Most commercial dairy goat famers use ad libitum milk feeding set-ups that allow constant,
unrestricted milk access to artificially rear goat kids. No detailed information on how kids use
these ad libitum milk systems exists and characterising this would help target future research
and improve management. The aim was to describe and characterise the individual and
group milk feeding behaviour of 16 castrated male dairy breed goat kids from 22 to 56 days
of age, in two pens fed from a computerised milk feeder supplying one teat per pen. Solid
feed and water intakes were measured from 15 to 70 days of age and Average Daily Gain
(ADG) calculated. Repeated measures mixed models produced weekly estimated marginal
means of milk feeding variables. Factors influencing ADG were investigated using residual
maximum likelihood analysis. Spearman‘s rank correlations investigated the relationship
between pen-level feeding behaviour variables and age. Meal criterions were created by
fitting a mixture of Gaussians to determine a threshold value. On average it took 7.8 days
before kids were reliably suckling alone (range 2-15 days). Each day kids spent on average
24.3±1.80 min feeding and consumed 1968±99.6 ml of milk. Mean individual daily milk
consumption increased with age (p <0.001; 1623 ml/day week four to 2222 ml/day week 8),
as did milk intake per meal (p <0.001). The number of daily rewarded milk station visits
averaged 8.4±0.14 (range 2 – 19). Daily milk meals and time spent milk feeding was not
impacted by age (p 0.666; p 0.095). ADG was not associated with age (p 0.226; weekly
average 0.19 – 0.22) and was most impacted by an interaction between daily milk intake.