An Egg Yolk a Day Keeps Mastitis Away: Dietary Choline for Lactating Dams

Are some cases of mastitis preventable with small tweaks in our Dams’ diets?

In this episode, Jane is joined by Magda Chiarella to review dietary supplements and food sources that can help prevent mastitis in lactating Dams.  Although sunflower lecithin is often recommended, sunflower lecithin has some potentially serious side effects and there are many far superior dietary sources of the active ingredient in sunflower lecithin, which is choline – phosphatidylcholine, to be exact.

​Subscribe to Madcap Radio on Podbean so you never miss an episode

---

​Referenced Courses and Titles

Enroll Today

Enroll Today

Buy Now

Further reading and citations to the referenced studies and findings

Puppy Culture's Mother's Pudding Recipe Card - Available from shoppuppyculture.com
Making Mother's Pudding from scratch.

Choline Fact Sheet for Health Professionals - National Institutes of Health
Summary of food sources of choline.

Breastfeeding and Diseases: A Reference Guide - Available from Amazon.com
Stephen E.  Buescher M.D

What Are Plugged Ducts? - foxvalleyobgyn.com
Offers this explanation of why Lecithin might help with clogged ducts:​

You may also see lecithin as an additive to many common foods like chocolate, salad dressing, and baked goods. It is a substance that helps keep fats and oils suspension (an emulsifier). Lecithin is a phospholipid, which has both hydrophobic (affinity for fats and oils) and hydrophilic (affinity for water) elements. It’s thought to help prevent the breast ducts from getting plugged by increasing the polyunsaturated fatty acids in the milk and decreasing its stickiness.

Egg vs. Soy Lecithin - Ecovatec Solutions Inc.
The relative power of egg vs soy (not sunflower) lecithin. Sunflower lecithin has even less PC than soy…only about 10%:

While soy lecithin does contain many of the same properties of egg yolk lecithin, its chemical profile and makeup are vastly different. It is generally agreed that the PL that is of the most benefit for humans is phosphatidylcholine (PC). PC is used by the body to make and repair cell membranes. It is also used to make the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is used by the brain to control movement and is vital for maintaining memory. PC has been shown to help stave off dementia, prevent liver failure, and help brain development.4 Soy lecithin contains roughly 33% PC. Egg yolk lecithin, on the other hand, is made up of 66-76% PC (see Table 1: below). Using soy lecithin to improve your health is like bringing a Chihuahua to a Greyhound race. They both may be dogs, but one is going to outperform the other, hands-down.

Natural Choline from Egg Yolk Phospholipids is More Efficiently Absorbed Compared with Choline Bitartrate; Outcomes of a Randomized Trial in Healthy Adults ​
​- National Library of Medicine
Lotte Smolders, Nicole J.W. de Wit, Michiel G.J. Balvers, Rima Obeid, Marc M.M. Vissers, and Diederik Esser

Characterization of Specific Egg Yolk Immunoglobulin (IgY) Against Mastitis-Causing Staphylococcus Aureus ​
​- National Library of Medicine
Y-H Zhen, L-J Jin, J Guo, X-Y Li, Z Li, R Fang and Y-P Xu
In vivo use of egg yolk to kill the common pathogens known to cause mastitis in cows.

Effect of Including Herbal Choline in the Diet of a Dairy Herd; a Multiyear Evaluation ​
​- Emirates Journal of Food and Agriculture
Alfredo Gutiérrez R., Alfredo Gutiérrez, Carlos Sánchez, Germán D. Mendoza
Bovine study that showed a positive correlation between adding choline and reduction in incidence of mastitis.

