how to get a baby to eat from bottle

[treeclimber233]

I just lost two does with babies. Two of the babies are almost 6 weeks old and the other baby is barely 4 weeks old. One of the 6 week old babies will drink milk out of a bowl but the other two will not even attempt to smell the milk. What is the best way to get them to take a bottle. I am going to get a nipple tomorrow.

 

[Jake]

Hold them under your arm with one arm and the hand holding their head up and put the nipple in their mouth usually that alone does it, if not squeeze the nipple a bit until they are sucking, generally after one feeding they will run to you as soon as they see the bottle. Get the milk into them asap.

 

[farmerlor]

I stick my thumb in their mouth and dribble the milk around my thumb into the mouth until they catch on, then I put both the nipple and thumb in which gives me leverage to keep squeezing on the nipple to squirt a little milk. You don't generally need to make it that complicated but if the baby is going down and getting weak that process usually helps.

 

[rockdoveranch]

I agree with what Jake posted, though our current bottle baby ewe lamb would not take a bottle in the beginning, so I put the colostrum replacer in a syringe and dribbled it gently in the back of her mouth. She caught on pretty fast thereafter.

Since she had a slow start I used Pedialyte instead of water.

 

[julieq]

We work in pairs on our new bottle babies. One person holds the baby, the other gently opens the mouth, inserts the nipple and holds gently underneath the jaw so the nipple stays put until they start sucking. It may take a few team efforts to get a kid going, but they always catch on sooner or later.

 

[treeclimber233]

ok. got a bottle and nipples. Tried to get them to suck. Not sure how much I got in them. They did suck some then ran around the pen hollaring for mom again. The bottle was 1/2 empty but there was a fair amount of milk on them too. Of course with Drift's (LGD) "help" I may find myself on Americas Funniest Videos. Must put Drift outside the pen on my next attempt. Thank goodness one will drink out of a bowl.

 

[spraygirl1]

I put a bit of honey on the nipple and my 10 day old baby Nubian suckled more than ever today. Ive been having a problem getting him to do more than 2 pulls. I was happy.