First time bottle feeding baby goat, need advice.

[thinkyesi]

Hi everyone! This is my first time ever having to bottle feed a buckling. Mother didnt want him, she was a first timer and didnt even develope an udder. She has absolutely no milk. I didnt even know she was pregnant.
Anyways, the baby was born yesterday afternoon. I've been bottle feeding him colostrum formula for baby goats I got at tractor supply. I've never done this, so I want as much info as possible about what I should do or dont do. Atm I've been feeding him 1-4 ounces per feeding. I've been been feeding him every 4 hours. Sometimes he only wants to drink very little, and sometimes he wants more. But I never have fed him more than 4oz a feeding.
His mother is a spanish mini and the dad is a spanish boer. He came out pretty small like a mini.
Also advice on goat kid formula, is it safe? I dont have a doe in milk right now.

 

[cassie]

Colostrum replacers will work in a pinch. After that feed real milk not replacer. I have said this before. Some kids do great on replacer and some kids do not. The ones that do not may scour or they may bloat and die. Plain old cow milk from the store works fine. If you want to get fancy, try this formula. Take a gallon jug of whole milk, pour off about a quart. Add to the jug a cup of buttermilk and a can of evaporated (not sweetened condensed) milk. Shake it up and fill the jug back up with some of the milk you poured off. This formula was made for Boer kids and mini goats because those does produce a richer milk than the average dairy goat. It sounds like you are doing things about right.

As for the doe, I would start milking her twice a day. Sometimes you can bring these does into milk. The first milking you may get only a squirt. The next milking you may get two squirts. Just keep at it and she may end up milking normally. However, if she doesn't increase in production at all, give up and wait until next year. I had one doe that that started out by giving me one squirt and by the end of a month she was milking twelve pounds a day. Your doe may come into milk and she may not. You won't know unless you try.

 

[thinkyesi]

So using store bought pasteurized cow milk will be fine?
What about store bought goats milk? And I'm not talking about the powered or canned.
How often should I feed him during the day and night?

The momma doesnt want me near or touching her. Shes being extremely skittish, for now I'm giving her some space so I wont stress her out.

 

[cassie]

Plain old store milk is fine. You don't need to buy goat milk. I raised many, many kids on cow milk and a lot calves on goat milk. I wouldn't bother feeding him at night. Three or four times during the day is fine. When I had my dairy, my kids got fed 20 oz of milk just two times a day but more often would have been better for them. Because I was milking 100 does twice a day I didn't have time to feed the kids more often. Be sure to vaccinate him with CD/T. That is for tetanus and enterotoxemia. My kids had access to hay and grain by the time they were two weeks of age.

As for your skittish doe, who is the boss here? If you don't want to be bothered milking her, that is fine, but eventually I would think you are going to want to do something with her.