This is sounds easy enough, right? Put the bottle in the babies mouth and it will suck. Not so fast, sometimes that's easier said than done. Baby Goats are born ready to nurse their dam. A bottle doesn’t look like Mom, smell like Mom and the teat is weird. Just ask your baby goat!
You will have to hold the bottle in their mouth and squeeze or drop colostrum/milk in their mouth. Rarely do they just latch on.
Bottle Feeding Tips:
•First thing, first..... Is the baby goat temperature within normal range?
•Make sure the baby is hungry and will suckle your finger prior to offering a bottle.
•Try an assortment of nipples if needed, human bottle/nipples and Pritchard Livestock nipples
•Is the bottle of Colostrum/Milk warm enough? A goats body temperature is 101 to 103 degrees.
•Cover the baby’s eyes with a dish towel.
•Have a lot of patience.
•Use a syringe to drop colostrum into the babies mouth or tube feed if needed.
If Bottle Feeding: Don’t forget to increase the amount of milk you feed the baby goat as it gains weight.
**Weigh your bottle babies daily!
**Our Boer / Meat goats often quickly need more than the feeding charts. They gain .5 to 1 pound a day and they have to eat to support the weight gain.
Bottle feeding is a subject that I have a lot of personal experience with. Pictured is our F7 Mini Nubian baby goat, Charlotte. I went outside at 5 am to do a "Labor Check" and heard the high pitched scream of a baby goat. It was this darling, with no Mom in sight, alone in a shelter, screaming from hunger. Turns out her first time Mom had a touch of a congested udder and was very sore. She would not let her nurse. By the time, Penelope felt better Charlotte was a bottle baby and wouldn't nurse. I posted a video below as she demonstrated some of the things I talk about in this article. She is now a healthy 8 month old teenage, goat girl. Don't give up, Charlotte and I didn't!