I am hearing mixed reviews on how long to bottle feed baby goats. So, I am asking for more mixed reviews.............. there is so much knowledge here, I would like to hear the imput.
Well, this was my first year at feeding bottle babies, but I had so many of them I think I learned a lot. I raise Boer goats, and had 3 right off the bat in January, and just had 2 more last week. I fed the first group bottles until they were 3 months old. They were on baby bottles for the first couple weeks til they got bigger then I got one of those buckets with the nipples in them, then I could feed all three at the same time! Life got way easier then.
The ones I have now are too small to use the bucket yet so I am still having to do the bottles. I do think some people wean them off the bottles earlier than 3 months but I wanted them to be really eating Boer goat developer and hay well before I took the milk away from them.
I appreciate you input. Always nice to hear what others do. We are not 100% on how old they are, but they are not to happy about 2 meals a day.
They are starting to eat feed and have been eating hay sparsley. But, they are also learning that goat food isnt all that bad.
I bottle feed for 3 mos, 3x a day for the 1st 2 mos, then 2x a day for 2 wks and 1x a day for 2 wks.
We bottle feed all our kids. Right now I have extra milk and so I have one 3.5 mo. old kid still getting 1 a day....I figure if I'm going down there anyway to feed others, why not let her have one too.