Kitten Weaned Too Soon

Making sure your cat is healthy.

Kitten weaned too soon. Stray or feral kittens are often found without a mother and therefor end up weaned too young which can cause suckling behavior. Orphaned kittens or those weaned too soon are more likely to exhibit inappropriate suckling behaviors later in life such as sucking on blankets pillows or your arm. So what happens when you separate the kittens too early. Normally the kitten weaning process begins at about four weeks of age.

Kitty milk is full of crucial nutritional elements that. The biggest concern for cats that have been weaned too soon is not the silly little habits that danger held on to but their overall health. Very young kittens who are too young to be weaned are called neonates. In an extreme case a cat will suck on just about everything he sees such as blankets clothes and even people when he is weaned too soon.

Kittens can acquire a lot of negative behaviors because of this early separation as well as health deficiencies. The first few months of life are essential to a young and growing kitten s well being and their mother is responsible for a lot of that. Newborn kittens get 100 percent of their nutrients from their mother s milk. As in most countries the kittens are weaned at 8 weeks old which is decided to be like this in consideration that critical period of socialization process in kittens end at that age so the study decides that the better weaning process should be weaned at 14 weeks old.

Ideally kittens should stay with their littermates or other role model cats for at least 12 weeks. Also cats who wean too soon can develop habitual suckling behaviors later on in life. When you wean a cat too late you could have a very hard time getting him to take to solid foods. But if you re weaning a kitten that has been orphaned you can start a little earlier between three and four weeks.

Professor hannes lohi stated that by weaning kitten at 14 weeks old it can give significant positive influence to the life s quality of the cats and their owner. A mother cat wean her babies naturally when kittens are about 2 3 months old by starting to reject her kittens. There has been some changes over the past decade or so about how some animal control facilities or shelters deal with the problem of orphaned kittens who are too young to eat on their own. In total the weaning process can last as long as ten weeks at which point your kitten should be eating strictly kitty chow.

Kittens are usually weaned at six to seven weeks but they may continue to suckle for comfort as their mother gradually leaves them for longer periods of time.