Is colostrum the same as lactoferrin?
One is a fluid with hundreds of things in it. The other is one protein, purified out.
Short answer
No. Colostrum is the first milk an animal makes after giving birth. Lactoferrin is one of the proteins in it. So a colostrum supplement does contain lactoferrin, but it is a small part of what is in the jar: in cow colostrum, lactoferrin measures 1.5 to 5 mg per mL while immunoglobulin G measures 50 to 100 mg per mL. Nothing in US labeling rules requires a colostrum product to state how much lactoferrin it holds, and most say nothing about it.
No. Colostrum is the first milk an animal produces in the days after giving birth, and lactoferrin is one of the proteins floating in it. The relationship is a jar and one of the things in the jar, so the two words are not swappable, and a product sold as colostrum is not a product sold as lactoferrin.
The confusion is easy to understand, because both get sold on the same shelf with the same immune-sounding copy. The numbers below are the quickest way to separate them.
Does colostrum contain lactoferrin?
Yes, and more of it than ordinary milk does. A 2021 review in Nutrients gathers the measured figures:
- Cow colostrum: lactoferrin 1.5 to 5 mg per mL. In mature cow's milk it drops to 0.02 to 0.35 mg per mL.
- Human colostrum: lactoferrin 5 to 6 mg per mL, falling to about 1 mg per mL in mature breast milk.
So colostrum is a lactoferrin-rich fluid, and that is the half of the answer the marketing leans on.
The other half is what else is in there. The same review puts immunoglobulin G in cow colostrum at 50 to 100 mg per mL. Against lactoferrin's 1.5 to 5, even the closest pairing of those two ranges is a tenfold gap. By weight, cow colostrum is mostly antibody. That is why colostrum labels advertise an IgG percentage and rarely mention lactoferrin at all.
The reason matters, because it tells you what colostrum is for. Calves get no antibodies through the placenta and have to drink them, which is why cow colostrum is loaded with IgG. Human babies get antibodies across the placenta before birth, so human colostrum is built differently: a 2022 review across mammal species found that hoofed animals, which pass on immunity only through their first milk, carry more IgG in colostrum than species like humans and rabbits, where the first milk leans on IgA instead. Cow colostrum is a calf's starter immune system, and lactoferrin is one ingredient in it.
What a colostrum label can leave out
If you want to know how much lactoferrin a colostrum capsule holds, the label is allowed to not tell you.
The FDA's labeling guide covers this in question 33. A maker may list the constituents of a dietary ingredient, indented under that ingredient with their weight per serving. May. Nothing makes them. So a panel reading "Bovine colostrum 1,000 mg" has met the rule, and whether that 1,000 mg carries 5 mg of lactoferrin or 50 is information the maker holds and you do not.
You cannot work it out from the figures above either. Those are concentrations in fluid colostrum, measured per millilitre. Supplement colostrum is dried to a powder, which concentrates everything by an amount that depends on how it was processed. Multiplying one by the other produces a number with no source behind it. Either the label declares lactoferrin in milligrams or you are guessing.
A lactoferrin product has the opposite problem, and it is a smaller one. Its panel has to state the milligrams of lactoferrin, because lactoferrin is the dietary ingredient rather than a constituent of one. What that panel still will not tell you is the iron load, covered on apolactoferrin, or whether a proprietary blend is hiding the split. The guide to lactoferrin supplement labels walks the rest of the panel.
Somebody did test them against each other
In 2024, a group in Rome put three things head to head: lactoferrin purified from cow's milk, lactoferrin purified from cow colostrum, and whole cow colostrum. They measured how well each stopped bacteria growing, how well each blocked bacteria invading and surviving inside cells, and what each did to IL-6, a signal cells release when inflamed.
Lactoferrin purified from milk won on every measure. Purified colostrum lactoferrin came second. Whole colostrum came last, and barely moved IL-6 where milk lactoferrin brought it down to the level of uninfected cells. The authors' own conclusion is that lactoferrin works best on its own and sourced from milk rather than colostrum.
