "exploiting" cows for their milk, and insemination to encourage lactati
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It gets better: rennet, the enzyme used to make cheese, is extracted from these slaughtered calves' stomachs. So if you're against the production of milk due to it causing the slaughter of newborn bovine then stop eating cheese, too.
Um, I imagine if you're against the production of milk you're probably already avoiding cheese...
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It gets better: rennet, the enzyme used to make cheese, is extracted from these slaughtered calves' stomachs. So if you're against the production of milk due to it causing the slaughter of newborn bovine then stop eating cheese, too.
Um, I imagine if you're against the production of milk you're probably already avoiding cheese...
You know, when you put it that way...
Seriously, though, my point (awkwardly put, as you pointed out), was that cheese was a double whammy - not only is milk production causing more calves to be born than is natural, but the production of cheese requires the slaughter of those same calves. The people who think that veal production is the only reason calves are slaughtered are often ignorant of the veal-cheese connection. But, yeah, for people who would rather go veg than drink milk over the veal thing this
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There's actually artificial rennet that can be used in cheesemaking, but you'd still be stuck with the issue of milk production.
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I was going to argue with you over this, but then I re-read the wiki page I linked to earlier and got depressed. It turns out that in the US we're at something like 80-90% of cheese manufactured using artificial rennet (obtained from genetically modified bacteria). There's no way that using just chymosin expressed by bacteria gets the same result as actual rennet from real calves (which contains other important enzymes like pepsin and lipase, balanced by evolution for the mother's milk).
I'm not sure I bu
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"Nipples" is now censorship fodder? Come on.
Pigeons, however, don't have nipples. The "milk" arises in the crop. RTFA.
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Unless you are an AC. I fucking hate ACs.
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Really... I was wondering what the dried goo that I pick out of my nostrils has to do with milk.
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I had to look it up since avian anatomy isn't common knowledge aside from which piece is which in a bucket o' KFC.
It's the part of their esophagus that can store food for later regurgitation to their chicks. So basically they throw it up. Wikipedia also describes it as looking like "pale yellow cottage cheese". [wikipedia.org]
Yum.
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Define "milk" (Score:2)
Last time I looked, "milk" was liquid secreted by blood-fed specialized glands for the nurishment of offspring.
Mamals happen to use glands on their chests that apparently evolved from sweat or scent glands.
Looks like birds, such as pigeons, use glands in their digestive tract that evolved from saliva or other digestive enzyme emitting glands (judging by the location).
In both cases the secretion is nourishing and white (no doubt due to the calcium content).
Looks like "pigeon milk" is "milk" by that definitio
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Is that any more gross then Cows Milk? Or any Milk as of a matter.
I am not a Vegan or a Vegetarian, and I do enjoy drinking milk.
But the fact that we are drinking an other animals body fluids is a bit gross, if you think too much about it.
But so is if you thinking when you eat an Fruit that you are Eating a plants Reproductive Organ. The fact if you eat a carrot or some other vegetable a full life form needed to die in order to keep you alive.
Many plants have a much more complex Genome then us animals do,
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It's hard enough to drink milk without thinking about where it came from.
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Now not only would pigeon milk be regurgitated, it could even be man-milk!
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Sweet!
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Well as some wine or beer lovers say: "Water? No, thanks. Fish sh%t in it."
Beer is made with that same water. While the water in wine has been filtered through a plant, both wine and beer are full of yeast excrement.
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In contrast think about a "US breakfast" of
fried slice belly of pig, aborted chicken embryos, mashed grass seeds digested by yeast and toasted. Now add cheese, yoghurt, waffles/pancakes and honey
I think it's a good idea for people to know what they are eating. That way they'd at least regularly realize that some poor animal died so they could have fried chicken etc.
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Unfertilized.
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Perhaps "regularly" reminding consumers they're eating cooked, dead animal carcasses might be of some use to ethical vegetarians/vegans, but for the rest of us: Animals are damn tasty.
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Maybe some of us keep eating animals so that PETA will keep providing us porn ;) :
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/peta-plans-porn-website_n_972497.html [huffingtonpost.com]
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Hah!
I somehow suspect that's unlikely to achieve the desired result.
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The fact if you eat a carrot or some other vegetable a full life form needed to die in order to keep you alive.
I don't think many people care about a plant (something that, to us, doesn't visibly feel pain or have any sort of intelligence) dying.
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When you are back in them olden time. You either ate/drank everything off the animal you can or you died from starvation because who know when the next time you can eat.
If it didn't kill you, and it was soft enough to chew. Then they ate it.
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- you need a live cow to drink its milk, don't you? That means you're not hungry enough to kill the cow and eat it but are rather patient (and presumably well-fed) enough to keep the cow around and forgo its meat in exchange for the milk;
- if I recall, the subset of humans capable of tolerating lactose only arose around 9,000 years ago, and it's still a relatively uncommon trait (ie more people are lactose intolerant than not).
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I'm pretty sure a bright hominid noticed that female mammals lactate (starting with Mom and then his wife as she fed his progeny.) It doesn't take any imagination to presume he did a little taste testing first with his wife... found it Hhhmmmm? Not bad. Then tried collecting the milk of cows, goats, sheep, probably anything that wouldn't bite his hand off when he tried to milk it (namely herbivores for the most part, Ogg likes the wolf milk but has a hard time drinking it from his left stump.)
The real kick
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if you think that's gross.. you haven't been on the internet long enough
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Highly nutritious pigeon vomit!
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Would you feel better about eating doves?
Pigeons are domesticated birds brought here from Europe...for eating.
Here's a Scientific America podcast about it all: Superdove!: The Straight Poop on Pigeons [scientificamerican.com].
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just thinking about cow utters
What is so disturbing about Bovine conversations? Some find them udderly rediculus, but rarely disturbing.
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