should i or should i not bottle feed my baby goats?
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Question by anna w: should i or should i not bottle feed my baby goats?
i have la mancha dairy goats that will kid in may.
i live to do bottle feeding.
and i wanted to know if i should bottle feed or not.
my goats ARE CAE neg. i don’t need to know how to bottle feed just that if it is a good idea or not.
thanks
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2 Responses to should i or should i not bottle feed my baby goats?
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it is totally a personal decision. I choose to so i can control how much milk each kid gets. and so they will be friendly, they are easier to sell if bottle fed too.
you can e-mail me at barehnh@aol.com with any other questions and we can get into detail about bottle feeding.
Is the doe friendly? And are you sure they are neg?
bryanabare
August 12, 2012 at 4:03 pm
The main decisions to bottle feed or not is to prevent the spread of CAE, whether you intend to use your goat milk, and how you plan on socializing your kids.
I have positive does in my herd so I treat my entire herd as CAE positive but asymptomatic. My kids are always bottle fed for CAE prevention (pastuerized milk and colostrum replacer only). If your does have been recently tested (within the last 4-6 months) and are still negative, it should be safe for the kids to nurse. But please keep in mind that these tests can sometimes provide false negatives, and goats that test negative may become positive at some point. There is an ongoing debate about CAE and research on it.
However, if you intend to use your does for milk, you probably want to pull the kids. A nursing doe is more likely to fight or kick you if you try to milk her, and the kids can get smart to your milking schedule and drain mom dry before you get so much as a drop. You need to decide if you want nursing kids OR a milker – having both is not always an option.
Bottle feeding helps socialize the kids to humans and you end up with much calmer, friendlier animals for it. Bottle babies are also more valuable at sale time.
From my own experience (and especially from a sale point), bottle feeding has always been the way to go for us.
stonefieldhill
August 12, 2012 at 4:50 pm