How to Feed My Pet

Bottle-feeding an orphaned puppy or kitten

Dogs & catsBirth – weaning·Sources checked September 13, 2026
This is general information, not veterinary advice, and it cannot diagnose your animal. Very young puppies and kittens deteriorate quickly — when something looks wrong, contact a veterinarian rather than waiting to see if it resolves. Medical disclaimer

This is the one page on this site where we are going to keep telling you to get a person in the room. Bottle-feeding a newborn looks simple and is not: the most common serious mistake — milk going into the lungs instead of the stomach — can happen quietly and kill an animal that seemed fine ten minutes earlier.

What follows is enough to make you a safer caregiver and to tell you what to ask. It is not a substitute for a veterinarian or an experienced fosterer showing you, hands on, with your animal.

How we label our evidence

  • Source-supportedStated directly in the cited institutional publication.
  • Our editorial guidanceA conservative reading of the evidence applied to a caregiver decision. Not a validated clinical protocol.
  • Evidence gapWe could not verify this in our approved sources, so we have not invented a number.

Choosing the milk

Use a commercial milk replacer made for the species, and follow its own mixing instructions. Merck prefers commercial replacers over homemade mixtures.

Our editorial guidance
Do not treat cow's milk, lactose-free drinking milk, human infant formula, or a product made for the other species as interchangeable without veterinary direction. We could not establish comparative product composition or universal substitution rules in our approved sources — which is itself the reason to follow a label rather than a substitution you read somewhere.
Source-supported
A correction worth making: "all newborn kittens are lactose intolerant" is not accurate. Merck describes feline lactase activity declining after weaning, plus possible secondary lactose intolerance following intestinal injury. That does not make cow's milk an appropriate complete diet for a newborn — it is nutritionally wrong for the job regardless of lactose.

Energy requirements

Merck publishes these as combined canine and feline figures — the same numbers for puppies and kittens.

Neonatal energy requirement, dogs and cats (Merck Veterinary Manual)
WeekEnergy requirement
Week 1133 kcal/kg/day
Week 2155 kcal/kg/day
Week 3175–198 kcal/kg/day
Week 4220 kcal/kg/day

Once a veterinarian has set how many calories should come from milk replacer, the arithmetic is straightforward:

  • Daily volume (mL) = calories to come from replacer ÷ prepared formula energy density (kcal/mL)
  • Volume per feed = daily volume ÷ planned feeds per day

If the animal is also nursing or eating solids, the veterinarian sets only the remaining calorie contribution. Do not add a full formula ration on top of what it is already getting.

Evidence gap
Notice what is missing above: how often, and how much per feed. Our approved sources did not provide a species-specific table of feeding intervals, feed counts, safe stomach capacity, or mL per feed. Arithmetic can tell you a daily total; it cannot tell you that a given bolus is safe for a given newborn. That depends on body weight, health, temperature, swallowing ability, formula concentration, and how much volume the animal tolerates — which is why a veterinarian sets it. We have not filled this gap with a "mL per 100 g" rule of thumb.

Positioning, and the aspiration risk

Support the puppy or kitten belly-down, with the head in a natural position. Never feed a newborn on its back like a human baby. Let it suck actively rather than squeezing milk into its mouth — forced feeding is a documented route to aspiration pneumonia, as is an undetected cleft palate.

Our editorial guidance
The aspiration hazard above is source-supported. The complete technique — hand placement, nipple flow rate, head angle — is not something we could verify as a published protocol, so we are not going to diagram it. Ask your veterinarian to watch you do one feed. That single appointment is worth more than any article.

Burping: less settled than you would think

People often carry the human-infant routine across. Our sources did not establish that every bottle-fed puppy or kitten must be burped, that burping prevents aspiration, or any validated technique or duration.

Swallowed air is a reasonable thing to consider. What it is not is a home diagnosis: a persistently swollen, firm, or painful abdomen must not be written off as "just gas."

Our editorial guidance
After a feed, check breathing and general comfort. Do not compress the abdomen or repeatedly strike the back to force a burp. A settled, comfortable animal is a reassuring observation — not a clearance.

When to act

What the action labels mean

Emergency now —
contact an emergency veterinary service and arrange immediate assessment. Do not wait for the next scheduled feed or weigh-in.
Call now for triage —
telephone the veterinary service when you notice the sign. The veterinarian decides how quickly the animal needs to be seen.
Contact today —
get in touch when you notice the issue to agree on a time. This does not mean waiting until evening.

Emergency now

Breathing difficulty, blue or grey gums, collapse, or marked weakness after a feed. Also: any suspected aspiration in an animal that is now breathing abnormally. Stop feeding immediately and go.

Call now for triage

Milk appearing at the nostrils, coughing or choking during feeding, a new respiratory noise, inability to swallow, or a persistent painful abdominal swelling. Stop feeding and get advice before the next feed.

Puppies

Repeated nasal reflux deserves assessment for a congenital defect such as cleft palate — do not assume every episode is down to positioning.

Two beliefs to drop: that squeezing in more milk means better growth, and that a little milk from the nose is harmless.

Kittens

Use a kitten-labelled replacer and its exact preparation instructions. Do not copy a puppy product, concentration, volume, or schedule into a kitten plan.

An aspiration history matters even before obvious pneumonia develops — mention it when you call, even if the kitten seems to have recovered. "No cough" does not mean "no aspiration."

Before every feed: a chilled newborn must be warmed first. Feeding a cold newborn is how milk ends up sitting in a stalled gut.

Sources