My uncle recently got started in the "deer business" and has a few deer. He's considering purchasing yet another - which is a bottle baby. But since he works a FT job - he wants to know if I will bottlefeed and care for it until it's weaned. He is willing to pay me for doing it. I told him I could do it, and didn't give him a price yet. I figured I already have a couple bottle baby goats anyway, so what's one more bottle baby ? Now - I have some questions : Have any of you on here ever had a bottle baby fawn ? I need to know ... Do you have to get up to feed them night feedings every few hours ? I know with the baby goats - You do that for the newborns, but after a week old, I don't get up at night to feed - I just feed before I go to bed, and then as soon as I wake up, and then every 2-3 hours during the day (well, depending on age, etc.) Would a bottle baby fawn be the same thing ? ANy advice would be helpful I also am going to research it as soon as I get a chance.
We bottle fed a fawn (years ago), it just wandered into the horse pasture, we figured the doe was probably killed on the road. Anyway, we took turns feeding it during the day, and I would get there early, like 7:00am, and feed her. One of the other (boarders) took the evening feeding. We were totally clueless about what we were doing, but she thrived.
Julie, how lucky you are!! As far as the times to feed go, I would say that since deer are so secretive about WHERE their babies are they only nurse a few minutes every so often so that they don't "show" predators where they hid them. Night feedings would probably be more often because they have the cover of darkness to help with the "camoflauge". As far as what to feed, unless your Uncle has a formula specific to deer for you to use , I would stick with goat milk, it is pretty much the univeral food for any orphan! Since the fawn would be secure with you, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to have it go on your own bottle babies schedule, shouldn't cause any problems.
I've done a little research (it's so hard to find stuff about caring for fawns/deer!) and found a couple helpful articles. ANd basically what I'm getting from them is that a fawn is cared for basically the same way we care for bottle baby goats. SO that sure makes it easy ! From what I've read - it seems that a bottle baby fawn has basically the same schedule/feed routine as our baby goats do. Here's a basic bottle feeding schedule I found ... Day 1-3 2 ozs every 3 hours (force feeding as necessary) Day 4-7 4 ozs 6 times a day Day 8-14 6 ozs 6 times a day Day 15-21 8 ozs 5 times a day Day 22-28 8 ozs 5 times a day Day 29-35 9 ozs 4 times a day Day 36-42 10 ozs 3 times a day Day 43-49 10 ozs 3 times a day Day 50-56 12 ozs 2 times a day Day 57-63 12 ozs 2 times a day Day 64-84 16 ozs once a day That's alot like what we do with our goat kids. Pretty much the same. So this should be easy ! I talked to my uncle again last night to ask him a couple of things. I wanted to know when the bottle baby would be comming ~ he said he has to talk to the guy today, but the bottle baby should be comming in May. So atleast it'll be nice and warm and beautiful outside when it's here I won't mind going down to the barn every couple of hours then I don't really mind now either (with my bottle baby goats) but the warmer the better ya know. I also asked him if the seller was going to get the fawn on a bottle for us, before my uncle buys it. Unlce said he doesn't know, but will ask. I HOPE that they guy does get it on a bottle for us - I don't want to fight with my uncle's fawn to take a bottle - I would be to worried that it would give me to much of a fight, and I don't know how much $$ my uncle's spending on this fawn (probably alot). So that would make me nervous ! Anyway, once it's here - it'll be here until weaned. So there will be LOTS of pictures ! And maybe I'll bring it to our Goat Meetup ! (My uncles house is in walking distance from the meetup to ~ so I doubt he'd mind if I brought the fawn back)
We raised a bottle baby fawn that the little kids named Sammy.He was very cute and easy to get to take the bottle.We fed him like a baby goat in all ways except different food of course. we had him on the bottle for about 2 1/2 months I think.We then gave him away.
