The "End" of Fawn Season and the Beginning of Summer!

Well at the end of the week we have a total of five healthy fawns! Two males and three females! Six were born but unfortunately one buck fawn died. All of the girl fawns are in the barn now and are eating very well. Two of the girls, #3 and #5, are a week old and starting to bounce around and play, the third fawn is just two days old.

Doe twins born on May 24, they are now in the barn

I will try to elaborated more on bottle feeding in this post. Again, we bottle feed the doe fawns so that they are much calmer and easier to handle.

We feed them four times a day, every five hours. This year we are using Ultra 24 milk replacer instead of whole milk from the store as we did last year. The milk temperature must be at 110 degrees when the fawn is fed or she won't take the bottle. We use plastic pop bottles and pritchard nipples for goats and mark the bottle every 2 oz so that we can keep track of how much they eat.
Starting a fawn on a bottle is anything but easy! The very first feeding is more of a "force feeding" because they are not use to me and I get more milk on myself than in the fawn! Once the baby recognizes me as "mama" feedings can go smoothly. To help her bond to me more I will put my shirt that I had been wearing that day into her stall. This way she will know my scent and eventually recognize it as where the milk comes from.

After dinner is mandatory cuddle time

When mother does nurse their fawns they lick the fawn's butt to stimulate a bowel movement and urinating. We also must stimulate the fawns (but with a baby wipe, I'm opting out on licking them!!) that we bottle raise for about the first two weeks or until we start seeing wet spots in their stall. Generally fawns will accept the bottle better if you stimulate them at the same time as you feed them.

Mama stimulates baby before he goes in for a snack

A frequently asked question that we get is "Why is their a pile of dirt in the fawn pen?" the answer is that fawns eat dirt! Believe it or not fawns will eat dirt because of the minerals in it. Every day we place fresh dirt in their pen and once they're at two weeks old we will start putting clover in there as well.

This post covers most of what we do when we bottle feed the babies! I'm sure I will think of other things that pertain to fawns in the next post!

Twin fawns about 15 minutes after their birth