How do I get the colostrum into the cria?
There are three ways a cria can get colostrum: 1) nursing from the dam, 2) suckling from a bottle, and 3) by tube feeding. If the dam has milk and the cria is sufficiently strong, nursing from the dam is clearly the best method. If nursing from mom is not an option, then the choice becomes bottle or tube feeding. Tube feeding has the advantage of being rapid and is the only choice in crias that are too weak to suckle. Under most circumstances, however, bottle feeding is the better choice of the two. When the cria suckles from the dam or from a bottle, the milk passes down the esophagus, bypasses the first two compartments of the stomach, and goes into the third compartment, the acid-containing portion. This bypass occurs because as the cria suckles, a muscular fold forms a tube (gastric groove) from the esophagus directly to the third compartment. In contrast, when a cria is tube-fed, most of the milk goes into the first two compartments and then moves slowly into the third compartment
