Bottle Feeding Baby Goats

Plan on at least eight weeks of using a bottle.

Bottle feeding baby goats. Bottle feeding is what you will have to do. If you have a goat in milk even if it is not the mother of the kid you are raising start there. Hands down a pritchard teat works best for. We always use raw goats milk with our bottle babies.

When bottle feeding baby goats it is so important to keep everything clean. Since our herd has tested cae free for years we no longer heat treat the colostrum or pasteurize the milk that is fed to the babies but we continue to bottle raise because of all the other benefits. We are lucky enough to be able to get the milk from our own. A general rule of thumb is if a kid lets go of the nipple offer the bottle one more time.

This requires bottle raising all the baby goats on heat treated colostrum and pasteurized milk. If your mother goat is calm and gentle and you plan on spending a lot of time with them that baby goat will most likely be just as sweet calm and well adjusted as a bottle baby. Take the gallon of milk and pour out about 1 3 and set it aside pour in the 1 can of evaporated milk and the 1 cup of buttermilk into the gallon then pour to the remaining milk that. For the first two to four weeks we give bottles at about 7 a m noon 5 p m and 10 p m.

Mix gently each time before making up a bottle. A bottle fed baby that stops sucking from the bottle and isn t interested anymore has been fed too much and the amount should be reduced by 1 2 ounces at the next feeding. Baby goats usually don t have to be bottle fed. Goats milk is obviously the best choice to bottle feed if you have it.

If you do not we recommend whole cow s milk. Okay so feeding a baby goat is absolutely adorable but this is not why you should ever choose to. 10 important points you need to consider 1. If it s store bought just be sure it is whole milk.

As the acting parent of a baby goat it is your responsibility to stop feeding them before they get full. Bottle feeding baby goats supplies. Some people try to get kids down to only two bottles as soon as possible but in my experience baby goats are more likely to get diarrhea when given too much milk at a single feeding. Cleanliness is so important.

Milk replacer is. This can come from either your own farm if you have a milk cow or just from the grocery story. If you want to try bottle feeding i have always found it to be a fun and rewarding experience. Sometimes though a mother goat will reject a kid for reasons that only mother nature understands.