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Evaluation of Four Methods for Estimating the Milk Yield of Baboons¹

Division of Biological Growth and Development, Southwest Foundation for Research and Education, San Antonio, Texas 78228, and Department of Virology and Epidemiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77025

The milk yield of lactating baboons must be known before their infants' total intake of any nutrient or other milk constituent can be determined. Of the estimations of this quantity presented here, the two most extensive were in substantial agreement. They involved measurement of the dilution of tritiated water in nursing infants' body fluids by the milk drunk, and comparison of the growth rates of nursing infants and infants drinking known amounts of formula from a bottle. The daily milk yield rose from about 200 ml when lactation was first well established, to about 400 ml when the infants were 4 months old. Male infants drank less milk per kilogram body weight than females did. There was little correlation between the infants' calorie intake (about 230 kcal/kg per day) and their growth rates, because most of the milk energy was used for maintenance. Small changes in the calorie content of the formula did not affect the volume drunk by the bottle-raised infants, but, when formula was continuously available, the infants drank about three times the normal amount. Two other indirect estimations, from measurement of the difference in food intake between lactating and nonlactating animals, and from an empirical relationship between maximum milk yield and maternal body weight, were not good predictors of the normal milk yield of baboons. They indicated, instead, that the energy cost of baboon lactation is very low.

Manuscript received 8 January 1971.