Best way to feed a baby goat
The Best & Easiest Method of Bottle Feeding Goats
Take the guesswork out of bottle feeding baby goats by knowing how much milk newborn kids need, how often to schedule feedings, and how long to bottle feed before weaning. Get some tips to help you troubleshoot why your baby goat isn't taking the bottle. Plus a bonus feeding schedule chart.
If you are looking for information about how to milk a goat or about milk breeds like Nigerian Dwarf, Nubian, and Lamancha, check out my post on how to milk a goat.
Why I Bottle Feed Baby Goats
We have enjoyed raising goats on our homestead for years. We prefer our goat kids to be dam-raised. However, there are two reasons why we have bottle-fed them instead.
First, in emergencies. Like when our doe passed away unexpectedly from hypocalcemia leaving us with two young goat kids that needed to be bottle-fed.
Some does will reject their kids, especially if there are multiples. If this happens, it is necessary to step in and bottle feed the newborns.
Other times, I have chosen to train a baby goat to a bottle.
For instance, if I have bucklings that I am planning to sell, I put them on the bottle so that they can be away from their mother.
Once, we had a doe that got a lopsided udder because her kid would only drink from one side. Even with me milking the other side morning and night, I wasn't sure I could prevent damage to her udder so we pulled off the kid and bottle-fed it.
Is Dam Raising Better
In my research, I did not find a significant difference in the health of adult goats that were dam-raised versus bottle-fed babies. Whichever you choose, keep these important things in mind.
Dam-raising kids is much easier on the goat handler because the doe does all the work.
In our experience, a doe will usually do a fine job if you allow her to raise her kids.
When dam-raising, the kids will naturally get colostrum from the mother goat's milk. The colostrum supplies antibodies to give the kid vital immune protection in the first months of its life.
If you are bottle-feeding newborns, consider a colostrum replacer. (Cow's milk can be used as a substitute if the cow has just calved.)
However, there can be a drawback to dam-raised kids too. They can become wild because they are not used to human interaction. It is important to be intentional to handle dam-raised kids often to keep them friendly and used to humans.
How Many Ounces of Milk Should a Baby Goat Drink
It is recommended that newborn (full-sized goat breed) kids 1 to 2 weeks of age should have at least 16 oz of milk each day. So you would give them 4 to 6 oz in a bottle four or five times a day.
If you are feeding colostrum, newborn kids need about 10% of their body weight in the first 24 hours.
These amounts vary depending on the size of the baby goat. If you are using a milk replacer, it is a good idea to follow the directions that come with it.
Keeping your goat kids on a feeding schedule will help prevent overfeeding them. Eating too much can cause them to have serious digestive issues like bloat and diarrhea.
If you are looking for a feeding schedule, Purina has a helpful bottle-feeding kid goats chart on their website.
How Long Do You Bottle Feed A Goat
Baby goats can be weaned as early as one month old, but it is better to wait a few weeks more.
Even though they don't really need water and hay while bottle feeding, it is a good idea to put some in their stall. If they have access to it they will practice and start to learn how to eat and drink it.
You will know your kid is ready to be weaned when it can eat hay, drink water, and weighs more than twice its birth weight.
How to Bottle Feed Baby Goats
To feed a baby goat with a bottle, take the kid in your lap.
Cradle the kid and gently hold its face up. With the bottle at a steep angle, place the nipple in its mouth.
Sometimes a goat kid will take to the bottle right away. It's always nice when you get an easy one.
Other times, it will take a lot of time and persistence to train them to take a bottle. Some kids will grit their teeth and won't open their mouth for you. Have patience and keep trying.
The baby goat may start chewing on the nipple instead of sucking. If they are opening their mouth and swallowing the milk, at least they are getting some nourishment. Keep doing that and eventually, they will learn to suck instead of chew.
