12/14/2024
😬Another... potentially sensitive topic: ni***es🙊
In the process of cleaning out the cabinet of bottle lamb supplies, we found one of the old school, red, screw on ni***es every shepherd has cursed while attempting to coax a delicate baby sheep to pretend it's texture, shape, or leaky nature remotely resemble something like their mother.
A few years ago we swapped to human baby bottles, like the one on the right, and have never looked back. They're far better to measure total volume fed, they're more durable, dramatically decrease the risk of aspiration, are vented properly to decrease bloat/pot bellies, and lambs almost always take to the shape of the ni**le significantly more quickly. In our experience, you'll want to slit the very end of the ni**le and buy some Y cut additional ni***es as the lambs grow and want a faster flow of milk.
We regret to admit having become pretty proficient in the labor of love that is bottle feeding lambs. To have sheep is to have bummers and there's no reason they can't turn out just as good as their naturally reared siblings. With different facilities or setup we might consider switching to a milk machine or a dairy goat, but we're over a decade in and the tried and true method of either raising them on or supplementing triplets still with their mother with a bottle has been extremely successful for us. With that said, there's probably a character limit we'd exceed discussing the topic of bottle baby rearing, but if nothing else, do yourself a favor this lambing season and trash the old screw top ni***es and buy yourself something 👌real nice, Clark👌 and try the human baby bottle method.
