What Do Newborn Kittens Eat

Set an alarm so you don t miss those middle of the night feedings.

What do newborn kittens eat. Kittens that are bottle fed should consume about a tablespoon or 15 ml of special kitten formula at each feeding. Your new kitten is playful and cute as can be. Feeding the wrong sort of milk such as cow s milk can have short term and long term effects including diarrhea dehydration nutritional deficiencies and long term health problems due to poor growth.

Kittens expend a lot of energy and shouldn t go very long without eating. When do kittens start eating solid food. Newborn kittens eat cat s milk only.

Only she doesn t eat much or at all. Just born kittens have a particular diet of cat milk. A newborn kitten can only digest milk and more specifically the milk from a female cat.

Don t let her go hungry for more than 48 hours. It does provide her with nutrients that she passes through her milk to the surviving kittens. The milk that the kittens take both by natural breastfeeding and artificial feeding is rich in fatty acids colostrum antibodies and vitamins.

When kittens are first born they are completely helpless their eyes are closed their ears are folded and they can t stand keep themselves warm or eat on their own they rely on mom for everything. Breastfeeding a kitten lasts about 9 weeks and when their teeth begin to come in after about four weeks they can begin to eat food. Newborn kittens require food every one to two hours for the first week of life then every three hours from seven to 14 days of life.

When the orphaned kittens are three to four weeks old begin to offer milk replacer in a shallow bowl then introduce a moist easily chewable diet. Feed your kitten a food that is made specifically for kittens. After the first four weeks of mother s milk a kitten gradually transitions to kitten food and is completely weaned at about eight weeks.