feeding a4 day old pot belly piglet

Question
I have a 4 day old pot belly piglet that Mom had refused to nurse, leaving me to bottle feed. I've bottled raised other animals from birth with success but never a piglet. How much and how often should he be getting his goats milk? If I let him he well down 2 ounces about every 2 hours. Is this too much?

Answer
If he is peeing and pooping Ok, active and energetic, then it's Ok to let him have as much as he wants for now. Diarrhea can be deadly for a piglet his age, so watch out for that. Keeping him warm is very important also.

When he is about 3 weeks old you can start mixing a starter pellet or two in his milk. Keep adding more pellets at each meal until it looks like cream of wheat. At this point you can either begin reducing the amount of liquid by just a bit at a time, until it's dry pellets, or you can gradually switch from goat milk to water and continue to feed him moistened pellets.

Piglets have a kind of internal clock for weaning. A four week old piglet might taste a food, but spit it out. A six week old piglet will hesitantly sample most foods. An eight week old piglet is ready to be weaned and is extremely interested in any food.

I recommend the book "Pot Bellied Pig Behavior and Training" by Priscilla Valentine, and the dvd "There's a Pig in the House" from tophogs.com Yahoo Groups has several groups devoted to pet pigs, PigInfoAndChat is a good one with lots of people who have bottle baby experience and are happy to answer questions.