Is this weird?

[Emilea]

Ok my neighbor bought this reg. boer family and after he got them home the mom rejected one of the babies and since he is not much on bottle feeding he sold her to my son for $5.00 (all the money in his piggy bank... he is 3) and this baby is 2 weeks old... she will not take a bottle i have tried forcing it and even a tube and she wants nothing to do with it, she does eat lamb starter and hay and grass and corn chops?? she seems really weak to me but my son (and myself) just can give up on her she is so sweet i'm just not sure what else to do...

also the day i was milking and my son wanted to give molly our gp puppy some so he put it in a bowl for her and then came back for more i asked where the milk went so fast and he said shortcake drank mollys milk... i din't believe him so i gave him more to take to her and sure enough she was drinking it from a bowl?!?!? now we give her milk in a bowl but she still doesn't seem to be getting stronger... i just don't know what else to do.

[Jim S.]

Maybe Sulmet (or a sulfa drug) for cocci, and did you deworm her? Those are always the two places to start. If she laps milk from a bowl, you can add Sulmet/sulfa to the milk. Deworm her orally by weight.

I'd go easy on the grain-based foodstuffs. Easy way to get her bloated/acidic.

Is she scouring? Poop normal?

$5 a reasonable price in my book, since you'll likely have $50 in it by the time she's 5 months old, and I just bought an unregistered 7/8 Boer doe off the farm Saturday at 6 months old for $50, minus the headaches. That's why I don't like bottle kids, it rarely pencils out. Your neighbor knows that, too.

[deetu]

If you have a doe in milk, you can lock her head and let the kid nurse a couple of times a day until she is stronger.

[thaiblue12]

My first "bottle baby" hated the bottle and it took her forever to drink 6 oz. She was scaring me so I tried a bowl and sure enough she would drink 10 oz. and more. So I stopped the bottle totally. She was very scared and unsure her first week or so here. Once she got use to us she became more lively. That including jumping on my back and trying to lay down! I stopped that, it hurts at 20 pounds and I am sure it would have been a rib cracker at 80 pounds.
I found that Di-Methox in the poultry section of my feed store. I wrongly called it Sul-Met in another post. I never was able to find that and Di-Methox is pretty much the same.
$5 is a great deal for a bottle pet. Yup I said pet. I might breed my girl and make some money but for now she is a weed eating pet that calls me daily for petting. Plus she is getting the milk for free so it is a good deal.
Jim bottle babies aren't headaches they are so cute and time consuming eating poop factories that you just got to love.

[Feral Nature]

Sometimes a baby has to "starve" for milk before it will take a bottle and Boers are harder to switch from teat to bottle than dairy goats, some say. I have switched them and yes, they will fight you, but hunger is a powerful motivator. Like Jim said, go easy on grain, too much will kill it. At that young of an age, it needs milk. Try store bought whole cows milk, kid/lamb replacers are not really very good, store milk is fine and I have successfully raised kids on it as have many here.

My baby goats get alfalfa pellets and grass hay, no grain whatsoever.

Warm the milk up but not over 103 degrees, better too cool than too hot. Try different nipples til you find one the little goat likes, baby bottle nipples, red and yellow prichard nipples, black or grey nipples from the feed store.

You may have to hold the baby down and force the bottle into his mouth and make him take it, once he gets the hang of it, he will know what to do...I have had them really fight hard then latch on and be quite grateful.

If the baby is sunk in and weak, be aware that he may not make it and try to prepare your son, sometimes they can be already too far gone when you get them. He may indeed be wormy, have cocci or have some other problem.

Also, goats are herd animals and need constant companionship, they fail to thrive when alone.


edited to say: Oops, I said "he" and it is a "she" goat

[Emilea]

Well she is pooping fine and I have not wormed her yet cause how small she is i'm not sure how much to give her.. a guy at the co op down the road said to give her LA cause one night she just would not eat or get up so i gave her .5 of that and it did help. but i'm sure she needs to be wormed. I did try putting a milking doe in a stention but shortcake wanted nothing to do with her she didn't care about the milk... she will drink some out of a bowl but only 8 or so oz a day. and she will eat the lamb starter which i got after everyone telling me it had cocci prevent. in it so i'm hoping that helps but she eats hay and grass but i need to find some kind of sulmet to give her?? this little goat wont even let me force a bottle in her mouth... and far as being alone she never is my son is always with her... ALWAYS... we let her out into our front yard to "play" with christian (my son) the other day i even found her on his turtle chair in the room when i got home from work... she does drink her milk more if he gives it to her and stays by her and pets her while she drinks... but that doesn't get to happen much anymore my husband thinks she is going to die and is trying to keep him away but when we are working and papa is babysitting the goat goes where christian does... is she too young for b12?

