Abstract
Mammalian neonates obtain antibodies, nutrients, and microbiota from breast milk that help them resist the complex growth environment. Similar to mammals’ lactation behavior for their offspring, parent pigeons regurgitate pigeon milk (PM) from their crops to feed the squabs. Whether pigeon milk is as valuable as mammalian milk is not clear, especially in terms of microbiota. This study adopted 16S rRNA gene sequencing to investigate the microbial composition and function in pigeon milk. We found abundant microbiota in pigeon milk. The dominant genera in parent pigeons’ milk were Lactobacillus, Enterococcus, Veillonella, and Bifidobacterium. An analysis of squab milk (SM) showed that Lactobacillus also accounted for a considerable proportion, followed by Bifidobacterium. Most of the squab milk microbial genera were also detected in parent pigeons. Microbial functional analysis showed that the squab milk microbes were more involved in the pathways of carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism, and energy metabolism. These findings indicated that microbiota play an important role in squabs and can be transmitted from parent pigeons to squabs by pigeon milk. The presence of plentiful probiotics in squabs also suggests that adding probiotics in artificial pigeon milk may promote the growth and development of squabs and improve the production performance of pigeons.
Highlights
Pigeon, the common name for birds of the taxonomic family Columbidae and the order Columbiformes, is an essential economic animal that provides meat and eggs for humans
We observed that most of the squab milk microbes are involved in the pathways of membrane transport, replication and repair, carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism, and energy metabolism, which are important to growth and development of the organism (Figure 1E and Supplementary Table 2)
It implies that pigeons transfer nutrients, and microbiota to squabs by pigeon milk to help them cope with the complex living environment
Summary
The common name for birds of the taxonomic family Columbidae and the order Columbiformes, is an essential economic animal that provides meat and eggs for humans. Up to 7 days of age, squabs mainly rely on pigeon milk to obtain nutrients, while between 8 and 14 days of age, the pigeon milk includes a large amount of food initially digested by their parents (Horseman and Buntin, 1995). Because of this special feeding pattern, the number of pigeon’s offspring and their survival rate are very low, which makes it difficult for the pigeon industry to achieve intensive breeding. The efficiency of the pigeon breeding industry remains low due to poor understanding of pigeon milk composition, especially regarding the microbiota in pigeon milk (Shetty et al, 1990)
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