Traditional Consumes of Squab Meat in Bangladesh

Cantonment Public College, Saidpur Cantonment — 5311, Nilphamari, Bangladesh

*Corresponding Author: Ashraful Kabir, Cantonment Public College, Saidpur Cantonment — 5311, Nilphamari, Bangladesh; Email: [email protected]

Received Date: May 21, 2024

Publication Date: June 10, 2024

Citation: Kabir A. (2024). Traditional Consumes of Squab Meat in Bangladesh. Mathews J Vet Sci. 8(3):46.

Copyright: Kabir A. © (2024)

ABSTRACT

Since Bangladesh is the land of enough crop fields, so local pigeons are available in all places. In villages, most houses would be focused with free-ranged local pigeons. These pigeons need not extra care or food. They easily nourished by leftover foods and less care by the owners. Squab meat is delicious and excellent for human health especially increasing blood components within the human body. Some selected pigeon markets of the north-south and central regions of Bangladesh (Plate 1) found moderate number of squab of pigeons. Due to less care, most squabs were found diseased especially pox and malnutrition. Due to physicians’ prescription, patients prefer squabs within 300-500 g weight with 250-300 taka per pair.

Keywords: Squab, food value, medicinal value, traditional meat, consumption, morphometrics, Bangladesh

INTRODUCTION

Mankind has practiced pigeon keeping for about 10,000 years ago (Levi, 1977) [1]. Pigeons were domesticated first around 4500 BC by the Mediterranean Sea (Gifford, 1941; Parvez et al., 2016) [2,3]. The wealth and huge areas with crop fields of Bangladesh premises for the rearing of pigeons (Bhowmik et al., 2014; Asaduzzaman et al., 2009) [4,5]. Pigeons/jalali pigeons (Columba livia) are found in each town and city around the globe (Marques et al., 2007; Parvez et al., 2016) [3,6]. Pigeons are reducing in Bangladesh due to unrestricted killing, violation of bird killing law, destroy their nests, modern construction, mechanical harvesting, urbanization, reduces of crop lands and hostile climate warming issue (Hossain et al., 2020; Bhowmik et al., 2014) [4,7]. Recent survey conducted a fair demand of squabs in large cities like Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore. Squab raising also has tremendous export item to Dubai, Singapore, Thailand, and Australia. Pigeon is a traditional part of middle eastern diet. In China, pigeon meat is a popular restaurant dishes and good demand from Jewish community clubs all over the world. The fertility and hatchability rate of pigeons are 90% and 85% (Praharee, 2023) [8]. Semi-intensive system is mostly observed for rearing pigeons in Bangladesh (Kabir, 2013) [9]. In fact, pigeons are kept for meat production, ornaments, sports, and experimental issue (Rahman and Khatun, 1999) [10]. Pigeons were popular in Romans, France, and England as a means of livelihood to produce squab (Goodwin, 1967) [11]. Among the farmers there were 50% gola, 37.5% giribaz, 5% Lahore pigeon, 5% satinette, and 5% fantail breed of pigeons (Islam, 2010) [12]. The objective of this study is to observe the visual rate of consuming squab as meat in some markets of Bangladesh.

Classification

Phylum:                  Chordata

Subphylum:                           Vertebrata

Class:                                      Aves

Order:                                     Columbiformes

Family:                    Columbidae

Genus:                    Columba

Species:                  livia

Subspecies:                            domestica

Trinomial name:    C. l. domestica, Gmelin 1789

SURVEYED AREAS

Kushtia, Kumarkhali, Bheramara, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Saidpur, Dinajpur, and Dhaka was the targeted places of observing the availability of squab of pigeon. All markets were shown few squabs of pigeons than the fancy breeds. The sellers said that few people buy these pigeons after physicians’ prescription for increasing their blood component. At the time of buying squab, they observe only the healthy birds. Maximum 500 g squab can be found but 300 g birds were common. After dressing, squabs can be lost 100-150 g waste. Visual observation of those squabs and questionnaires to the sellers and buyers were the procedures.

NUTRIENTS IN SQUAB MEAT

Squab meat is very lean, digestible, rich in proteins, minerals and vitamins. It is also tasty, delicate and fancy meat as well (Aliza, 2005; Jane, 2005; Richard, 2006; Morgan, 2006) [-16]. This squab meat is considered as white meat, so this is safe for human consumption (Praharee, 2023) [8].

MEDICINAL PROPERTIES OF SQUAB MEAT

Chinese people consider the meat of pigeons with medicinal properties (Hsiung et al., 2005) [17]. Chinese medicine also believes that pigeon meat has the effects of nourishing the liver and strengthening the functions of kidney and blood. The earliest dietary therapy method can be traced back to the ‘Tang Dynasty’s Dietary Therapeutic Materia Medica’, there has been quoted that one pigeon wins nine chickens. The protein content of this meat as high as 22-24% and fat is only 1%, so it is especially suitable for middle-aged and elderly people. In addition, this is good in the case of obesity, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and diabetic patients. It has a good blood-enriching effect and can correct the anemia. The liver of pigeon contains choline to prevent atherosclerosis. White portions in the bones of this bird increase the elasticity of our skin. It also has a strong anti-aging factor and is important for improving thyroid functions of humans (Praharee, 2023) [8].

BODY MORPHOMETRICS

Jalali pigeon (Columba livia) maybe selected at 15-day of age for their body weight (Bhowmik et al., 2014) [4]. The gross weight and meat weight was found 1:0.55 in an adult rock-pigeon/jalali pigeon (Kabir, 2011) [18]. Live weight of jalali (Columba livia) and giribaz pigeon (Columba livia domestica) at 20, 25, 30 days of age were 181.30, 217.10, 237.20 g and 155.00, 214.00, 244.70 g, respectively (Islam, 2010) [12]. A study suggested that 60 giribaz pigeons (25-35 days) after slaughtering its dressing with total meat percentage were 53.88 and 18.97 (Hasan et al., 2016) [19]. Growth of pectoral muscle (flying muscle) appeared to be very fast growing in early life of flying squab (Hasan et al., 2016) [19]. Live weight of gola male and female pigeon were 304.10 and 257.50 g (Azad, 2009) [20]. The body weight of pigeon varies according to the breed, nutrition, and overall management (Bhowmik et al., 2014) [4].

Plate 1: Squab of local pigeons in ‘Kushtia Rajar Hat’ of Bangladesh

CONCLUSIONS

It is possible to improve the jalali pigeons (Columba livia) and local pigeons (Columba livia domestica) through selection and other relevant breeding strategies for human consumption. In addition, we could replace these pigeons with king pigeons that are completely standard as sufficient meat. In Bangladesh, king pigeons are available but most pigeon keepers rear it as a fancy pigeon (Kabir, 2020) [21]. Squab of local pigeons is mostly affected by pox (Plate 1) or other diseases, so people cannot like to take it as meat. In this case, king pigeons could be an excellent alternative, and we have huge chickens too in all markets.

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