A different approach than bottle feeding

Tried to teach the serval kittens to drink their milk out of a bowl rather than bottles with teats. They ( Lauren, Karen) decided to try this because when we were feeding them with the bottle they were just chewing the teat that we tried to feed them with and not suckling properly.

We also changed their milk from Esbilac puppy milk replacer to a mixture called lion milk. It contains egg yolk, milk, cream, gelatine and cooking oil. The amounts of each ingredient vary according to the amount of milk you want to make. We had to change them from Esbilac to the new milk because we were running out of Esbilac and Esbilac is really expensive when brought from the veterinarian.

What we did was pour the amount of milk that each of them had to get into one single bowl. It was then a process that requires a lot of patients and determination. You first have to show them the bowl, sometimes they just want to run away. Another problem that we had was keeping them near the bowl. Because they were still kept in a small cage inside they just want to play the minute we take them out of the cage.



Introducing the kittens to the milk



Apollo not being really interested in the milk

Trying it but rather just want to play with it

After introducing them to the milk in the bowl we would dab our fingers into the milk and onto their mouth. Every time we did this you would bring your finger closer to the bowl so that they move closer and closer to the milk. Oryn licked the milk up a few times but he pushed his whole nose into the milk and this resulted in it going up his nose. He sneezed a few times and didn’t want to drink the milk any more.

Apollo tried a few times but wasn’t really interested in drinking the milk, he just wanted to play.

On night shift Lisette still had to feed them out of the bottle so that they would still get their nutrition and enough food in because they didn’t drink all the milk that they were suppose to that day.

We will try everyday to see if they get better at drinking out of a bowl.