I am a die hard "dam-raiser". For one thing, I can't stand the clingy-neediness of bottle kids- they're annoying, and they sometimes never grow out of it!! Then there are the growth issues....dam raised grow faster and fit into the main herd better. Bottle babies get picked on a lot and can't really fend for themselves. There is the hassle of bottle feeding....I could go on and on....
And the thing that really irks me is this: I did all the pasteurized bottle feeding baloney, even on the kids that were from test negative does, and I always brought the milk just to a boil, so I *know* it was hot enough...but a number of them ended up testing CAE positive!! Moreover, the doe who originally infected my (formerly longtime CAE negative in spite of years of dam raising) herd was a bottle baby raised on the prevention program.
I don't know what the answers are about CAE anymore. I used to think I did, and now I'm just not so sure as I used to be. The truly strange thing is that all my positive animals have been asymptomatic and look just as good as the negative ones. They all produce well, too.
I wish they would do more research on CAE....I am inclined to think we haven't seen the entire picture yet....
By the way- dam raising will
not decrease the milk production if you milk the doe twice a day and fed her the usual amount. In fact, when you wean the kids, the does are producing MORE milk than they ever would have on twice a day milking, because the kids have been demanding it umpteen times a day... I can take my does to a show and they walk into the ring with just 12 hours of milk....and the judges have called them over-uddered. They have less time of milk than any of the other does there, but mine are not used to having 12 hours of milk at once! You do have to milk them 2X a day though...otherwise the kids don't drain the udder evenly and the supply in the less favored half goes down and makes it look lopsided.
