Bottle feeding ? re: 5.5 and 7.5 week old kids

[phoenixmama]

I know this is kinda long, but I'm a new goat person, with some new babies that we just love and that set us back a bit...so I really want to do the right thing here. Please help me! :/

All right, so our two new girls are 5.5 and 7.5 weeks old today. The 7.5 week old is just what I imagined, bounding all over the place, super excited about her bottles, is convinced I'm not giving her enough milk , seems to be an all-around happy little doe.

Here's the full background with the 5.5 week old (the one my question is about): Three days before we were due to go pick her up, the previous owner e-mailed me letting me know that she was having some diarrhea. She said that she didn't feel right about sending me home with a sick doeling, so she offered a different doeling (a younger one) instead. When we got up there last Saturday the update on the doeling's situation was this:

She got checked out by their dairy veterinarian, no fever, no blood in her stool, still acting fine all around, given a dose of CD antitoxin to be safe, and put on Albon to be safe. The previous two days, she was back to normal stools, and still acting completely normal. When we got there on Saturday, her bottom was completely clean (I imagine it wouldn't be if she were having diarrhea), and she was still acting like a healthy baby. We decided to go ahead and still take her instead of the other little doeling, because by Saturday the previous owners thought she was perfectly fine. I totally trust the people that we got them from. She wouldn't have sent me the e-mail in the first place if she were just trying to get rid of a sick doeling, and they have a really good reputation that I would think they'd want to keep.

Here we are at home, and she acts totally different than the older doeling. Again, she is 5.5 weeks old today. She's way more reserved, quieter, not eager at all come bottle time. She'll come out and stand where we are, or follow us if we walk around...she just doesn't practically try to knock us down in order to get to the bottles the way the older one does. I have to feed the older doeling first, then lock her up (so she'll let the younger one near her bottle), and I have to actually open up her mouth to stick the bottle in before she'll latch on and start drinking her milk. She won't drink more than 8 oz. or so at a time. She doesn't appear to be sick really...no fever, no diarrhea, tail up the vast majority of the time. She just acts so differently from the older doeling! Should I just feed her more often so that she gets the amount of milk per day that she is supposed to? Can there really be this much of a difference in how different kids will act?

 

[Ariel301]

They do have differences in personality. I've got a pair of bucklings like that. One is six weeks, the other five. Chess, the six week old is never happy. He doesn't like anything. He fights me when I try to give him a bottle, and only sips little bits out of a bucket, then cries when I take it away after I think he is done. He cries A LOT. He doesn't play. (I think he's not quite mentally developed to his age, as he was premature and his mom nearly starved to death while she was pregnant, then was not able to feed him enough for the two weeks she tried to nurse him--he acts more like a newborn than one of his age) Baruch, the five week old, is always happy, always wagging his tail, never cries over anything--he wanted to play with us while we were disbudding him! He eats like a pig and bites the nipples off my bottles because he's so excited and rough. He will take a gallon of milk at a time, while Chess might take four ounces.

I'd have the problem girl checked for cocci by a vet to be sure she's ok on that, but it may just be her personality. Some kids don't seem to be big eaters, I have found, while others are super greedy. Being sick and then moving to a new home is stressful, and different animals react differently to stress. It may be that she will settle down more as she gets used to things.

 

[tabetha]

We have two baby goats, likely twins, have the same difference in personality, however, our little one was weak, was a hard feed, had to latch and hold her, she wasnt good at the sucking.... She also had diarreah. We switched her over to goats milk, and added probios to the milk twice a day, and it worked wonders on the diarreah...

I'd say, if she's eating and no diarreah, and walking around, i'd say she's fine.