Tips For What to Do If Your Baby Goat Won't Take a Bottle
- Use warm milk – Goat's milk is warm when coming from the mama's udder. Warm the milk in the bottle and test the temperature just like you would for a human baby's bottle by shaking some onto your arm. It should neither feel hot nor cold, but body temperature.
If the kid is really fighting you, check to see if the milk has cooled off a lot. - Try different nipples – If they are completely rejecting one nipple try another one. Pritchard nipples are great and can be used with most plastic bottles. You can also try regular baby bottles or rubber nipples that go on glass jars.
- Try a different position – Some bottle babies will do better feeding on your lap and some will do better standing up. Kids that have been dam-raised for any length of time have always eaten standing up. Try adjusting the feeding position to see if that solves the problem.
- Feed smaller amounts more often – Remember that kids are used to grazing on their mom all day instead of drinking a few large servings. Start with less milk and feed them more often.
- Be patient and calm – Bottle feeding baby goats can be frustrating when you are trying to transition to a bottle. You know how important it is for them to eat, but they aren't cooperating.
Getting frustrated, upset, or hurried may stress or scare the kid while being calm and patient will help the goat to learn that bottle feeding is okay.
It's always best to keep in mind the health of the kid and try to find the bottle-feeding time an enjoyable experience (as much as is possible!).
- How to Milk a Goat
- Breeding Animals 101: A Resource for the Homesteader
- Heritage Breeds For The Homestead
- The “Scoop” On Feeding Our Farm
- Raising Meat On the Homestead (Answers to Frequently Asked Questions)
- Goats and Goat Care
Bottle Feeding Baby Goats - Backyard Goats
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Once your kids arrive, you will need to decide if they will be dam-raised or if you will be bottle-feeding baby goats. There are reasons you might choose to bottle feed from promoting friendliness to managing the dam’s udder. Or you may be forced to bottle-feed because for one reason or another the dam can’t or won’t let the kids nurse or a kid is too weak or compromised to nurse.
Whatever the reason, if you are planning on bottle-feeding, you likely have many questions including:
- What kind of milk to feed baby goats?
- How to get a baby goat to bottle feed?
- How much milk to feed a baby goat?
- How long to bottle feed a baby goat?
What Kind of Milk to Feed Baby Goats:
When bottle-feeding baby goats, the very first milk they must receive is colostrum. Ideally, the dam will be producing enough colostrum that you can express her own into a bottle and immediately feed it to the kids. But if her fresh colostrum is not available for some reason, your other choices are to feed fresh colostrum from another doe that has kidded at the same time, feed frozen colostrum that you saved from a previous kidding, or feed kid colostrum replacer. For this last choice, it is important to be sure it’s kid colostrum replacer and not calf or lamb replacer as the nutrient needs are different for different species.
It is also important to be sure it’s colostrum replacer and not milk replacer. Newborn kids absolutely must get colostrum in the first 24-48 hours of life or their chances of survival are low. Do not substitute any type of homemade replacer at this stage and don’t try to get by with regular whole milk.
Once you get the newborn kid through the first 24-48 hours, then you can switch to milk. Ideally, you will have fresh goat milk available as this is best. Many goat owners who choose to bottle-feed will milk the dam and then immediately transfer the milk to bottles and feed it to the babies. Other goat owners prefer to heat-treat the milk before bottle-feeding baby goats in order to eliminate the risk of potentially passing CAE or other diseases from the dam to the baby. I, myself, do my CAE tests while my does are pregnant so that I know they are negative and then I feed the mother’s milk to the babies raw, which feels more natural to me and I believe it contains more of the beneficial antibodies than heat-treated milk does.
But if you do choose to heat-treat, remember that colostrum cannot actually be pasteurized because it will curdle, so it must just be gently heated to 135 degrees F and held at that temperature for one hour. Regular milk can be pasteurized at 161 degrees F for 30 seconds.
If you don’t have fresh goat milk for bottle-feeding baby goats, then your choices are goat milk replacer or another species of milk. I have seen goat milk replacer recipes but the advice I get from my veterinarian and goat mentors is that whole cow milk from the grocery store is more adequate and appropriate in the event that I don’t have, or don’t want to use, powdered replacers.
