I’ve compiled my most commonly received questions as well as the information I try to impart on every person taking home bottle kids. The information below are recommendations based on what works for us; research your options to decide what best works for you.

Bottle Feeding: What To Feed - We have always followed the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine recommendation of feeding baby goats whole cows’ milk in place of goats’ milk when goat’s milk is not available. We do NOT recommend feeding any formula. Gradually transition your bottle babies from goat milk to whole cows’ milk by mixing cow/goat milk 25/75, then 50/50, then 75/25 until you work your way down to just cows’ milk. Feed milk warmed to body temperature!

Your first day home, feed your kids goat milk. Your second day begin by diluting 75% goat to 25% cow. The next day, mix 50/50, and then the following day do 75% cow and 25% goat. Feed that mix until you run out of goat milk. Please DO NOT buy goat milk from the store for your goat kids. Commercial dairies are not required to be free of CAE, CL, or Johnes. All goats on my farm are free of these diseases, don’t risk introducing them to your new bottle babies. Stick to whole cows milk. Also, DO NOT feed 2%, 1% or Fat Free. Whole milk only.

Bottle Feeding: When and How Much - There are at least as many recommendations for how much to feed, how many times per day, and for how many weeks as there are goat owners. What works for us is feeding bottles 3 times per day which can be before work/school, after work/school, and before bed or however is easiest for your daily routine. Meals do not need to be fed exactly so many hours apart. We feed babies 2-6 ounces each when they’re very young and allow them to work themselves up to 8-12 ounces per meal.

We strongly recommend you do NOT limit what your kids are eating at each meal and allow them to get full at each feeding. As a general rule we stay under “around” 36 ounces per kid in a 24 hour period but we don’t ration kids. Most kids won’t eat anywhere near 36 ounces in a day until they are closer to weaning age. That estimate is provided here because some kids are bigger and eat more at a time - especially male kids! And some won’t ever get to 36 ounces in a day.

Bottle feed until 10-12 weeks of age. By about 6-8 weeks we reduce kids to 2 bottles per day. Around 8-10 weeks we reduce to 1 bottle per day. By 10-12 weeks we wean kids off their bottles.

Bottle Feeding: Equipment - There are lots of different styles of bottles and nipples. We start kids on a specific style of nipple because it is very readily available. These are grey soft silicone nipples. They can be ordered from Caprine Supply or purchased locally from PineNut. This nipples fit right onto a SmartWater or Coke bottle. This is the style of teat your kid will be used to when going home. You can transition your kid to another style of teat with some training and patience. We wait to send kids home until they are well established on a bottle, easily and readily recognizing their bottle and latching on freely. Bottle babies can be fed while being held or while standing up.

Risks Goat Kids Face - The two largest concerns for your goat kids are going to be coccidia (mentioned above) and pneumonia. Both are in their environment, period. Either of these can become a life threatening issue in the wrong setting. Pneumonia is opportunistic, flaring up when your goat kids are stressed from extreme temperature or diet changed. Coccidia is always present in their gut in low numbers, but can easily get out of control in moist and dirty environments. Keep your kids’ environment consistent. Keep fresh food and water available. Transition between feed or milk types slowly. Watch the weather for unexpected sudden drops in temperature such as an impending snow storm and enclose your goat kids somewhere warm during the worse of the storm. Provide a dry stall or shelter and regularly remove manure and place dry clean bedding such as hay, shavings or straw. We use hay and shavings in our barn because we have found straw always comes with sucking lice which are transferred by birds and mice who like the leftover grain seed heads in straw.

When you raise more than 100 kids per year you eventually find out that — while super duper rare — the occasional kid loves to eat shavings! And those shavings do not digest, they become impacted in the gut. For this reason, watch your kids with shavings to make sure they aren’t ingesting them, remove shavings if your kid is determined to eat them! Eating shavings means actually swallowing them. Most kids will pick up and chew on shavings or anything new and interesting. They’re like toddlers exploring with their mouths. So, be on the lookout for kids who consume the shavings rather than chew and spit them out.

Worrisome signs include: kids who suddenly go off feed or milk. Don’t wait. If they miss a meal, it’s because they don’t feel well. Fever or low temp (rectal thermometer is a must)! Normal baby goat temp is between 101.5 and 103.5 degrees. Don’t attempt to feed a kid who has a temp below 101, get them warmed up then feed. Snotty nose or wet persistent cough. Diarrhea that doesn’t clear up on it’s own after a couple of hours. Lethargy or listlessness.
The internet is no place for veterinary advice. Suspect an issue? Call me. Or call your VET! I highly recommend Comstock Equine locally here in Northern Nevada. They have an excellent team that we use to care for our own goats.

While you will not need the supplies below immediately, I have still compiled the highlights on what to expect your new goats to need

Minerals - all goats, including your new babies, need a loose mineral intended for goats. Goats do not salvate enough to properly utilize a mineral block. Blocks, even those labelled for goats, are not ideal. Begin offering your loose mineral now, even if it doesn’t seem like they eat much of it! MannaPro is a readily available brand that can be purchased in small bags. We have found MannaPro is not sufficient supplementation for our herd, but it should work for wethers. Provide a small mineral feeder inside their shelter up off the ground. We add kelp mixed into our minerals, and recommend it, but it’s not absolutely necessary. SweetLix is our preferred brand of minerals. We’ve found most feed stores can order this brand if they do not stock it.

Hay - Your new baby goats won’t eat much hay at first, but it’s important to offer it. Good quality Orchard/Alfalfa mixed hay or strait Orchard hay are our preferred choices. I don’t recommend hay nets as tiny legs can get tangled in them. Hay should be fed off the ground to reduce waste - but goats are notorious hay wasters. Thankfully wasted hay and goat manure make excellent compost!

