I'm no expert, but I've raised two rounds of bottle babies. when I want to bottle-feed, I isolate the lamb from the normally-feeding lambs. The rejected lamb will get signals from the other lambs that food is there, as long as you try hard enough. They also will think the sheep are their friend and not trust you.
Once isolated, they might go for 12-24 hours without doing much with the bottle at all. Once they are seriously hungry, they will go for it. I would also consider cutting your mix with goat's milk from the store or anywhere you can get goat or sheep's milk. Prepare yourself for scours (diarrhea) especially if bottle-feeding this young. _Michael, Perino Ranch Blackbellies. On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Robert Jung <mrbobj...@gmail.com> wrote: > After successfully raising 10 lambs we have our first rejected bottle > baby. She has a twin sister that the mom didn't reject and every time > I tried to set her near them she got head butted. > > Over the past 24 hours every couple hours we've been feeding 1 part > kaeco Colostrum + 1 part mana pro milk replacer mixed with 4 parts > warm water (best we could figure out from the conflicting directions) > and she'll take the bottle but won't drink very much. I would say > total she's had maybe 50-75 CCs total in the past 24 hours. I read on > here that she needs at least 10% of her body weight per day. Which > for 4.8 lbs would be something like 220 CCs. She looks pretty weak > and thin and while she'll stand up and walk around she looks a lot > less healthy and happy than her sister out back with her mom. > Anything obvious we're doing wrong? > > I'm terrified of the idea of tube feeding since I've never done it > before but we are willing to give it a try if we have no other choice. > Is this the next step and if so does anyone know of a good training > video or guide or something? If you can't tell we are complete noobs > at this. > > Thank you all so much and thanks again for the great advice you give! > > -Bob in New Mexico > _______________________________________________ > This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list > Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info > _______________________________________________ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