How to Get a Baby Goat to Take a Bottle:If your newborn is healthy enough to have a strong sucking reflex, getting it to take a bottle will be relatively simple. I like to use the little red “Pritchard” nipples for newborns because they are smaller and easier for them to suck. Don’t forget to snip the tip of the nipple as it doesn’t come with a hole in it! Hold the bottle at an angle so that the milk is flowing downward, open the baby’s mouth with your fingers, and stick the nipple inside.
I find it helpful to put gentle pressure on the top and bottom of the muzzle to help the baby hold the bottle in its mouth at first. A strong kid will generally be hungry and start sucking enthusiastically.
If the baby is too weak to suck, you may need to feed a few drops at a time through a medicine dropper (be careful not to put too much on its tongue or in the side of its cheek at once or it could go down the wrong tube and into the lungs). Or you may need to tube-feed the baby. I’ve also had babies that just needed to wake up a bit in order to get the sucking response going, and I find that using a supplement like “Nutri-Drench” or some Caro syrup or even coffee, rubbed on their gums, is often enough to give them a little energy boost and get them eating.
How Much to Feed a Baby Goat:How much your babies will need depends on whether they are full-sized breeds or miniature breeds, and also on how old they are.
In general, try to feed three to four ounces per five pounds of weight per feeding. At first, you may be feeding every three to four hours, and then after a few days, you’ll spread this out to four feedings a day. You can drop that back to two or three feedings a day at about three weeks of age, and then down to twice a day by six to eight weeks. For the last month, you can feed once a day as they should be eating some hay and grain by then, if not sooner.
Here are two useful charts to use as a starting point. You may need to modify the schedule and number of feedings per day based on your own schedule and time constraints, but this is a good place to begin:
Bottle-Feeding Nubian Goats (or other full-sized breeds):| Age | Ounces per Feeding | Frequency |
| 0-2 Days | 3-6 ounces | Every 3-4 hours |
| 3 Days to 3 Weeks | 6-10 ounces | Four times a day |
| 3 to 6 Weeks | 12-16 ounces | Three times a day |
| 6 to 10 weeks | 16 ounces | Twice a day |
| 10 to 12 weeks | 16 ounces | Once a day |
| Age | Ounces per Feeding | Frequency |
| 0-2 Days | 2-4 ounces | Every 3-4 hours |
| 3 Days to 3 Weeks | 6-8 ounces | Four times a day |
| 3 to 8 Weeks | 12 ounces | Twice a day |
| 8-12 weeks | 12 ounces | Once a day |
As a general rule of thumb, when I’ve decided on bottle-feeding baby goats, I try to feed doelings for at least three months and bucklings or wethers for at least two months.
Sometimes I go longer if I have extra milk, but this seems to get them off to a good start and by two to three months they are eating grass, hay, and even some grain, so their need for milk is greatly reduced.
Bottle-feeding baby goats is a time commitment, but it’s also a fun way to bond with your babies and make them oh so friendly!
References
https://www.caprinesupply.com/raising-kids-on-pasteurized-milk
How to feed kids from the first days of life: useful tips and recommendations
The key to healthy development and growth of newborn kids is proper and systematic nutrition. In the first days of life, the gastrointestinal tract in animals is quite vulnerable. Therefore, the livestock breeder faces an important task: to prepare the goat for the first feeding and carefully work out the daily diet. With a competent approach to the nutrition system, in the future the animal will please with good characteristics and, of course, excellent productivity indicators.
Preparation phase and fast feeding
The first feeding is recommended already 30 minutes after the baby goats are born. This timely manipulation will increase the chance of forming a stable immune system.
It is very important to follow a few steps before feeding newborn animals:
- Cut the umbilical cord with sterilized scissors.
