Can I feed my chicks some pudding?

[SillyChick]

Hello

We bought some pudding at the store. I was going to buy yogurt for my chicks but unfortunately there isn't any. I'm thinking that pudding can do..........can it? The name is:

Hunt's Snack Pack Pudding Vanilla Flavor

What's written on the box:
Good source of calcium
Needs no refridgeration
No preservatives
Real Nonfat milk is our #1 ingredient

Here are the ingredients:

Nonfat milk
water
sugar
modified corn starch
vegetable oil (contains one or more of the following: Palm oil, Partially hydrogenated palm oil, sunflower oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil)

Less than 2% of:
salt
calcium carbonate
sodium stearoyl lactylate
natural and artificial flavors
color added (including yellow 5 and yellow 6)
Contains: milk

Is it safe?

Many thanks!

 

[devora]

Some folks have said that chickens don't digest milk well. We've given them things that have some milk (bread pudding) but not a lot and not regularly.

Are you saying you would give this instead of yogurt or just as a one time gig b/c they were out of yogurt?

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Chickens are not mammals so they do not have the Lactase enzyme to digest the mild sugars. I would forgo the pudding and anything that contains milk products. There are better sources of nutrients for chickens: Fishmeal, Meat and bone meal, soybean meal, etc.

Jim

 

[helmstead]

But isn't yogurt a milk product? Seems they digest it fine...far as I can tell anyway.

 

[speckledhen]

Yogurt has enzymes and active bacteria cultures that are good for their digestion, not exactly the same as milk. I've been told that chickens cannot digest lactose, but in the old days, farmers fed chickens milk for some medicinal reason I can't recall at the moment, so I'm not sure about that. The pudding you posted the ingredients of seems to have lots of fake stuff in it and added processed sugars, artificial colors, etc, i.e. alot of junk. It's not remotely like plain, unflavored active culture yogurt or plain milk, for that matter.

 

[helmstead]

Quote:
Ah, I see. Thanks for that. All I could think of was that I know how to make yogurt with goat milk, LOL, and it's just a tbsp of plain yogurt in some milk.

I digress...

Back to the original post, I wouldn't feed it either. It contains a lot of preservatives (one of those things I'm avoiding with my flock, anyway).

 

[WoodlandWoman]

The active culture in yogurt consumes the lactose in the process of making the yogurt. Yogurt has none of the bad and all of the good, for chickens.

Edited to add this link on probiotics. Lactobacillus acidophilus is the active culture in yogurt.
http://www.vetcareindia.com/probiotics_bulletin.htm

 

[earthnut]

I wouldn't use it because of the high sugar content. Isn't sugar bad for chickens? That would worry me more than a little lactose.