Effects of Feeding Rumen-Protected Choline on Incidence of Diseases and Reproduction of Dairy Cows
- The Veterinary Journal, ScienceDirect
F.S. Lima, M.F. Sá Filho, L.F. Greco, J.E.P. Santos

 The Role of Micronutrients in High-Yielding Dairy Ruminants: Choline and Vitamin E
- vetjournal.ankara.edu.tr
 Luciano Pinotti, Michele Manoni, Francesca Fumagalli, Nicoletta Rovere, Marco Tretola, Antonella Baldi 

A Meta-Analysis on the Impact of the Supplementation of Rumen-Protected Choline on the Metabolic Health and Performance of Dairy Cattle 
​- MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)
Elke Humer, Geert Bruggeman and Qendrim Zebeli
​
​This is the “Humer study” referenced in the citation above this one and what it actually says:

3.4. Effect of Rumen-Protected Choline on Postpartal Disorders
Table 6 summarizes the effects of RPC on postpartum disorders. In general, inconsistent effects on the risk of ketosis were observed. For instance, Lima et al. [36] observed improved health of early lactating cows in terms of reduced incidences of ketosis and mastitis when they were fed 15 g choline chloride in the form of RPC per day from 25 days before calving until 80 days in milk (DIM). When heifers received 15 g choline chloride per day only 21 days before calving until parturition, controversial effects on health were observed. More specifically, while RPC had no effect on the incidence of ketosis and mastitis, higher incidences of metritis and fever were observed. However, this group of cows showed an overall lower incidence of ketosis and mastitis compared to the former group, which received the RPC for a longer period of time. Also, Davidson et al. [18] found a lower ketosis incidence in multiparous dairy cows supplemented with 40 g of choline chloride in the form of RPC from 21 to 91 DIM, although no statistical analysis was possible due to the low number of observations. However, other studies observed no beneficial effect of RPC on the incidence of ketosis [6,11,14], whereby it has to be noted, that the overall ketosis risk in several studies was already low (e.g., [11,22,34]).

2020 Meta-Analysis of Bovine Studies Regarding Choline Supplementation - Science Direct
U. Arshad, M.G. Zenobi, C.R. Staples, J.E.P. Santos

Lima et al. (2012) observed that supplementing 12.9 g of choline ion reduced the incidence of retained placenta in nulliparous cows and that of mastitis in all cows. The exact mechanism by which choline might reduce these 2 diseases is unclear; however, supplementation of choline has been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects by reducing plasma concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines (Sun et al., 2016), but also improved measures of immune function in transition cows (Vailati-Riboni et al., 2017). It is possible that supplementation with choline attenuated the dysregulated pro-inflammatory responses typically associated with the initiation of lactation in dairy cows. Therefore, supplementation of choline might benefit and provide a more coordinated innate immune response against the fetal placental tissues after the calving process. Also, improved innate immune defenses might reduce the risk of mastitis in early lactation. Furthermore, Zenobi et al. (2018a) observed that cows supplemented with choline had greater concentration of total Ca in plasma in the first 7 DIM, and both Bollatti et al. (2018) and Zenobi et al. (2018a) observed a reduced risk of subclinical hypocalcemia with choline supplementation. Subclinical hypocalcemia suppresses innate immune response (Martinez et al., 2014), and improving Ca homeostasis around parturition has been shown to reduce the risk of retained placenta and metritis in dairy cows (Santos et al., 2019).

Lecithin Content of Egg Yolk
- MadSci Network

Mayo Clinic Article: Eating Eggs Does Not Pose a Risk of Raising Cholesterol Levels
- Mayo Clinic

Bioavailability of Egg Choline vs Choline Salts
- National Library of Medicine
Lotte Smolders, Nicole J.W. de Wit, Michiel G.J. Balvers, Rima Obeid, Marc M.M. Vissers and Diederik Esser

Cosmetic Use of Choline as an Alternative to Liposuction
- National Library of Medicine
Mohan K. Thomas, James A. D’Silva, and Ateesh J. Borole

