Expert: Norman Auspitz - 6/10/2010

Question
I found a kitten thats about 10 days old. I can get him to eat and sleep fine He will enough pee but I have only been able to get him to poob once in two days. how often should he go.
He eats about half oz. of milk every three hours.

Answer
LaJuana,

Your kitten will continue to have to be hand raised until it is weaned (about 3-4 weeks of age). Ten day old kittens are not very good at regulating their body temperature yet, so the most important thing is to keep him warm. You should keep him in a warm draft free part of the household, when you are not home.  

To see if he is doing well, you can use a digital postal scale for weighing him. Newborns should gain about 1 oz (30 g) in the first week and nearly 2 oz (50g) in each subsequent week until weaning.  A good feeding regimen for him is 4 times a day (e.g. midnight, 7:00 AM, 1:00 PM, 7:00 PM).  

You can get good kitten milk replacer products, e.g. Justborn or KMR. I am assuminmg the klitten will nurse from a pet nurser? If the kittens are taking formula from a pet nurser he should take  about .3 oz (8-10 mL) of formula for every 4 oz (100 g) of body weight.  Divide this by 4 to get an idea of how much to feed each time. If the mixture is too rich or the kitten is being overfed, he can get diarrhea. If he does not seem to drink enough, wait a few minutes and try again.

Make sure the formula is warm on the back of your hand before giving it to the baby. Watch out for over feeding.  This can cause diarrhea and, worse, if a kitten regurgitates it can aspirate the formula leading to pneumonia!

Once each baby has been fed, you can potty it.  It should pee each time and poop once a day. To potty the kitten get a soft tissue or cloth and gently stimulate the genital area, it will potty.  You can burp each baby by holding it upright and gently tapping on its back.  With tube feeding, it should not get much air, so you may not hear any burp.

Please get back to me if you have more questions and let me know how the little tyke is doing.  Hand reared kittens are always a challenge and it does not always work out.

Best regards... Norm.