# Cold or warm milk replacer?



## Laurie J

I'm feeding a couple of bottle lambs, and I heard of an interesting concept. We always take them nice warm milk, like they'd be getting from Mama, however, it was suggested that a way to keep them from overeating and to feed themselves, is to put the milk
replacer over ice in a lamb self-feeder bucket. Apparently the lambs will just drink a
little at a time as the stuff is cold. They do not over eat that way. Anyone have any comments on this?


----------



## mawalla

It's been a while since I've had to raise a bottle lamb but when I did the cold milk method was what I used. It worked well. Some of those bottle babies are now production ewes in my flock today!


----------



## Ronney

Sounds to me like a lazy way of making sure a lamb feeds little and often! Good God, would you feed your new born baby ice cold milk? No, I didn't think so!!!! How much energy do you think this lamb would use up digesting cold milk and keeping itself warm. 

Sorry, but we already shift too many things around to suit our convenience but feeding any young animal cold milk does not strike a good chord with me at all. If you want to feed your lambs/calves little and often in the way they would if they were on their mothers, heat the milk and feed them 5-6 times a day.

Mawalla, you may have done it successfully and have ewes to prove it. But on the other hand I fed my lambs warm milk starting off at 5 feeds a day and decreasing to two - and have ewes to prove it. And I bet my lambs were a site more comfortable for it.

Cheers,
Ronnie


----------



## CaliannG

Feeding cold milk will cause higher lamb (and kid, or calf, or whatever) loss due to hypothermia and bloat.

Lambs, like kids, will not digest milk, or anything else, if they are cold. That is why, if you find one suffering from being chilled, you warm the baby up FIRST, *then* you feed it. Feeding them cold milk will simply lower their core temperature... uncomfortable in warm climates and downright detrimental in chillier ones.

It is a bad idea.


----------



## mawalla

Ronney, granted I've only been raising sheep for 13 years, so I may not have the vast experience that you have, but I'm successful. New born lambs are not fed ice cold milk. DUH! Newborns, if they must be bottle fed, are given colostrum for the first 24 hours, warm, every 3 hours. Tubed if necessary. Feedings are done warm and every 4 hours for the next 3 days with 15% - 20% of their body weight fed to them in a 24 hour period. They are weighed daily to make sure they are gaining and to properly adjust the amount they receive, and they go to work with me. (Because I work for a large animal veterinarian I have a place to keep them at my office.) I introduce them to the lamb bar at any time between 5 to 7 days of age, depending on the animal. The jugs are filled twice a day and cleaned daily. Creep feed and hay is available to them as well. They are vaccinated with CD/T at this time, too. They are weaned from the artificial rearing system when they are eating the creep well and their weight is at around 25 - 30 pounds. The length of time depends upon the animal. 

I switched to this system 10 years ago when I had a couple of lambs die of enterotoximia due to consuming a regular feeding of warm milk replacer. I had a necropsy done on both dead lambs and had a lab test the milk replacer I was using. The milk replacer, Sav-A-Lamb, tested to have a high clostridial count. Feeding it warm caused the death of these lambs. I'd used this brand for three years with out a problem so it may have just been a bad batch. But I was not taking anymore chances. I did extensive research on alternative artificial lamb rearing methods and have followed the method ever since.


----------



## CaliannG

mawalla said:


> I switched to this system 10 years ago when I had a couple of lambs die of enterotoximia due to consuming a regular feeding of warm milk replacer. I had a necropsy done on both dead lambs and had a lab test the milk replacer I was using. The milk replacer, Sav-A-Lamb, *tested to have a high clostridial count.* Feeding it warm caused the death of these lambs. I'd used this brand for three years with out a problem so it may have just been a bad batch. But I was not taking anymore chances. I did extensive research on alternative artificial lamb rearing methods and have followed the method ever since.


Thank you! You have ANSWERED the question that has plagued the goat people for some time. That question being: Why does milk replacer kill?

We knew that if you put five kids on milk replacer, 3 of them would end up dead. We never knew exactly why, but that is the reason why even in commercial operations, we DON'T feed milk replacer. We feed either store-bought, pasteurized cow milk (if we're small, with only a few kids to bottle), or we feed wholesale, bulk tank, pasteurized cow milk (if we are a large, non dairy operation), OR bulk pasteurized, whole goat milk (if we are a dairy, often right out of our own tanks).

