Feeding Newborn Kittens

Video Transcript

"Let's talk about feeding newborn kittens. The first thing to know with feeding newborn kittens is it can be a challenge. It can be time consuming but it is rewarding in the end. First thing to do is always check with your veterinary clinic first to find out what to use to feed, how often and if you're doing things correctly. Most veterinary clinics can guide you through that very easily and they're going to recommend something like KMR kitten milk replacer. This is a nutritional supplement for newborn kittens. And we're talking about orphans typically. If the queen or mother cat is present natural ways of going about that, letting the mother take care of the kitten is the way to go but if it's an orphan or something like that your clinic can help you through that. Most newborn kittens are going to need nutrition or milk replacer every two to four hours. They need to kept warm; you don't want to over handle them. Be very very gentle when you're dealing with them. Also elimination is a problem when when they're newborns and the mother's not taking care of them. What you have to do is after feeding typically take a warm damp wash cloth and gently kind of message their genital area, around where where the fecal matter comes out. And what happens is the mother would do that normally which would stimulate the kitten to eliminate both fecal and urination. And so talk to your regular clinic about that, they can guide you through that. And generally most kittens thrive once they start being fed and taken care of."