You should seek the advice of your veterinarian if your pet is ill as only he or she can correctly advise on the diagnosis and recommend the treatment that is most appropriate for your pet.

Feeding orphan kittens can be problematical - especially if they are orphaned suddenly and the owner does not have any commercial milk replacer available.

In general a commercially available milk replacer should be recommended for orphan kittens, but if one is not available the following homemade recipe has been used  (Remillard et al (1993) American Journal of Veterinary Research 54 : 901-907) :

One fresh whole egg (15g), Protein supplement (25g), Condensed sweetened milk (17ml), Corn oil (7ml) and Water (250ml). 

This formula provides a total of 310g of food with the following approximate analysis per 100 g of food (Table adapted after Hand et al, Small Animal Clinical Nutrition 4th Edition (2000) : p1068 Mark Morris Institute). This is not a perfect replacement for queens milk - it is lower in fat content and has a lower energy density. In addition, it does not contain colostrum.

HOWEVER recent evidence suggests that there is wide variation between the analyisis of homemade rations made up by different people - probably due to differences in raw ingredients content.

 

	Homemade Recipe	Natural Queens Milk
Moisture content (g)	86.4	79.3
Dry matter (g)	13.6	20.7
Protein (Crude)  (g)	6.4	7.5
Fat (oil)  (g)	3.4	8.6
Carbohydrate (NFE)  (g)	2.9	4
Ash  (g)	0.7	0.6
Calcium (mg)	109	180
Phosphorus (mg)	109	162
Sodium (mg)	90	90
Potassium  (mg)	113	103
Copper (mg)	0.2	0.11
Iron (mg)	3.5	0.35
Zinc (mg)	1.9	?
Metabolisable Energy (ME) kcal	62	121
Metabolisable Energy (ME) kJ	260	506