Can you feed a one day old kitten baby formula?

Answer 1

No, it needs its mothers milk to help it stay strong and healthy.

The Mother's milk has antibodies in it to protect the kittens from different diseases & viruses. If there is no Mother cat to feed the kitten, then purchase a ready made formula for kittens (not puppies) at a pet store or feed store plus a baby bottle. Heat the formula up to room temperature. Test by putting few drops on the inside of your wrist, if you cannot feel it, then it is room temperature. Do NOT feed the kitten if it is cold, it must be warm before eating or will not be able to digest the food. Feed it every 2 hours and use a warm cotton ball to rub the anus & where it urinates from to stimulate the kitten to urinate & defecate, it cannot do it by itself, the Mother cat would normally lick at it to make this happen.

(Ask Paisley response/addition) If you have a litter of kittens with no mother, you need to check with your pediatrician vet or your regular vet if there are no separate specialty vets in the same practice but ask to learn the best course of care but with regards to the need to feed or lose the little, it's best to stop into a livestock or livery store b/c the old-timers who run these stores have been caring for mother-less animals their entire lives and give excellent advice. Our vet took care of everything from babies through geriatric animals though most farmers with livestock have a tendency to put down any animal that reached a geriatric age where the animals are too old or are in too much pain to move. I've done my share of the same as it is much more humane than allowing them to suffer when age and worn out bodies won't allow them to move or function as they did before those last days.

FYI: Livestock stores worth their salt, as the saying goes, carries kitten milk on the shelf in power form for mixing and in liquid form to use straight out of the can along with various sizes of bottles and nipples. Most also carry the tick-tock clocks because they work well with kittens along with pups as well.

Wrap a tick-tock type of clock w/o the alarm on in a medium heavy small towel b/c it mimics the mother's heart beat and will settle the kittens in well enough. Add a bit of a heat lamp to keep them warm or use a hot water bottle but keep a check on the heated bottle - not too hot/not too cold. It needs to be Mom-cat temperature or warmer to keep the kittens warm. It helps to rub the kittens in a fluffy warm towel to ensure they stay warm to keep from losing any of them.

As for the urination and defecation, this can be easily done by wrapping the kitten in a small towel and keeping one hand with the bottle to feed b/c they will be more interested in the food than anything else. You can massage the genitalia to stimulate urination and defecation but don't be too concerned if they don't defecate within the 1st day or so because there is so little food in their bodies and it is milk so they will urinate more than defecate. defecation becomes much more important when introducing soft foods such as canned kitten food, especially when they learn to lap it up although it does help to mix kitten milk with canned food in a low bowl to make it a mushy mix that is easier for lapping than for eating. They will ingest the soft food but slowly at first until they learn how.

The biggest concerns in the early weeks is keeping them plenty warm, staying on schedule with their feedings, and changing the covering of whatever container (box, kennel carrier, open kitten breeder box, or even small kiddy pool (guide dog puppies are born in kiddie pools that are sterilized while the mother is in labor then after the birthing process, a second sterilized pool with blankets and plenty of warmers in a sterile environment are available for the switch to make mom & pups comfortable so I would consider a very, very small kiddie pool for the kittens since at this point their eyes aren't open and they can't get out but the "tick-tock" clock wrapped in a towel along with hot water bottle will save you some sleep if you don't have access to an actual mother cat's sounds after giving birth in addition to the heart-beat & mews toward the kittens. It's best to make them feel as at home as possible and you need to take on the position of Mama Cat).

I say this because I have nursed regular kittens from bottles as well as helping a bobcat I brought home as a pre-teen who gave birth to more kits than she had teats to feed. Our vet who handled our farm animals set up milk, bottles, mixes, and food that was as close to what a bobcat would need until he could return with more information because it wasn't an every day question or request for assistance he received. In fact, my bobcat assistance was a first for him.

The kittens all survived as did the mother and after a bit of help, we taught them to hunt and take down prey (not our farm animals though) but they were hunting, capturing, and eating their prey without any problems so it was well within time for them to go live their lives out at a Wild Life Reserve that was approximately 20mi from where I lived with the hope they would stay on the preserve without attempting to come back to me or come up to people. People are afraid of what they don't understand and the last thing I wanted was someone to kill these beautiful animals I had months to a year invested in both in caring and in my heart - to have some idiot come along and take their lives for their pelts. The ranger who traveled the Wildlife Reserve run across them every now and again and I did as well when I went out on horseback with him. Although, once I ran across the mother bobcat in our pasture land again and once we sort of said our good-byes (she wouldn't come too close to my horse, which I believe was her way of not spooking him, she left in the direction of the reserve with the couple of kits she had with her although they weren't kits anymore at all. They were grown but I recognized each one. We tagged their legs as babies and rotated out nursing from the Mom and nursing from the bottle to be sure that all the kits received their share of the mother's milk to keep them growing and make them strong enough to survive whatever life threw their way, with the exception of an idiot with a firearm. But, I never saw them after that day. I hope they lived a long life and the kits continued to breed and grow in the safety of an area where hunting was not allowed.