- Wipe the goatling dry with a clean cloth and towel, carefully removing mucus from the nose and mouth. This stage is very important, because the remaining fragments of mucus can provoke the development of lung disease.
- Keep the kids warm by covering them with a blanket.
- Wash the mother's udder. Then milk the first colostrum and discard it. The first streams of colostrum contain a lot of bacteria, so you can feed babies only the second portion.
After completing all the steps, you can start feeding with maternal colostrum, which contains a complete list of essential vitamins and minerals.
Once in the gastrointestinal tract, colostrum washes out the original stool and has a general strengthening effect on the body.
Note: in the first hours of life, kids feel an acute shortage of antibodies, so it is very important to release useful maternal antibodies into the blood as soon as possible, as well as start the stomach.
Feeding in the first months of life
Usually, newborn kids are bred to achieve one of the following goals:
- to increase the population;
- get more milk.
Based on the tasks set by the livestock breeder, there are three main ways of feeding:
- Under the uterus. This method is used in cases where there is no goal to obtain high milk production. Kids grow near their mother for three to four months, feeding exclusively on milk from the mother's udder.
- Artificial. This method is applicable when a farmer raises goats in order to obtain large milk yields. This method is quite energy-intensive and complex, since it requires strict adherence to the feeding scheme.
- Combined. This method includes both methods described above.
Each of these methods has both advantages and disadvantages.
With artificial feeding, early weaning from the mother's udder is often practiced. This is due to the fact that the feeding process negatively affects the performance of an adult goat. In addition, kids that are active during feeding can damage the nipples, which will take a lot of time and money to treat.
Kids that grow up near their mother are difficult to separate from the goat afterwards. Therefore, it is recommended to accustom young animals to self-feeding from small containers as soon as possible.
Already at the time of the first feeding with colostrum, kids can be accustomed to eating food from a small bucket according to the following algorithm:
- Pour milk into a container.
- Rest the muzzle against the bucket so that the animal can sniff out the food source.
- Place a container next to the kid to start lapping up the milk.
If the animal does not start eating at this stage, you can dip your finger in milk and let the newborn lick it. Usually, after such manipulation, the feeding process is quick and easy.
Note: It is preferable to feed goats with whole milk. If this is not possible, pasteurized milk can be included in the diet. When feeding with a whole milk substitute, after reaching two weeks of age, it is recommended to introduce complementary foods: semolina or oatmeal.
Feeding scheme
Maternal colostrum contains an increased content of antibodies and trace elements within three days from the moment of birth. After this period, the composition of the mixture is similar to regular milk. If the goat gives a lot of colostrum, then the excess product can be frozen to feed the kids with it for some more time.
When feeding little kids, it is important to follow not only the schedule, but also the feeding pattern. On the first day of life, the daily portion with five meals a day is 500 ml of milk.
This dose should be increased daily by 20 ml. Thus, on the fifth day, the portion will increase to 900 ml. And on the ninth day of life, the daily norm will be 1.5 liters.
On the tenth day, a transition to four meals a day is recommended. As well as the introduction of liquid complementary foods, which in total does not exceed 200 ml. At the same time, the portion of milk remains the same. Upon reaching three weeks of age, the following products can be included in the diet: cake, coarse oats, bran. At the beginning of the third month of life, complementary foods with finely chopped root crops are allowed. At the same time, milk is gradually removed from the diet.
With any method of feeding the first weeks of life, the main product of the goat's diet is milk. With artificial feeding, the main task of the breeder is to ensure feeding according to the schedule with a gradual increase in the portion of milk and the phased introduction of complementary foods.
Feeding newborn kids - AgroXXI
How to feed a kid from the first days to 7-8 months of age (+ video)
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First feeding - benefits of colostrum
Whichever way you choose to rear your goat, it is important that the time between birth and first feeding with colostrum is as short as possible.
The maximum interval is 1 hour.
The fact is that kids are born with a very weak immune system and are prone to many infectious diseases. They do not yet have the necessary antibodies in their blood. It is with colostrum that a newborn receives not only the first portion of tasty and nutritious food, but also maternal antibodies to strengthen immunity.
