Does any one have experience w/ a lambar feeder for Nigerian kids? I would like to bottle raise my kids but can not be there to feed every 2 hours, so was thinking a lambar feeder would work but I can't find any w/ nipples small enough for the Nigerians.
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I wanted to bottle raise b/c I though it would make the kids friendlier, but I would never be able to go out there every two hours like I said so I was thinking a lambar feeder would be a good alternative go bottle raising. I thought that it would still make them friendly w/ out having the commitment of having to be on a strict schedule. I would have milked the dam and gave all the milk to the kids b/c I will never give one of my kids formula if I can help it, it is so bad for them.
After thinking about it and hearing what people say about dam raising vs. bottle raising I am really thinking that the best thing to do it to let them be dam raised and just spends lots of time w/ them to get them use to people. There are a lot of benefits to this I feel and they learn to be a goat and not think they are part human! I have also heard of a lot of goats that were dam raised and just as friendly, if not more, as a bottle raised goat, plus they aren't a pain in your side like bottle babies are... I have a couple!!
I am glad you went "beyond my question", I always enjoy hearing other peoples oppinions and how they do things. Thank you!
We bottle feed. But I give them as much milk as they want the first few days, then move to every 4 hours during the day. I get them down to 3 bottles a day as soon as I can and they each get their own bottle. That way I know how much each is eating and there is no chance of overeating.
This past spring we used a lambar for most of our kids. I started them off individually on bottles at 3 days at the earliest using a Pritchard nipple, and then after a week or so transitioned them to the lambar which just had the regular black rubber lamb nipples on it. The lambar itself worked fine for me; the kids had no problems using the lamb nipples.
As a kid-raising method it's not one I'll do again. We have a cheese business so we wanted the does' milk for that, it wasn't something that I chose to do for potential kid temperament reasons. Bucklings got milk replacer, doelings got mama's milk with a top-up of milk replacer. The doelings grew better than the bucklings but none grew as well as, or were as healthy as, the few kids we separated only at night, milking their mamas in the morning. We had issues with scours. The lambar clean-up was a ridiculous amount of work as was making the "formula" several times a day.
We've decided that this year we will only bottle feed if a doe has more kids than she can handle, or if kids get rejected for some reason. The rest will all be dam-raised but separated at night as soon as is reasonable. We'll get less milk for our business before weaning, but, based on our experience this past year, the does will produce more milk overall if their kids are left on them.
If you were considering using it because bottlefeeding may create more people-oriented kids, keep in mind that if you're not actually there feeding them then they might not associate you with the lambar anyways, it's only if you're there with it that they think people are cool because they bring the food.
So that went a bit beyond your question, which was just about the nipples, but I thought I'd share my experience with the system even though I don't know if you were planning on using milk replacer or mama's milk, or if you were planning on doing it to make sure any potential diseases weren't spread from doe to kid. Good luck! No matter which way you choose to do things you'll learn from it all:-)