Bonding goats dam raised and bottle babies

[Nanno]

I tried a hybrid bottle/dam approach early on and it was a dismal failure. I never attempted it again. It just made the kids angry because they weren't hungry enough to want to take a bottle, and me shoving it in their face and mouth just made them upset. I once bought a couple of two-week-old bottle kids and I was able to feed them bottles or put them on a willing dam until they got to the point that they preferred the dam (they nearly always prefer a real teat to a rubber one). In the end it didn't make any difference. My dam-raised kids are so bonded and attached to humans that you can't tell they weren't bottle raised except that instead of begging for food, they beg to be petted and held.