The second reason why you can’t do without colostrum is the “launch” of the digestive system. If the kid quickly receives colostrum, then the first to colonize his stomach and intestines are not harmful, but beneficial lactic acid bacteria, which not only prevent pathogens from multiplying, but also destroy them. In addition, they contribute to the release of original feces and good digestion.
Feeding scheme for kids under the uterus
This method is practiced only for goats with low milk production. Kids are with queens up to 3-4 months of age, after which they are transferred to a milk replacer and other food.
When rearing a goat kid on suction, you should make sure that the goat's udder is healthy and clean, and the milk is well milked. In goats, sometimes plugs form in the nipples, which prevent the goats from sucking the uterus normally. Weak kids cannot drink milk at all if a cork has formed, so the first trickle before feeding the kid should definitely be milked.
The best and tender hay and concentrates should be given to kids from 3 days of age.
In the first 5 days, the baby should receive milk 3-4 times a day in a volume of up to 1.5 liters. Remember that the substitute should be introduced into the diet gradually, until the mother's milk is completely replaced by it.
From the age of 20 days or from the age of one month, the kids must be given mineral supplements: 5 grams of salt, 5-7 grams of bone meal or crushed chalk per head per day. By 2-3 months, the daily dacha of bone meal or chalk is increased to 10 grams.
At the age of 3 months, kids should be gradually weaned from the queens - over a 7-10-day period, alternating days of feeding with mother's milk and days on concentrate.
Feeding schedule for kids without queen
Cultivation with pasteurized milk
An alternative to artificial milk replacer is natural pasteurized goat's milk. Pasteurization is necessary to kill the bacteria and make the milk fit for consumption some time after the goat has been milked.
There are two methods of pasteurization - fast and slow. When fast, the milk is heated to +74°C for 30 seconds. With slow, the temperature is lower, but the holding time is longer - it is necessary to heat the milk to + 64 ° C and hold for 30 minutes. Today, for these purposes, you can use household pasteurizers or a regular stove and a thermometer.
After processing, quickly cool the milk in a sterile container. Remember that everything related to milk must be sterilized in order to avoid re-contamination.
If you are planning to heat colostrum, the technology is slightly different here.
It must be heated to +56°C and held for 60 minutes. This treatment simultaneously destroys bacteria and preserves the antibodies necessary for the kid.
When growing without a queen, special bottles or cups are used to water the kids. Milk containers must be clean. But it should be remembered that the growing kids begin to butt heads and can accidentally hit the person who feeds them from the bottle. In addition, feeding from a bottle with a nipple is a rather slow way to feed kids.
Pot feeding
You can teach kids to drink on their own from their very birth. Despite the apparent unusualness of the method, the kids willingly agree to drink from the pot and drink from it with great pleasure, because here they have the opportunity to immediately drink a lot.
You can accustom a kid to a pot or bowl already with the first portion of colostrum. To encourage a kid to drink, you need to heat it 1-2 degrees above normal temperature (+39°C).
To make the goat drink for the first time, dip its muzzle into the pan for a second. Usually this is enough for the baby to figure out what to do next.
Small cups can be used to water the little kids first, and then they can be replaced with pots. Cups and pots are much easier to keep clean than bottles, and you don't have to incur the extra expense of buying teats and bottles. There is, however, one significant drawback - the kids sometimes put their feet in the pan and spill all the contents.
Kids diet
Until the age of one month, the kids need to be fed four times a day (every 4-5 hours), the first time at 6 am, the last at 21 pm.
From the age of 10, a small amount of good hay or brooms is placed in the feeders and they begin to give 4-6 grams of salt per day.
From the age of 3 weeks, goats are fed concentrates: bran, rolled oats, crushed cake (preferably a mixture of them), adding to the concentrates 8-10 grams of crushed chalk or bone meal per head per day.