[Jim S.]

Emilea, pull down the eyelid and check the color as soon as possible. Is it white? If so, you need wormer and sulfa drug in that goat! It is close to death from anemia. If it is pinkish, worm it anyway, and right away. If the eyelid is white, it is very, very hard to save them. Normally it would be reddish-pink. Give ivermectin at 1 cc per 22 pounds orally. Dissolve the sulfa in the milk (aureomycin and Sulmet powder works). If you cannot get sulfa quick, buy calf scours pills, grind them up real fine, and dissolve in the milk. Or you can give them broken up, in the back of the mouth, to where they swallow them. You need to act. You may also have to feed molasses, Nutridrench or a quick energy source to keep the goat going.

thaiblue, I am in it as a commodity business. I cannot justify the costs of raising bottle babies vs. their sale value. Pet people can do what they want, that's another world from mine entirely.

I can buy a perfectly healthy unpapered 5- to 6-month-old Boer cross for $50 (just bought 2 last Saturday), saving myself a ton of work, inputs, possible sickness and death loss. Been doing goats 17 years, and I have YET to find a bottle baby that I could not have just bought as a herd addition for less money. That is exactly why people around here are so glad to be shed of them. At $5, it might come out about even by the time all the inputs are in if there is no sickness. Bottle babies here bring $20-25, and you will be in for more than that if you'd bought outright at that price.

So then, it is easy to see why the farmer says, "$25 in my hand now is better than taking a chance and investing in a goat I will be underwater with cost-wise, before she is bred or before he can be sold, if it lives."

I've done it both ways, and there is no way I can pencil-out the costs in a bottle baby. Labor alone eats it up.

[fishhead]

Is it okay to give a sulfa drug with milk?

I know that in the past milk products were not to be ingested when taking human sulfa antibiotics. It made them ineffective. Has that changed?

[Feral Nature]

If the baby is 2 weeks old and only drinking 8 oz a day, it will die. Boers are huge eaters and it could not be getting enough nutrition even if it is eating some solid food. Is it drinking water? It is most likely dehydrated as well.

For Cocci prevention and treatment, I use DiMethox 40% in my babies milk bottles for a 5 day course every 21 days til they are near grown. The dose has been posted time and again on this forum and a search will find it or i can post it again if asked.

To worm babies that do not live with adult goats, I use Valbazen 1cc per 10 lbs by mouth and repeat in 19 days.

[chamoisee]

Do you have other goats that are in milk? I would put one in a milking stand, hold her rear legs, and get that baby to nurse her. Force teh doe to nurse the kid at least 4 times a day.

Also, is it getting any water?

I don't know how old this kid is, but there is no possible way she can live on just 8 oz of milk a day. I think you should learn how to tube her...she needs at least 8 oz at each feeding, and in her weakened state, I would probably be giving it to her 6-8 times or more per day until she gets her strength back. When she gets better, try for 12-16 oz four times a day.

I haven't had the best luck with bottle feeding, but when I have had good results, it was from extremely fresh milk as often as the kid wanted it, even if that meant I basically lived with a bottle next to me and the goat in the house.

That baby will probably die unless you learn how to get the tube into its stomach. :bawling:

[Emilea]

that is what i ment she is drinking 8 oz each feeding twice a day. and I did give dimethox last night 1cc she is 3 weeks old and yes she does drink ALOT of water and she does (the past few days) eat lamb starter and grass and hay all the time everytime i look out the window or go down there she is eating... but she still seems weak and i am getting some sulmet tonight to add to her milk. I do have two alpines that are milking but she wont even try to suck... she fights me and crys i squirted her in the mouth thinking maybe that would help but nope, no luck... she does lately seem like she is up more... but still weak and boney i do have her in a pen alone so my bigger babies don't trample her, should i let some of the calmer ones in?

