Bottle fed is when a goat kid is raised on a bottle, while dam raised is when a goat kid is raised by its mother. We have had both on our farm, and there are pros and cons to both. It's important to do your research and choose which is best for you and your family.
One of the major benefits of buying a bottle fed baby is that you don't have to wait until they are weaned to bring them home. If this is what you choose, you have to be prepared to put the time into feeding them properly. In order to keep them healthy, you will need to follow a strict feeding schedule and they will need a lot of attention. You also have to be VERY careful not to overfeed them. Baby goats are NOT human babies. Human babies cry when they are hungry and stop drinking when their stomachs are full. Baby goats will drink themselves sick, so don't let them fool you into thinking they didn't get enough. See our post Goats: How To Bottle Feed for more information on how to properly care for a bottle baby.
Bottle babies also seem to have less "respect" for humans. They see you as their momma/herd and will treat you as such. We have noticed that the goats we have bought that were bottle babies jump on us, have no idea what personal space is (will even chew your hair), and will try to escape the goat yard to be with us (which could potentially be dangerous for them). These things can be corrected, but that's time that we could be spending elsewhere. These behaviors are also not dealbreakers for us. We have some does that were bottle babies that still jump on us occasionally, but because they are a miniature breed, it's easy to push them aside.
On our farm, we let our does raise their babies whenever possible. This keeps them happy as well as saves us time (and possibly money if we have to make the formula). We only bottle feed if the doe gets sick, the doe rejects a baby, or if the doe isn't producing enough milk for all of her babies (can sometimes happen in triplets or quads). We also like dam raised because its less stressful for both the doe and the kids and stress can trigger sickness. Dam raised kids feel more confident being outside with the herd and can be introduced to the herd earlier with their momma protecting them. We also find that dam raised kids tend to be healthier and learn a lot more about foraging.
A big question we get asked is if bottle babies are friendlier than dam raised. Frequent human contact is what really helps make them great pets, not necessarily the bottle feeding aspect. We make sure to handle our kids from birth, even if they are dam raised. This is a "chore" we usually delegate to our daughters and its their absolute favorite. It also helps that our does are very docile and domesticated because kids tend to mirror what their moms do early on.
Starting this year, we are going to be introducing all of our kids to bottles, just in case they need to be transitioned to one at a later date. We had a situation last year where a doe we had bought got sick when her twins were 4 weeks old. Our vet said to pull them and bottle feed them so she could spend her energy on getting better. The kids wanted nothing to do with the bottle. It was a stressful few days until they finally accepted that was how they were going to get their milk from now on. We no longer have that doe (or her offspring) because we want only really healthy, robust goats in our bloodlines. But she did teach us an important lesson about being prepared for anything to happen, which is why we will have all of our future kids familiar with a bottle, even if they are dam raised.
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