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Adult dogs should not drink too much milk.
Many dogs adore milk or dairy products. But is it safe for dogs to drink milk, or could it pose disadvantages for your four-legged friend? zooplus reveals the most important facts.
Milk contains vital nutrients such as vitamins and high-quality proteins, which new-borns need for their growth. Therefore, a puppy relies on its mother’s milk.
However, the situation is different for adult dogs. They can receive all the essential nutrients through solid animal and plant-based foods. Thus, whether milk is a part of a dog’s diet is a question of age.
The reason for dogs’ age-dependent digestion of lactose is the enzyme lactase. This enzyme normally breaks down the milk sugar so that the body can process it.
As your dog gets older, it produces less lactase. The consequence: the lactose remains undigested.
© Carola Schubbel / stock.adobe.com
Not all milk is created equal. To answer the question “Can dogs drink milk?” let’s look at the different types of milk and dairy products:
The high lactose content can be problematic for dogs’ digestion.
The small intestine of adult dogs cannot fully break down the so-called lactose. Therefore, if your adult dog drinks too much milk, it may experience digestion issues such as diarrhoea.
When feeding conventional milk, it’s important to monitor the amount and tolerance.
Cat’s milk is specially produced for cats. Though not lactose-free, it contains less lactose and is often easier to digest for many dogs, not just cats.
Condensed milk is thicker and contains more lactose, fats, and calories than regular cow’s milk.
Although it may taste better to many dogs, for health reasons, you should only give your dog a very small amount (if any) of condensed milk.
Supermarkets today stock a variety of lactose-free dairy products. With a maximum content of around ten grams of lactose per litre, these products are generally more digestible for some dogs than regular milk.
However, even this type of milk should not be part of your dog’s normal diet.
Diluting milk with water is generally better for your dog than undiluted milk.
This way, you can quickly and easily reduce the lactose concentration and the calorie count while still providing a tasty experience for your dog.
Goat’s milk is considered more digestible than regular cow’s milk due to its higher content of short and medium-chain fatty acids, which the small intestine can break down more easily than the long-chain fatty acids found in cow’s milk.
While goat’s milk is a tasty alternative, you should still not feed too much of it since it also contains a lot of fats and calories that can be unhealthy for your dog in high quantities.
Plant drinks made from soya, oats, or rice have become more common in supermarkets in recent years — raising the question among environmentally conscious dog owners whether these plant-based drinks are also suitable for dogs.
While some dogs may tolerate plant drinks in certain quantities, others may be allergic to the plant-based proteins.
In this case, you should not give your dog plant drinks — especially if the drink is sweetened or contains other flavourings, such as vanilla essence.
Besides the calories, the limiting factor in milk is lactose. If your dog drinks too much milk or similar products, its health could be compromised.
It has long been known that obesity can affect a dog’s health. Therefore, the choice of food and the amount of feed play a central role in healthy feeding for dogs.
Since milk contains more fat and calories than water, which can lead to obesity, you should not let your dog drink too much milk.
Adult dogs often display digestion issues such as bloating, diarrhoea, or constipation after consuming too much milk (and therefore lactose).
As this is uncomfortable for your dog, it is better to replace milk with water — or at least not to exceed the recommended maximum amount.
Veterinarians advise feeding no more than 20 millilitres of milk per kilogram of body mass per day. You should feed even less condensed milk, at a maximum of ten millilitres per kilogram of body mass per day.
If your dog cannot tolerate milk at all or is carrying too much weight, you should avoid giving it milk as a precaution.
Instead of milk, dog owners often provide other dairy products like yogurt, cottage cheese, or curd to their dogs — and often for dietary reasons.
Not without reason. As cottage cheese and curd contain comparatively less lactose than milk, dogs usually tolerate these foods better. Additionally, yogurt is thought to have a probiotic effect on dogs’ digestion.
But the golden rule still applies: Don’t give too much to your dog, and make sure to maintain a balanced portion.
Although your dog would likely not always turn down a delicious bowl of fresh milk, you should not make it a regular part of its diet.
The main reasons are the threat of digestion problems and the risk of obesity.
This article from zooplus Magazine is purely informative. If your pet is experiencing discomfort, contact your veterinarian for diagnosis and treatment.
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At the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen I was extensively trained as a veterinarian and was able to gain experience in various fields such as small animal, large animal and exotic animal medicine as well as pharmacology, pathology and food hygiene. Since then, I have been working not only as a veterinary author, but also on my scientifically driven dissertation. My goal is to better protect animals from pathogenic bacterial organisms in the future. Besides my veterinary knowledge, I also share my own experiences as a happy dog owner and can thus understand and enlighten fears and problems as well as other important questions about animal health.
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