No knowledgeable goat person feeds kids replacer, and now I know why. Like sheep are extra sensitive to copper, and goats need it so it doesn't bother them.... _goats are more sensitive to clostridium._

There needs to be more livestock cross-over of information. This is good knowledge for both goats AND sheep.

I also now know that my lambs, when I get any, will get warm goat or cow milk...NOT replacer. Seems replacer, if fed properly, kills lambs too, just not as often.


----------



## lambs.are.cute

The question is how cold is cold? The shepards here that use the lamb bar system feed the milk cold - as in ambient temperature. Never had a problem with loosing lambs and had less trouble with scours. I've never used it as I have very few bottle lambs and I usually do it by hand. I've noticed during hand feeding the lambs don't eat as fast on slightly colder milk (not it is still warmed up but is like 5* colder).


----------



## birchtreefarm

I've used Advance lamb milk replacer which suggests feeding "cold" but what they actually mean is "not warmed up". So mix the replacer with room temp water and place in a self-feeder. Yes, they won't overeat at any one time, but will eat smaller amounts more often. For those who work off-farm and can't be there to feed every few hours, this works. Advance also notes that the formula is "acidified" to prevent bacterial growth for the few hours the milk is in the feeder. 

Never thought this could be such a contentious topic!


----------



## Ross

birchtreefarm said:


> I've used Advance lamb milk replacer which suggests feeding "cold" but what they actually mean is "not warmed up". So mix the replacer with room temp water and place in a self-feeder. Yes, they won't overeat at any one time, but will eat smaller amounts more often. For those who work off-farm and can't be there to feed every few hours, this works. Advance also notes that the formula is "acidified" to prevent bacterial growth for the few hours the milk is in the feeder.
> 
> Never thought this could be such a contentious topic!


This is what we do too, excpept I use Grober replacer. Mixed correctly by weight and not dry measure I wouldn't expect to lose any. Cold milk stops gourging on milk and mimiks natural feeding rates at least.



> Never thought this could be such a contentious topic!


No kidding! It kind of makes people forget themselves at that!


----------



## PNP Katahdins

We use Kent milk replacer for our few bummer lambs each year and have been happy with it for over 10 years. It's made with hot water. It stays pretty warm when fed from a bottle but of course cools down a little to air temperature when fed from a bucket. The most we have fed at one time is six. They do very well. Any time I have been able to compare one twin fed by mom and one on the bucket or bottle shows both doing well. We have only had one bucket-fed lamb die out of all of them.

Our Kent dealer says he sells quite a bit of lamb milk replacer every year, with 2/3 of it going to dairy goat people. There are LOTS of dairy goats in SW Wisconsin.

Some of our local shepherds swear by Merrick's powder too.

Peg


----------



## susanne

this is the very first year i have little lambs.
they were rejected from their dams and i wanted to start a little spinning flock for myself. 
since i'm used to raising goat kids on the bottle, it would not have crossed my mind to use milk replacer. nor do i want to use cold milk. 
i feed with the bottle to each kid/lamb and yes more time consuming but in all the years have not lost one kid because of entero due to too much milk consumption. 
when i started with goats, i visited a farm at kid feeding time. buckets with cold milk were put in the pens and kids were jumping at it. after they were done, all of them were shivering. that was when i decided i would never feed my kids like this. 
i guess with big herds or lots of lams you have not much choice then to use the lambar or literally live out in the barn feeding kids/lambs.


----------



## nobrabbit

I wasn't able to attend but my husband attended one of the sheep courses at the University of Kentucky when we first got our sheep. He was surprised that they said to mix lamb milk replacer with cold water. We have always had bottle calves and feed them warm. Something about the difference in their stomachs/digestive system.


----------



## frazzlehead

I found an article recently from New Zealand that suggests mixing milk replacer with yogourt to help reduce abomasal bloat.

I have a bottle lamb this year, and I've been mixing her milk replacer with live kefir culture that I have here. The stuff is really good for helping with digestion and kick starting rumen function (I give it to sickly sheep too with good results - it's like yogourt, only 'more so'). 

They recommend a gradual transition from warm to cold replacer - we're still feeding it warm, but will be cooling over the next few days.


----------



## CaliannG

frazzlehead, if you can get it, try mixing your milk replacer with simple, raw milk.

