I have always heard that allowing this will allow a goatling to over eat and they can get sick and even die from this. Scours seems to be the main issue as well as possibly overeating disease. To hopefully avoid these issues I decided to use kefir instead of plain milk.
It's been a couple of weeks now and I have to say, so far I am impressed!
Here's the setup. This is a bucket I had that had been setup to feed up to 4 bottle babies, a lifesaver for me if there is more than one! I had to find a place to put it to allow access for the doeling while making sure that the other goats didn't destroy it. Since the chicken pen and goat pen share a wall, I drilled a hole in the wall for the nipple and hung the bucket in the chicken shed.
Here's the inside, those little things on the bottom are kefir grains. Makes it so I can pour fresh milk in from the milking and it'll kefir in short order.
Here it is from the goat side.
It didn't take the little girl long at all to figure this out. I had already trained her to the bottle so she knew what the nipple was. She was one of 2 doelings born on the same day as 3 bucklings and they are all half siblings. The mother of the bucklings has got the most amazing milk ever and I swear you can actually watch her kids grow. They double their weight in a bout a week, I kid you not! The little girls were not doing so well. I don't think their mom was making very much or very good milk. I sold the mom and sister and kept this girl. She was definitely smaller than the boys when I started this, but I neglected to weigh her. I really should have! While she had most definitely gained weight and filled out, I don't know how much. Right now, though, she is the same size and pretty close weight with her brothers.
She did tend to pork out at first, but after a couple days she settled down and now just comes up every so often and takes a bit and then goes out to play. There has been NO scours or anything of the sort.
Happy, healthy and growing well!
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