Read the limits before you read that as a verdict. This was cell culture and bacteria in dishes, so nobody swallowed anything and no symptom was measured. More importantly, the abstract does not say whether the three preparations were matched for lactoferrin content. If the whole colostrum arm held less lactoferrin by weight, which the concentration figures above make likely, then the loss is arithmetic rather than a finding about colostrum. The comparison is still worth knowing about. What it does not show is that a milligram of lactoferrin inside colostrum does less than a milligram of lactoferrin on its own.
The two products, side by side
| A colostrum supplement | A lactoferrin supplement | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Dried first milk, whole | One protein, separated out |
| Main component by weight | Immunoglobulin G, 50 to 100 mg/mL in the fluid it came from | Lactoferrin |
| Lactoferrin content | Present, 1.5 to 5 mg/mL in the fluid it came from, rarely declared | Stated on the panel in milligrams |
| Usually sourced from | Cows, within days of calving | Cow's milk, or yeast engineered to make the human sequence |
| Declares milk as an allergen | Yes | Yes, when it is the bovine kind |
Can you take both?
Plenty of people ask, and no trial has tested the combination. Not one of the dose studies on how much lactoferrin per day gave colostrum alongside it, and the colostrum trials did not add purified lactoferrin.
What can be said is narrower. Taking both means taking lactoferrin twice, once purified and once inside the colostrum, in an amount the colostrum label probably does not state. If you are counting milligrams for a reason, that puts your real total out of reach. Both are dairy, so a milk protein allergy rules out the pair rather than one of them.
And if the reason you are comparing these is a gut symptom, a low iron result or a run of infections, the choice between two bottles sits downstream of a question no label can answer. The lab figures on this page tell you what is in each product. They do not tell you that either one will help you.
Where this comes from
- Sangild PT, Vonderohe C, Melendez Hebib V, Burrin DG. Potential Benefits of Bovine Colostrum in Pediatric Nutrition and Health. Nutrients 2021;13(8):2551 — review: lactoferrin measures 1.5 to 5 mg/mL in cow colostrum and 0.02 to 0.35 mg/mL in mature cow's milk; 5 to 6 mg/mL in human colostrum falling to 1 mg/mL in mature human milk; immunoglobulin G measures 50 to 100 mg/mL in cow colostrum; human and cow lactoferrin share 69% of their amino acid sequence. The University of Copenhagen holds a patent on bovine colostrum for pediatric patients and the first author is named as its inventor, which the paper discloses
- Bigler NA, Bruckmaier RM, Gross JJ. Implications of placentation type on species-specific colostrum properties in mammals. J Anim Sci 2022;100(12):skac287 — review across mammal species: hoofed animals, which transfer immunity only after birth, have higher immunoglobulin G in colostrum than species such as humans and rabbits that transfer it in the womb, where colostral IgA does more of the local gut work
- Rosa L, et al. Antibacterial, anti-invasive, and anti-inflammatory activity of bovine lactoferrin extracted from milk or colostrum versus whole colostrum. Biochem Cell Biol 2024;102(4):331-341 — laboratory comparison, no people: purified lactoferrin from cow's milk outperformed purified lactoferrin from colostrum and whole colostrum against bacteria and on cell IL-6 levels. The abstract does not state whether the three preparations held matching amounts of lactoferrin
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter IV. Nutrition Labeling — question 33: a maker may list the constituents of a dietary ingredient indented underneath it with their weights per serving. The word is may, not must, so a colostrum panel can stay silent on lactoferrin
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Food Allergies — milk is one of nine major food allergens and allergen labeling covers dietary supplements, so both colostrum and bovine lactoferrin have to declare milk
This page is general information, not medical advice, and not a recommendation to take anything. It cannot interpret your test result. Lactoferrin supplements are made from cow's milk and are unsuitable if you have a milk protein allergy. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, giving anything to an infant, or being treated for a health condition, talk to a doctor or pharmacist first.