Mykah’s Milk – Goat’s Milk Formula (homemade baby formula)

Meet Mykah’s new milk mommies!!!  We started Mykah on homemade goat’s milk formula a few weeks ago.  She is doing AMAZING on it!  If you follow my personal blog at www.warriorprincessdiaries.com you know I have low milk supply.  On top of that Mykah has food allergies preventing us from being able to use donated breast milk.  We tried hypoallergenic formula, she would not drink it… smart baby!  45% corn syrup and a lot of other ingredients I can’t pronounce.  That stuff is not food.

After a LOT of prayer and a series of events we were led to Swede Farm Dairy.  Leanne is a midwife with twelve, yes 12, children and had low milk supply herself.  She told me our story hit close to home and despite that fact that this time of year most of the goat’s are dried up pregnant, she and her husband Tim (and their 12 kids 🙂 are committed to helping babies and they worked it out to be able to provide milk to Mykah each week!!!  A HUGE blessing.  If you are ever at the Urban Harvest Farmer’s Market in Houston on Saturday morning stop by their booth and try some goat cheese – so yummy!

Here is the formula that we are using… it is based on the Westin A Price formula.

Ingredients (individual amazon links not working – see bottom of page)

• 2 cups goat’s milk (low temperature pasteurized)
• 1/4 cup homemade liquid whey (See recipe for whey) Note: Do NOT use powdered whey or whey from making cheese (which will cause the formula to curdle). Use only homemade whey made from yoghurt, kefir or separated raw milk.  We make whey from goat yogurt that we buy from Swede Farm.  We found that 1 pint of this yogurt makes about 1 cup of whey.
• 4 tablespoons lactose
  
• 1 scoop HMF Natogen (infant probiotic)
• 1/2 teaspoon unflavored high-vitamin fermented cod liver oil
  
• 1/4 teaspoon high-vitamin butter oil (optional – milk fat only, does not contain lactose or milk proteins casein and whey)
  
• 1 teaspoon expeller-expressed sunflower oil
  
• 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil (good quality)
  
• 4 teaspoons coconut oil**
  
• 2 teaspoons Frontier brand nutritional yeast flakes
  
• 2 teaspoons gelatin (optional – I did not use this)
  
• 1-7/8 cups filtered water (remove 2 TBS from 2 cups – honestly I just used 2 cups)
• 1/4 teaspoon acerola powder
• 1 drop infant Vitamin D (1,000iu/day)
• 1 capsule Colostrum (optional)
• 1/4 tsp Glutamine (***included for gut healing – optional)

<<You can buy ingredients (except the milk products) in a kit from Radiant Life.  The kit will have a different probiotic, and exclude Vit D, Colostrum, and Glutamine.  The HMF Natogen is a better probiotic in my opinion.  You may also get most ingredients from Amazon (see disclaimer).  You may save a little money as well, especially if you are a Prime member w/ free shipping.  Order cod liver oil and optional high vitamin butter oil from Radiant Life.>>

Goat’s milk is lower in iron, B12 and folate than babies need, thus the formula calls for 2 tsp grated chicken liver (frozen for 14 days).  Use ONLY liver from pastured chickens from a trusted farm.  We buy from YonderWay Farms.  However, for us the liver clogged up the Lact-aid and we did not want to go to a faster flow bottle nipple yet (we are still breastfeeding and use the First Years Breast Flow bottle).  We tried adding molasses (see Organic Thrifty blog) but it turned her stools a really dark brown and made it hard for me to evaluate the improvement of the green slime as we did an elimination diet.  Mykah is 5 months old now so we decided to leave the liver out of the formula and just feed it to her in her egg yolks.  I read about that in Super Nutrition for Babies… great book!!!  (UPDATE 12/27/12 – we are now adding molasses to her milk, since starting solids her stools are all crazy anyway, haha, so the dark color of the molasses poops don’t freak me out as much as they did when she was younger).

Finally, we had a hard time deciding between low temp pasteurized milk and raw milk.  It is too much to go into in this post.  We are more comfortable with low temp pasteurized milk for Mykah at this point (although we drink raw milk).  But we did add Colostrum to the formula (we use Designs for Health brand – contact me for order info).  If you can’t find a good local goat dairy in your area try looking for Water Oak brand in your health food store.   Do not use ultra-pasturized or powdered milk.  ** Original formula calls for only 2 tsp coconut oil and also includes high quality cream – however Mykah seems to be dairy sensitive so we substituted xtra coconut oil for the cream.  You cannot get goat cream, the milk does not separate the same as cow milk.  We searched and searched for a researched based substitute and could find nothing so this is an educated guess – if you have other solutions please post a comment and let me know! *** I added glutamine to help heal Mykah’s gut from inflammation due to food allergies.

Mykah is 5 1/2 months old as I write this post.  She is a healthy 16 pounds and doing so great.  She spits up WAY less (turns out it was not just a “laundry problem” after all).  She has less gas and is less fussy.  Best of all, no more slimy green mucus poops!  In fact, she LOVES LOVES LOVES to laugh and is a really happy baby!!!  YAY!!!

I hope this post helps other moms and babies!!! Please feel free to leave any questions you have in the comments section and I will do my best to support you!!!

Final note:  I am a HUGE fan of breastfeeding.  I have chronic low milk supply and must supplement Mykah with something and this is the best alternative to commercial formula I have found.  Thankfully, I am able to breastfeed and provide Mykah with about half her daily needs with my milk.  The WAP Foundation has a detailed chart showing the nutrient comparisons of this homemade formula to breast milk.  Here is a nice article on soy and why we don’t feed that to our baby.  This post is written to share our journey with family and to support other moms on the same journey!!!  There have been many tears!  It has been hard!  And finally there is light, and joy, and new hope!

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.  Psalm 30:5

Disclaimer:  I will earn a small commission if you use the above links to order products from Amazon.  These are the exact products I use for Mykah’s milk.  Ordering from our Amazon store is much appreciated.

***Links not active – argh – I am working to get the Amazon links live.  Check back soon.  So sorry!  For now here is a link to the BABY FOOD FORMULA page on our AMAZON STORE to view products.***