[fishhead]

Having the company of a calm kid might help her feel more secure and that has to be good. Just be careful that she gets her share of the food even it means separating them during feeding.

What's wrong with letting her drink milk from a bowl as long as she's getting the milk? That seems to be a moot point.

[trob1]

I would weigh this doe and keep track of her weight every few day to a week to make sure she is gaining. I personally wouldnt add anything to her milk as it will change the taste and make it bitter and then she wont drink any of it. Take some honey and add the meds to it and syringe it into her mouth so you know she got it all. You might try a b complex shot, some bo-se and some probiotics or yogert for her gut. If she is eating all the grain and hay have you seen her chew cud?

[Emilea]

I'm not so much worried about her drinking from a bowl as i am her not gaining any weight *it seems* and still *acting and looking* weak. I will try the syringe thing tonight when i get the sulmet, i was scared she would not like it in her milk since i had such a problem getting her to even look at the milk at first.i'm not sure what "chew cud" means but i know she is eating ALOT of grass, lamb starter, and hay, but that has only been for the past week or so... i am going to give her some b complex tonight she only MAYBE weighs 8-10 lbs would i still give her a full cc??

[trob1]

Chew cud is when they bring up food from the rumen and chew it again. Something you might try is to take a q tip and rub it in the mouth of an older goat then rub it in her mouth to get the bacteria that helps start the gut. If you can get a hunk of cud from the goat and put it in her milk that would even be better. You might even try offering her milk 3 times a day and see if she would drink more that way. I will be pulling for this little girl. Hang in there.

[cowgirlracer]

Three years ago, we picked up (a neighbor picked up, rather, for us) some orphans. A Saanen buckling, a Sable doeling and a nondescript doeling. They became Judd, Winona and Naomi. The doelings took to the bottle immediately and, in fact, jumped into our arms when it was feeding time. The little buck had never learned how to suck, but he would drink from a bowl. After a fashion and with a lot of patience and perseverence, the buckling learned how to accept and drink from a bottle. That buck is now huge and is a very prolific (too prolific) stud. He has torn down barn walls and hog panels to get to our does and has produced many more does than bucklings -- in multiple births. That buck is unbelievably easy to manage -- even when he has business to which he must attend.

I cannot say about Boers, though. Last night at the ADGA show in Gillette, we visited with a couple from Bracken County, KY who were showing Oberhaslis. They used to have Boers and told us that Boers started looking for a place to die as soon as they were born. That is a sheep saying out here, but they are pretty knowledgeable about goats.

Tom
Cowboyracer43

[Emilea]

I am going to try the q-tip thing and see if that helps I don't know if she does that or not, i just know she eats alot of grass and hay, but it to me doesn't make sense that she is still not alot stornger and not looking healthier..

[Feral Nature]

Boer kids don't look for a way to die, they are vigorous and very hardy, I have never lost one...negative thinking is what kills them.


Emilea, can you post a pic of this goat, maybe we can get a visual and that may help.

[chamoisee]

16 oz of milk is not enough. I've had kids pack that much away in a single feeding...they got 16 oz 3-4 times a day. Emilea, I hate to say it, but your doe is going to starve to death if you don't find a way to get more milk into her. This is why she is weak and bony. Yes, she may also be wormy, but worming her multiple times will not do a thing to solve the problem of her being malnourished.

There are websites that tell how to intubate a goat- not dribbling it in to her mouth via a tube, but getting a tube down her throat and into her stomach.
Or like I said, if you can get her to nurse a doe in milk...

8-10# is what many kids weigh at birth. If nothing else, give her milk in a bowl (fresh each time, not the same milk from last feeding) many, many times a day, every hour or two, until she starts feeding and getting stronger.

[Feral Nature]

I agree with chamoisee, a Boer kid usually weighs 9-11 lbs at birth and by 2 weeks is pretty dang hefty, meaty and broad. They feel like lead weights when you pick them up. Eating solid food is not cutting it right now. The kid should be packing away tons of milk....especially a Boer.....I don't know how much you want to spend, a child's pet is special, could the vet tube it for you the first time?