Anna, perhaps some people are thinking about goat milk as "more natural" in
the new age sense, but I think most people who consider it as suitable for
babies have merely inherited outdated ideas. At one time, at least in Europe
and North America, babies were much more likely to survive if they had goat
milk instead of cow's milk or the various concoctions that passed as
"formula." My grandmother's first infant, born in 1907, died at age 6 months
of what we would now call FTT. I am not sure why my grandmother was not
successful at breastfeeding -- I never had the chance to ask her, but other
relatives think she was told not to bf because of a family history of TB. My
mother, who was born in 1909, was fed a barley water and whey mixture; she
was two pounds under birthweight at 6 months of age and, at one year,
weighed a "whopping" 12 pounds. My grandmother started raising dairy goats,
and her subsequent two children thrived on goat milk.

To this day, many people who are allergic to bovine milk can tolerate goat
milk. This, and the popularity of goat milk as infant food during the early
part of this century, percolates in the minds of our society. Old
information dies hard. (We in the breastfeeding field are used to that, eh?)

Margery Wilson, IBCLC
former goatherd