Hand rearing kittens

Re: Hand rearing kittens

Emma Bartlett — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:05:45 GMT

http://www.royalcanin.co.uk/vet/lifestage_diets/kitten_and_neutered_feline/vital_milk.aspx

I used this kitten kit.......it took a couple of days for kits to get used to the bottle, but fine after that. The tiny biscuits can be mixed with the milk to make a porridge when weaning, mine wouldn't eat that though, they just wanted the dry biscuits!

Re: Hand rearing kittens

hayzie — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:32:53 GMT

Hi, i have been hand rearing kittens, they are now 6 weeks old. One of them had the same problem.

I used a small syringe for the first few weeks, so when his sucking became weak i could help him by pushing down, but i continued to encourage him to suck for himself by wiggling the syringe in his mouth and pretending to withdraw it to encourage him to start sucking.

Once he was about 3-4 weeeks old, i moved onto a bottle, he seemed to like the small short teat with a rounded end. If he had trouble at any time i reverted back to a syringe (as obviously you cant squeeze the bottle or air goes into kitten).

You could also try to get him lapping at a bowl at about 3-4 weeks (mine were useless lol).

Mine did well and has weaned very well too (although not as greedy as his brother).

Good luck!

Re: Hand rearing kittens

Tracy Windler RVN — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:19:34 GMT

Hi, I've always used just 1ml syringes while the kittens are very small, dribble it in ever so gently until they get the idea, then you'll find they can suck so hard, they drag the syringe hub down themselves! You have to move onto 2.5ml syringes as they get bigger and take more milk per feed. Good luck xx

Re: Hand rearing kittens

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:26:25 GMT

different shaped teat?