Transcript

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist and this is Madcap Radio. Today, I'm joined by my good friend, fellow dog breeder and nutrition guru Magda Chiarella. We're going to be discussing the pros and cons of giving sunflower lecithin to your lactating bitches to help prevent mastitis. This is a fabulous episode, but it is a bit of a deep dive. So before we jump in, I'm going to give you our conclusions and recommendations up front.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And then if you're interested in the science behind our reasoning, listen on. So here we go. Although it's possible that sunflower lecithin might help prevent some kinds of mastitis, we do not give it to our bitches, nor do we recommend its use. The reason for this is twofold. First of all, lecithin has some potentially severe gastrointestinal side effects. Things like nausea, diarrhea and general stomach upset.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And you know, you're introducing these side effects at a time when it's often a challenge to get bitches to eat at all. And then that can snowball and cause your bitch to become hypoglycemic, meaning to say she can get low blood sugar, she can become dehydrated, she can become nutritionally deficient in certain really important things that can cause disorders that are as bad or worse than mastitis.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So again, yes, while sunflower lecithin potentially could help prevent some kinds of mastitis, in this case, the cure might be worse than the disease. Second, the good news is you have much better dietary sources of the active ingredient in sunflower lecithin. It's not lecithin per say that helps prevent mastitis. It's choline. And choline is just one component of lecithin.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: There are much better and more bioavailable food sources of choline than sunflower lecithin, and they don't have those bad side effects. The standard recommendation for a medium size bitch is to give 1200 milligrams of sunflower lecithin per day. You could get the same amount of choline that you're getting from that 1200 milligrams of sunflower lecithin from any of the following: one egg yolk or one and a half ounces of beef liver or three ounces of beef muscle meat, or one fifth of one batch of mother's pudding.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: What you can begin to see is if you're already feeding your dog a whole food diet. They are getting tons of choline, much more than you could ever hope to give them through sunflower lecithin. And it's coming in a form that's nutritious, comforting, and actually contributing to the well-being of your bitches rather than making them feel terrible. So our recommendation is if you are feeding a whole food diet, continue doing so, maybe adding an extra egg yolk or an extra serving of mother's pudding.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: just to turbo boost that choline intake. Now, if you're not feeding a whole food diet, then our recommendation is to supplement with the small amount of these kinds of whole foods: an egg yolk, some mother’s pudding, a little bit of cooked beef liver, any of these will have a choline punch equivalent or far exceeding sunflower lecithin. 
 
So that's it in a nutshell.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: If you want to hear more about mastitis, what causes it and why, we think scientifically choline may be able to prevent certain kinds of mastitis, listen on. 

Welcome to Madcap Radio. Today I'm joined by Magda Chiarella of Dig-N-Pop Norwich Terriers. Magda, welcome and thank you for coming.

Magda Chiarella: ​Hi, Jane. I'm very happy to be here.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I think it's safe to say, Magda, that mastitis has been on our radar as dog breeders and as educators for a long time.

Magda Chiarella: It has. When you think of the worst case scenarios, you know, you can lose the dam.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: You can lose the dam. Speaking of people losing their dams, there was somebody on the Puppy Culture Discussion Group recently who very unfortunately did lose her dam to mastitis. And the conversation rose up around it about things that you can do. And somebody said, well, I give 1200 milligrams a day of lecithin. This is something that's borrowed from the human body of knowledge on breastfeeding.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: The human breastfeeding advocacy groups talk about using lecithin as a supplement, and the argument is that it makes milk less sticky.

Magda Chiarella: And less sticky milk would prevent blockages that might lead to mastitis.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Okay. So before we go any further, I think we need to talk a little bit about what mastitis is when we're on the topic of the lecithin supplementation, we're speaking about a very specific sequence of events that we're trying to address.

Magda Chiarella: Exactly.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So one of my co-owners is a OBGYN and her brother actually is a lactation M.D. so he was a great resource for this. And the way he described it is, well, first of all, the actual milk is up in the body, like in those ducts up there, like close to the body and then coming down from there he said, it's like crape myrtle.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: It's just it's not like a clean four lane highway. It's like all these interlaced branches of of delicate ducts just coming down. Right. So what happens is it's very easy and they do expand and contract a lot. So it's very easy for one to get just a little bit too expanded and then sort of get caught or hooked.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Oh, or his, he put it to embarrass another one so that it prevents it from emptying. And when that happens, then the milk starts backing up in there. And if you're lucky, you can feel it and you can do compresses and work it out. If you're not lucky or you don't feel for it and you don't find it, it can now start harboring infection, right?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And infection can come from, it's in the air., it's on the puppies toenails. It's everywhere. I mean, it's naturally occurring in the environment that the animal is in. But the point is, the more you can keep the milk flowing through and not have any of those back ups, your, you know, gaming the system in your favor. Right. You're you're lowering the chances.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: It's not the only way that they can get mastitis. It's not a guarantee that she won't. But by keeping that milk flowing, you are improving your chances of avoiding that kind of mastitis. Is that a fair way of describing it?