Raw milk, of ANY species (cow, goat, horse, yak, sheep, human, buffalo) has enzymes in it that have no other function than to help digest milk sugar and protein chains.


----------



## frazzlehead

Definitely would use raw milk if I had it, CaliannG! My cow's not in milk at the moment (nor am I, anymore!), so replacer plus kefir's the best alternative I have. Hopefully next year I'll have fresh raw cow milk around the same time as we have baby lambs. 

The humans in this house love it too!


----------



## bknthesdle

The lady I got my Nigerian dwarf bottle doeling from recommended Merricks Super Lamb milk replacer. She said it's about the only replacer she doesn't lose kids on. The down side is that it costs $50/bag.



CaliannG said:


> Thank you! You have ANSWERED the question that has plagued the goat people for some time. That question being: Why does milk replacer kill?
> 
> We knew that if you put five kids on milk replacer, 3 of them would end up dead. We never knew exactly why, but that is the reason why even in commercial operations, we DON'T feed milk replacer. We feed either store-bought, pasteurized cow milk (if we're small, with only a few kids to bottle), or we feed wholesale, bulk tank, pasteurized cow milk (if we are a large, non dairy operation), OR bulk pasteurized, whole goat milk (if we are a dairy, often right out of our own tanks).
> 
> No knowledgeable goat person feeds kids replacer, and now I know why. Like sheep are extra sensitive to copper, and goats need it so it doesn't bother them.... _goats are more sensitive to clostridium._
> 
> There needs to be more livestock cross-over of information. This is good knowledge for both goats AND sheep.
> 
> I also now know that my lambs, when I get any, will get warm goat or cow milk...NOT replacer. Seems replacer, if fed properly, kills lambs too, just not as often.


----------



## Ronney

Laurie J said:


> replacer over* ice* in a lamb self-feeder bucket. Apparently the lambs will just drink a
> little at a time as the stuff is cold. They do not over eat that way. Anyone have any comments on this?


The OP is quoted as above. Putting milk over ice is going to make it bloody cold until later in the day when the ice has melted and the milk might have got something close to day temperature. Why would you want to do this to a young animal? 

I don't use milk replacer because I milk cows and the hand reared lambs live in a paddock next to the cow shed so milk comes out of the cow, into a bottle and into the lamb at an ambient temperature, possibly slightly below. When I do heat raw milk up for the inbetween feeds for lambs, I consider it the right temperature when I stick my pinky in it and can't "feel" it i.e. it's not so cold I'm aware of it, or so warm I'm aware of it. If I dribble it on to the back of my hand, it should feel cool. This is about blood heat and is the temperature a lamb or calf should be fed at.

This thread, and many others I've read plus people I've talked to, is starting to make me wonder if a lot of problems with lambs is being caused by feeding milk that is too warm.

Frazzle, yoghurt is used a lot over here on small animals and keep in mind that it is good for calves and lambs with scours - it helps settle the stomach and get the right bacteria up and running again as well as giving nutriment.

Cheers,
Ronnie


----------



## Ross

We cerrtainly feed cold (not over ice) milk replacer to slow them down. I really doubt temperature has anything to do with replacer problems. Poor mixing amounts and over-feeding with too infrequent times issues would be where I would look. Cleanliness and water quality bringing up the rear. I have fed replacer from the frig, they eat shiver for a minute and get back to hopping around their pen.


----------



## Fowler

Laurie J said:


> I'm feeding a couple of bottle lambs, and I heard of an interesting concept. We always take them nice warm milk, like they'd be getting from Mama, however, it was suggested that a way to keep them from overeating and to feed themselves, is to put the milk
> replacer over ice in a lamb self-feeder bucket. Apparently the lambs will just drink a
> little at a time as the stuff is cold. They do not over eat that way. Anyone have any comments on this?



I use sav-a-lamb milk replacer....at room temperature...so not to upset their wittle bellies....I just follow directions....and not allow them to pull at my heart strings for more....cute little beggers


----------



## beoircaile

I'm with Ross- cool milk- not ice cold. If I've had a lot, I put cool milk in the bucket and use 1litre bottles with warm water to temper the milk. It keeps the lambs from gulping and gagging.

Conversely, in the summer, I use the 1 litre bottles filled with ice water to keep milk from getting too warm.

I try to wean at 1m if possible when bucket feeding. Our lambs this year are done with the bucket (although they would love to be on it) and on hay/creep/water already and doing fine.


----------

