Posted by Nat on May 24, 2001 at 13:44:14:
In Reply to: Newborn..help #2 posted by bobbi on May 23, 2001 at 21:05:33:
Did the kid get any colostrum from its dam? Is there a reason why she wont let the kid nurse such as mastitis, or no motherly instinct? Have you tried to confine them to a pen by themselves to get aquainted?
If she won't let the kid nurse, you can try having someone restrain the doe, and have another person try to point the kid in the right direction. If you can't get any sucess, milk out the doe and feed this to the kid via a soda bottle with a lamb nipple. If the damn dosn't have alot of milk, you can feed kid milk replacer, lamb milk replacer of whole cow's milk.
Almost all feed stores have milk replacers, and nipples. If the kid is hungary enough, he/she should suck pretty well off the bottle, or in the case of a dumb kid you may have to force the nipple into his/her mouth (being careful not to make them choke when the milk pours out).
If you have a weak kid you may have to tube feed it, but you really need to know what you're doing and have a 60cc srynge and a small lamb feeder tube to accomplish this. If you have an experience goat farmer near by, or a sheep farmer they can show you how, or worse case, a vet can. Its not hard to do, just too easy to kill them via pnenomia if you tube down the wrong pipe. A 60cc srynge tube feeding kit is a vital thing to have in your kidding supplies.
Hope I helped
-Nat's Little Bit Farm