Magda Chiarella: I think it is. And we should maybe clarify that mastitis can have other underlying reasons, but one of them is blocked milk duct.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right. And we're only addressing that with this and also that mastitis, you know, there's a I think they call it milk stiasus or something in humans where it's actually just, okay, there's a blocked duct and it's inflammation, right? Then it gets blocked. It gets inflamed and then it gets more inflamed because it's blocked. It gets more blocked. More inflamed, and that's a problem.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Then there's actually having an infection.

Magda Chiarella: Mm hmm.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Which is a separate issue. And then it can go septic, it can go into gangrenous, like the tissue can actually die. And that's where you see those really dramatic, you know, bitches losing half a breast, all turning black and everything. So what we're talking about is can we avoid this dramatic insult, you know, where we have this result from a blocked milk duct?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And will lecithin help? Reduce the possibility of that happening? My question is, should I be giving lecithin to my my bitches? I mean, am I missing out on something? And so to back into whether I should be or shouldn't be, what would the function of giving it be? And the function of giving it would be purportedly to thin down the milk, make it less sticky, and make it flow easier so it's less likely to cause a back up, which would cause a blocked duct, which then would be more likely to be like a petri dish for infection.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Is that fair to say? As far as what they say, how they say it works, right?
 
I just want to talk about whether we feel lecithin actually can help prevent mastitis based on the research. And we could actually find a lot of well, we found no human citations, nothing in the human or in dogs, really, other than anecdotal.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: The National Institute of Health, I think does like a yearly survey of lecithin. I did find that and and it's use in this context and they said, no, there's no evidence that it works. It doesn't mean it doesn't, but nobody's proven it. So there's in some no evidence that lecithin actually does have this effect on milk, or at least no, I should say studied in, studies that prove it.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: That doesn't mean it's not true. There's just no studies that prove it, which is a very different thing. And it's one of those things where it seems to make sense, but we really couldn't find any studies on it. 
 
But this is interesting. In the course of looking for studies or cross-referencing all these websites, I did find one breastfeeding advocacy coach that said, you know, it's not lecithin that you need, it's choline.

Magda Chiarella: And that's exactly right, because ...

Jane Messineo Lindquist: What is choline?

Magda Chiarella: Choline is something that is within lecithin. It's one of its components, but lecithin and choline are not exactly the same. Choline, is what you were describing everything you said that lecithin might be doing, that, you know, emulsifying effect of making. Yeah, exactly. Perhaps choline that's one of these components of lecithin. And actually there are studies that show choline specifically choline to be effective for prevent not for reducing incidences of mastitis.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: In cows.

Magda Chiarella: In cows.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And we had to go to the money animals. We had to go to cows. There's nothing in humans, right? Nothing in dogs, right. Anecdotal right. And Magda has an anecdotal that I'll share in a little while, but so choline we did find this one retrospective study that talked about it and they did find that choline reduced, among other things, they were.

Magda Chiarella: Giving dietary choline to cows. And those cows that, you know, upped their, intake of choline had much less often mastitis.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And they did say in the study that they don't know for sure why it works. They know it works. They don't know for sure why.

Magda Chiarella: Well, they had a couple of guesses, the hypothesis. So one of them was that choline is known to bind with cytokines. Cytokines are these messengers of infection. So cytokines.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Inflammation or.

Magda Chiarella: Cytokines kind of tell the body to inflame.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Interesting.

Magda Chiarella: Basically tell cytokines are messengers. So cytokines are these protein signaling proteins. That's what they are and they tell the body there is an infection. You know, in aisle five here there is an infection in the rest ... left breast and the body rushes to create inflammatory response.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Okay. So now just walking it back to remember our description of what we were talking about with how mastitis happens.

