Reply #8: I had a real eye opening experience last year. [View All]

A friend's ranch burned killing almost a thousand of his sheep. Of the few remaining ewes many had to have c- sections to give birth and still there were something like 80 orphaned lambs. These orphaned lambs were bottle fed primarily by one woman (a retired engineer who now had a small flock of milk goats). Some of us helped in various ways.

The university provided free c-sections and vet care and milk replacer. This woman, quite the expert in bottle feeding goat kids and lambs said that expired milk from the grocery store with added cream was better than the milk replacers, even though they are scientifically formulated. She got the local grocery stores to donate the out of date milk and cream. I went around collecting goat milk (which is the best substitute for lambs) from my various neighbors who had any extra to spare and drove over once a week with that for these lambs. If she got low on real milk, she would mix it with the lamb milk replacer. What she thought was the main trouble with the replacers was the use the cheapest source of fats, which are vegetable oils. These are far less expensive than cream from mammalian milk. Any business that produces mammalian milk substitutes do this, at least for farm animals.

I thought a lot about how a businesses' first responsibility is to it's shareholders, not it's customers. If fat is fat, why not get the cheapest one around? That is best for the shareholders and some nutritionist at some time must have thought that this was true, maybe some still do. So, a nutritionist makes sure that the ratios of proteins to fats to sugars are correct, but if the goal is to make money, then the cheapest most readily available fats, sugars and proteins are probably sourced first and tried out before trying more expensive ingredients. I suspect that a great deal of effort is made to get the proportions and general flavor acceptable, but as the science improves on understanding differences between each kind of fat, sugar and protein then one would hope that mammalian milk substitutes could be improved.

Unless one absolutely has to bottle feed, I simply cannot understand the risk of feeding formula. Even with farm animals.

I had a really hard time with getting started with breastfeeding, but stuck it out and I never doubt that it was the best food for my daughter. I was very upset when other mom's for whom it was not at all difficult went to bottle feeding as it was still too much work for them.