# Milk replacer vs goat milk for bottle calf?



## TheBanditQueen (Jun 2, 2013)

We just inherited a 5-day-old bottle calf. It is a bit weak. We have milk replacer, and my husband has had experience with bottle calves before, so he knows what to do more than I. My curiosity question is, would goat milk help as a supplement to the milk replacer, or should they not be mixed? I have one Nigerian doe in milk right now that we could use if needed. She doesn't give a huge amount, being a mini, so it wouldn't be an entire goat milk diet, just some.


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## myheaven (Apr 14, 2006)

When I'm low on goat milk I mix it with milk replacer. It works wonderfully.


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## Cannon_Farms (Aug 28, 2008)

They digest differently so with a sick calf I wouldn't do both, too bad you can't get more goat milk they do great on it


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## sammyd (Mar 11, 2007)

We have mixed the two and fed them. I wouldn't feed them separately like one type in the morning and another in the evening.


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## topside1 (Sep 23, 2005)

Mixing is no big deal providing your MR is real milk powder and not soy milk powder...Topside


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## TheBanditQueen (Jun 2, 2013)

She isn't looking too good today. Very liquid diarrhea with a little blood in it. Haven't seen a lot of it, but haven't seen any normal either. We've fed her 3 times since last evening, about a pint each time. But she seems listless and depressed. She couldn't/wouldn't nurse on the bottle, we had to manually feed her.

From what I understand of her birth situation, there is a chance she didn't get enough colostrum, which makes the whole endeavor a moot point.  But, on the chance that she did get colostrum and is ill, any advice?


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## o&itw (Dec 19, 2008)

The value of colostrum is its antibodies from the mother. Not getting it gives the calf little initial immunity. Still, that doesn't mean the calf is hopeless, just that it will likely need more medical help for the first few months. Any bottle calf that got taken away from its mother is going to be stressed. Stress is your biggest enemy... this is a real common time to lose a bottled calf. All you can do is keep working with it, and maybe give it a spoonful of granular Terramycin or something similar twice a day.


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## TheBanditQueen (Jun 2, 2013)

Where can we get Terramycin? Is that like the electrolyte stuff I have been reading about?

Every source I find says something different. Some say mix milk replacer and electrolyte in a feeding, others say feed only electrolytes for 24 hours and slowly add milk back in, some say feed them both but separated by 3-4 hours... Maybe it just depends on the particular situation.

Should we feed smaller amounts more often?


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