Magda Chiarella: You can block the duct by putting pressure, it blows.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Inflammation causes the it can cause embarrassment of one of the other ducts. Right. One can just swell right over and so.

Magda Chiarella: Mechanically.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Mechanically close it.

Magda Chiarella: So that's one of the possible.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Cytokines takes those pro-inflammatory things out.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Exactly.

Magda Chiarella: So those screaming proteins saying inflame, inflame, which is not a good thing for a lactating individual.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Interesting. Okay, so that's one way. And then what what else did they and.

Magda Chiarella: Another way is that basic chemical binding of choline with lipids, lipids are fats. So fats within milk will be transported along smoothly out. Right.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So in other words, in some, reduces inflammation and makes the milk thinner and slippery. Exactly. Yeah, basically. So they don't it hasn't been proven. They don't know for sure that that's where they then test the milk to know if that's but that's their hypothesis and it's a pretty good one. I thought it was interesting that they also use choline for gallbladder disease, because that's something in dogs that sticky, Auggie had that, they can get a sludgy bile duct.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And so I guess it helps thin it out.
 
 I think we just have to talk a little bit about the just in lay terms about the mechanics of of what lecithin and choline more specifically do, which which is that they're what we call emulsifiers. Right. And that means they can bind both to water and to fats.

Magda Chiarella: Well, there are different kinds of choline. Okay. So the body produces phosphatidylcholine, and acetylcholine. And one binds to lipids, fats, and the other one to water soluble is water soluble. So acetylcholine is something that actually affects even brain and some other tissues.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Okay.

Magda Chiarella: While Phosphatidylcholine binds with fats and helps to transport them.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So like when you get your salad dressing and you know you're prepared salad dressing has lecithin in it. Is it having both types of choline that allows it to?

Magda Chiarella: It does. It does. But what we are interested in that PC, phosphatidylcholine, that's the choline that binds to fat. And as a fun, fun fact, it's also what's injected in cosmetic procedures that melts the fat.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. So. So there really could be something to it as far as making the milk thinner, less sticky, right flow easier, right.
 
So, Magda that that brings us to the $20,000 question and the $20,000 question is, should I be giving and recommending that people give lecithin to their lactating bitches.

Magda Chiarella: Lecithin has a potential of being beneficial. However, it has some undesirable side effects.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Oh.

Magda Chiarella: Some severe cramps, digestive issues, nausea, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. So it's not a benign supplement.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: In fact, this unfortunate breeder that lost her bitch that wrote in said she had tried lecithin and it made her bitch throw up. And I think it's worth just mentioning here that especially in the first few days, you can have anorexia in your bitches anyway. I mean, they cannot want to eat. So adding lecithin. Yeah, right. You know.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Well, so what do we do?

Magda Chiarella: We should consider going straight to the source, going to sources of choline.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Okay.

Magda Chiarella: Choline is a natural compound, and there are natural foods that are very high in choline.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right? I mean, is that as good, though, as, you know, getting that 1200 milligrams of lecithin? I mean, can you really get it from food?

Magda Chiarella: In my opinion, it's much better.
 
Choline. in natural form exists in high concentrations in foods that dogs easily absorb like eggs, interesting, liver, beef, fish, everything that dogs readily eat. Choline is very bioavailable from those sources and obviously there is no stomach upset with eating what the stomach is designed to eat.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Okay. So I'm going to kind of like close the circle here a little bit on this particular thing because I, I found the same thing as you, which is that, in fact, and we're going to talk about the numbers - eggs, liver, beef, have has much more potentially benefit in terms of just the amount of choline and the bioavailability of choline.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So why then are women told to take sunflower lecithin? And the answer is what they say is modern lifestyles. I mean, women are afraid of eating fatty foods who were on these this whole low fat thing. They won't eat egg yolks because they're worried about the calorie content and the cholesterol. And I'm just going to throw it out there, unless you have a specific sensitivity to dietary cholesterol, the cholesterol in eggs are not going to raise your cholesterol.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: But the point is there was so much resistance and just unwillingness of, I was going to say breeding females, you know, women of childbearing age to eat a diet that was sufficient in in choline that the medical and national health establishment just sort of threw up its hands and says, here, just take a pill. I mean, please just take a pill.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: But, you know, it's dog breeders. Our dogs aren't worried about their body image, are they?

