Kid bloat

[farmmom]

A few months ago I had twin bucks born and decided to allow my 11 year old son to use them for his science fair project (under my supervision of course). So, we fed one goat milk and fed one goat milk replacer. We planned to track the growth difference in the two for the first 6 weeks. However, at 25 days, the buckling we were feeding milk replace bloated. I had not recieved my stomach tube yet, so had to puncture his rumen with a hypodermic needle to relieve the pressure. After this, we fed him goat milk, and he did better. I also did some research during the night I spent up with him and discovered that the USDA says that one of the leading causes of bloat in kids is the feeding of formula. Why would this be? Isn't it supposed to be made to raise healthy kids on? At 6 weeks, this kid died. I had given the two to a friend who told me she went out one morning and found him, but he seemed fine the night before.

Also, point of interest. At 25 days the formula fed kid had was 125% of his birth weight while the milk fed one was 236% of his birth weight. I guess we got all the info we needed for that science fair project.

[togg75]

Great information

[southerngurl]

It seems quite uncommon to hear success stories with milk replacer.

[pookshollow]

Isn't it supposed to be made to raise healthy kids on?

No. That would be goat's milk.

Hard lesson learned, I guess. I can't say that I've ever read/heard anything good about raising kids on milk replacer. Now that I think about it, years ago I worked on a government research farm (learned how not to raise animals). We had a sow die of mastitis, and we tried to raise the piglets on milk replacer. I think 5 of 12 made it to weaning age. I also raised a bottle lamb there - found it dead one morning.

[HappyFarmer]

I've always heard replacer wasn't as good. Thanks to your science project now I know!
HF

[fishhead]

Some people have posted that they use replacer successfully year after year. If I'm not mistaken dairy farms use replacer too.

It might be helpful if the people who do have sucess would post their method. Do you add anything? Do you feed more often/less often?

[DQ]

milk replacer isn't made to raise healthy kids. its made to make money on by-products that would otherwise be thrown away. same with human formula. a little more reasearch has obviously been done in human formula to make it safer because it had/has a tendency to kill human kids. even now in people 1 out 5 infant deaths are a result of feeding formula instead of breastmilk. money talks though, its big business.

[nehimama]

I'm sorry for your loss.

It's my understanding that real milk curdles in the kids' stomach, allowing it to be utilized/absorbed as nature intended. Milk replacers do not curdle, though why this would lead to an absorption or utilization problem, I don't know. However, I've never had luck using replacers on lambs or kids.

If I ABSOLUTELY MUST use replacer I will mix it at least half and half with whole milk, and don't seem to have problems.

NeHi

[betsy h.]

Another very good reason to keep C&D anti-toxin in your goat medicine cabinet at all times- and milk replacer out of your feed room.

If you innoculate newborns that you will be bottle feeding with C&D anti-toxin at birth, 5ml orally, 5ml subcue, and again in one week till you vaccinate them with CDT or Covexin8 (What i use.) and do a really intense vaccination schedule until they are fully covered, folks would have much less bloat problems- what with bottle fed kids not getting the C&D antibodies in mom's milk naturally, they need some extra help.

I also use Bova-Sera or Poly-Serum at birth and have had great success with keeping the snots and crud away from the bebe's.

[farmmom]

I started them both on the mother colostrum and milk for the first week, so they should have had some antibodies I would think. But, yes I kept the formula for emergencies only, and if I need it, will mix it with milk.

I have 2 children. The first started formula at 3 months old, when I had to return to work after my husband decided he didn't want to be a dad. He became sick almost immediately. My second breastfed for the first year. He's very healthy. I guess that should have taught me that lesson.

[goatkid]

Originally Posted by fishhead

Some people have posted that they use replacer successfully year after year. If I'm not mistaken dairy farms use replacer too.

It might be helpful if the people who do have sucess would post their method. Do you add anything? Do you feed more often/less often?

Many commercial dairy farms do use milk replacer. I used to work on one such farm. They lose kids on replacer. I think it's just that they get so many kids that they cut their losses. We bought bucklings from that farm cheap to raise for meat kids. We had so many problems with the replacer that we lost money that year. Besides bloat, the kids simply had no resistance to things like crypto, e coli and entero, in spite of being fed their dam's colostrum and being vaccinated with CDT. The ones that survived had poor growth by market time. On top of that, the doelings I raised to adulthood succumbed to various things by a few years old as compared to the much healthier does I have who were raised on goat's milk. The woman who used to run the dairy has now sold her commercial does to dairy and reduced her herd. She will no longer feed replacer, nor recommend it. All our goats are raised on goat's milk, or if we don't have enough, whole cow's milk.