Goat Grower Pellets - We feed our kids Elk Grove Milling Goat Mix OR Elk Grove Milling Sheep Mix pellets until 6 months of age. Along with fresh clean water, regularly cleaned stalls, and plenty of sunlight and open space we offer a pellet to encourage rumen development. One of the hardest challenges that baby goats face is coccidia and one way to combat that is a medicated feed (Pictured below). I don’t personally use a medicated feed as it can build resistance, but it’s a viable option if you’re wanting to prevent Coccidia. Feeds or minerals that contain Deccoquinate cannot be used to treat a large bloom of coccidia in goat kids. It’s a preventative low dose medication to help prevent high levels of coccidia in your goat kid’s gut. This is one tool in helping your goat kids thrive and must be combined with good parasite control practices.

We’ve tried at least half a dozen brands of medicated goat pellets before deciding medicated feed wasn’t for us. One year, we went to every feed store and chain store and picked up a bag of each brand we could find to test what would work best for us. While each brand has pros and cons in terms of ingredients, vitamins and minerals, cost and availability we found the Producer’s Pride (sold at Tractor Supply) brand to be the most palatable to goat kids.

Heat - If you visit our barn, you’ll notice we have Prema Heat Lamps hanging in our kidding pens and stalls. As long as overnight temps are below 45, we provide a heat lamp. We like this style of lamp because the bulbs cannot fall down into bedding to start a fire. The most common cause of a barn fire from a heat lamp is when a bulb that has been used for an extended period of time works loose, or the adhesive holding the bulb to its base melts over time, and the hot bulb falls onto bedding. A heating pad would also work! There are great options designed for dogs or chicks.

Water - Kids drink most of their fluid in milk for the first couple of weeks. Water can be offered immediately, but we tend to introduce it after a couple of weeks. Water should be provided in a small quantity such as a small bucket filled just a little. The container should be short enough the goats can reach it as well as jump out should they accidently jump in.

Vaccinations - The most common vaccinations for goats are Pneumonia and CDT. We vaccinate pregnant moms, so your kids go home with some immunity. However, if you choose to vaccinate you can do these at 8 and 12 weeks. I can most certainly help administer vaccines on kids brought back to me by appointment.

Shelter - Your baby goats need shelter from wind and rain/snow. Dog houses and 3 sided shelters will work just fine once your kids are well established. Barn stalls, horse shelters, even enclosed carports all work as well. Very new babies can be kept indoors in a crate or even a puppy pen set up in the garage if the weather is very cold!

Worming - Don’t worm your goats, of any age, before confirming what parasite they have. Not all wormers work on all classes of parasites. Ivermectin is excellent for sucking lice, but useless against coccidia. Move your goat to a clear space such as a concrete driveway pad and wait for them to poop. Collect the poop with gloved hands into a ziplock bag. Drop your sample off at the NV State Lab in Sparks Nevada. For a few bucks, you can learn what, if any, parasites are disrupting your goat’s body and then pursue the proper wormer to treat that specific parasite. Unless we see symptoms of parasites that concern us, we randomly check fecals on our herd through the state lab twice a year as a matter of good maintenance.

Coccidia, as mentioned above, is the greatest concern for goat kids while adult goats usually manage just fine with some coccidia in their systems. Every goat has coccidia, it’s about managing levels. We treat every single kid here every 30 days for 5 consecutive days with Corid. Let me just add this here - stop googling stuff and then deciding you know what’s what. The internet gives people a Confirmation Bias. If you go google whether or not Corid causes Goat Polio or is dangerous for goats you’ll get 1,000 answers of YES and Confirm your Bias. Don’t do that. Read peer reviewed collegiate studies to answer your questions. Corid is dangerous IF your kid has a deadly level of coccidia already in it’s gut. And so is the high level of coccidia in it’s gut. Corid is dangerous if you overdose. Corid is not dangerous when properly dosed. Corid is not dangerous when given as a preventative on a careful schedule that results in your kid never experiencing a large bloom in her gut. This is why we use Corid on a carefully managed schedule and dose properly by weight.

Companionship - Goats cannot live alone. And, before you tell me about that goat you know about that was happy it’s whole life and lived alone, please let me stop you there. That goat was the exception, not the rule. Anecdotal accounts of that one time some guy’s uncles buddy kept his goat tied out on a rope by itself it’s entire life just isn’t evidence to contradict this point. The goat couldn’t speak.

If it could, it would have told you it was afraid to be alone because it was easier prey for a predator and the nights were lonely and cold because it didn’t have a herd to bed down with. The whole of the goat community agrees - goats are highly social animals and they need constant companionship. Lonely goats will be loud, destructive, escape whenever they get a chance, and often become depressed to the point of going off feed and dying. As such, we won’t sell a single goat kid. Period.

Caring for the Disbudding Sight - Some goats are born polled which means naturally hornless. But for those who are born with horn buds, we remove them before they go home. Do NOT: apply any salve, cream, etc to the horn sight. This sight is dry, cauterized, and sealed. Applying any sort of topical treatment that will get the sight soggy will make it more sore and open it to bacteria. Keep it dry. Allow it to heal on its own. Hair will grow back over the sight.

DO: Apply some ice if you notice swelling, which is rare but possible. DO: treat any bleeding, oozing, or open area with good wound care practices. Clean well, apply antibiotic ointment, and keep dry. Swelling, bleeding, or oozing can occur when rumbunction goat kids decide to scratch their heads or head butt their pals.