cow milk replacer. Good or bad?

[manybirds]

normally we get ultra 24 multi species milk replacer for our goat kids but it's anywhere from 28-40 dollars for an 8 pound bag depending on where we can buy it from which is expensive. This year wer going to be having a lot more kids then normal to bottle raise and I was wondering what some opinions where on using cow milk replacer? I know some people swear cow milk replacer is worse then giving them plain water and some people say they've never used anything but. Is there something I can supplement into cow milk replacer to make it better? Or should I just stick to the mult species?

 

[Pearce Pastures]

Never done cow replacer or mutispecies, just goat. It was expensive and caused scouring. But I don't know why cow replacer would be much different from whole cow milk, which works well with goats. Maybe you could compare the fat and vitamin content between whole milk and the cow replacer?

 

[Goatgirl47]

I, personally, would not use calf milk replacer. Actually, if I bottle-fed my own goat kids (which I really have no experience with bottle-feeding goats), I would give them fresh milk from my cow (or goat), or buy store-bought milk. But if you can't do either of those, I think multi species would be better then cow milk replacer.

 

[Latestarter]

From everything that I've read, aside from the colostrum needs, which should come from the doe, just plain old whole cows milk from the store is adequate for most goat kids...

 

[manybirds]

I'll maybe try cows milk. I brought home a kid today and none of my does have freshened yet so goats milks not an option quite yet.