Magda Chiarella: If I think of an obstetrician telling a lactating mother, please eat some beef liver.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right? Right.

Magda Chiarella: And if I think, you know, as a contrasting to that as me offering beef liver to my girls lactating you know bitches that's a very different response.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: We're going to talk about some different sources.

Magda Chiarella: Well, you mentioned that the whole discussion started with somebody posting online that they are giving 1200 milligrams of lecithin to their Labrador. I believe it was a lab.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right.

Magda Chiarella: So a medium sized dog gets 1200 milligrams of lecithin. So let's back up a little bit. Lecithin has a few components, choline being only 13% of.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Oh interesting.

Magda Chiarella: What lecithin is.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So not not that much in there.

Magda Chiarella: Not that much.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Probably cheap and easy to manufacture, though.

Magda Chiarella: Right? Right. So let's compare it to an egg yolk.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Okay?

Magda Chiarella: An egg yolk has on average 115 to 120 milligrams of choline.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So just to put it in context, 1200 milligrams a day, 13% of that of the lecithin is 100. That would equal 156 milligrams of choline. So you got 156 milligrams of choline versus 115 and one egg yolk. Wow. That brings us right back to mother's pudding, doesn't it?

Magda Chiarella: It sure does.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right. So we are typically feeding at least two egg yolks in our mother’s pudding a day to two hour medium sized batches. Plus she's getting egg yolks.

Magda Chiarella: Right.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So that's a big hit of of truly.

Magda Chiarella: Bioavailable.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Choline. functional functioning.

Magda Chiarella: Choline functional.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Choline. Yeah.

Magda Chiarella: I would like to share my personal experience with that. The only time that I in ten years of breeding, had a case of a blocked milk duct, not mastitis, but you.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Caught it early on.

Magda Chiarella: But it's.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Early.

Magda Chiarella: It was in a mother in a dam who would absolutely refuse any drop of mother's pudding.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Oh, that's so interesting. Study of one, but.

Magda Chiarella: ​Study of one. However, out of.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: A lot of litters, she was the only one.

Magda Chiarella: She was the only one.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So it fits. Yeah.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So I just want to recap in closing because my question here is very specific was A. Should I be giving lecithin to my lactating bitches and B. Should I be recommending that people do it? And I think me personally, we've established that the diet that we give with the amount of egg yolks and mother's pudding and meat and liver and everything, there's no way.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I mean, we are already giving so much choline. It's crazy. Now, as far as recommendations, our first recommendation is if you aren't giving those kinds of food, you know, add a couple egg yolks, you'll be okay.

Magda Chiarella: In the form of mother's pudding or in whatever other form you're comfortable with adding eggs. Yes.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: You’re, if you're not familiar with mother's pudding, we have it on the Puppy Culture website. I mean, on the discussion group, there's a there's a recipe card there. We're not going to go deep into it, but it's a it's a postnatal energy boost food for for dams. But so okay. So if you are feeding a natural raw diet or cooked diet as Magda does, you know, you're good. You're you're getting of it. If you're feeding not that kind of diet, but you add, you know, do some add ons. You're good.

Magda Chiarella: Right.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: If for any reason you're not going to do either one of those two things. I mean, maybe it's a rescue organization. You know, there could be any number of reasons why this could be. I mean. You were

Magda Chiarella: Lecithin ...

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Going through chemotherapy. You weren't you were feeding kibble. And, you know, so we're not judging we're not judgy here. But if you're in that position, definitely adding lecithin, if your bitch tolerates it, well, could help.

Magda Chiarella: It could help. It would probably have those side effects at, so if you could substitute it with an egg, do it.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: We recommend it. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Magda.

Magda Chiarella: Thank you, Jane.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: It was great.

Magda Chiarella: It was.