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My parents and sister are giving buffalo's milk to 25 days old kittens, even when we have the mother cat to feed them.

It's like just some moments ago the mother cat was with her kittens in her bed, but the kittens were meowing a lot rather than feeding on milk form their mother. So, my sister and mother gave them buffalo's milk. And they might continue to feed them buffalo's milk regularly.

  • Please explain what consequences will occur.
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  • It is not a good idea to feed them buffalo's milk, buffalo's milk should be only fed to baby buffaloes and the only milk suitable for kittens is cat's milk, all mammals have different composition of their milk.
    – lila
    Commented Oct 18, 2020 at 15:34
  • They may start to moo instead of meow...
    – Tim
    Commented Oct 19, 2020 at 11:46
  • Kittens can get very dehydrated, possibly to the point of death, if they get diarrhea. OP please tell your family they may kill the kittens if they don't stop! I get the feeling you already know this is a bad idea and you're looking for leverage to get them to stop. Hopefully telling them that will get them to stop
    – Kat
    Commented Oct 19, 2020 at 22:44

1 Answer 1

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It's difficult to find advice specific to buffalo milk, but I think it's likely the advice would be buffalo milk is not good for kittens, and if you need to supplement their diet, use kitten formula instead.

The advice when it comes to cow milk seems to agree that cow milk isn't good for kittens due to the high lactose content which will give them diarrhea, and possibly make them dehydrated. Plus cow's milk doesn't have the same nutritional balance as cat's milk, and therefore it's not nutritionally healthy for them either.

Buffalo milk has even more lactose than cow milk, and therefore would surely cause diarrhea even worse. I would guess that it also has the wrong nutritional balance since buffalo are so different from cats.

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  • Another possible product could be lactose-free milk. There are a couple of varieties made specifically for cats (supplemented with taurine, too) which my cats have loved.
    – Upper_Case
    Commented Oct 19, 2020 at 18:26

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