Orphaned Lamb Feeding

[Tom8]

Hi, We breed Valais Black nose, Grey Face Dartmoor and some stock sheep for pets, fibre flock and breeding. Sadly one of our Dartmoor mums died yesterday leaving an orphan son of a couple of weeks old. He is strong and healthy but still needs his milk. We hoped another might adopt him as a long shot but no. We now are struggling to get him to take a bottle. Anyone have any tips on how to successfully do this?

[JeffreyD]

Try something like molasses round the teat.

In theory once it gets the idea you won't need to do it all the time.

Try and get it to mix with the other lambs as much as possible as the one we had to it for ended up thinking it was a dog and hated life in the field.

Which was cute when it was a lamb but a pain in the arse when it was fully grown.

[RizzoTheRat]

We used to have to tube feed some if they were really weak, but generally a bit of milk on a finger would give them a taste and then the trouble would be keeping them from knocking the bottle out of your hands!

JeffreyD said:

Try and get it to mix with the other lambs as much as possible as the one we had to it for ended up thinking it was a dog and hated life in the field.

Which was cute when it was a lamb but a pain in the arse when it was fully grown.

We had one that we basically couldn't put in a field with a footpath as if anyone walked in to the field he could easily knock them over while searching thier pockets for rich tea biscuits

[Tom8]

We have some misfit sheep we've rescued, one who grew up with dogs. They gave her to us as they run a cafe and the sheep bit a customer's dog!

[Thevet]

Stomach tubing is definitely a very short term option, most lambs will move on to teat/bottle feeding. At 10 days old, fostering on is always difficult but not impossible, involves much unpleasantness with skinning and potential restraint of grumpy mum.
Bottle feeding long term is the fall back option, but many pet lambs develop abomasal ulcers.
HTH