from Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children (Michel de Montaigne, late 1500s):
The village-women where I live call in the help of goats when they cannot suckle their children themselves; I have now two menservants who never tasted mothers’ milk for more than a week. These nanny-goats are trained from the outset to suckle human children; they recognize their voices when they start crying and come running up. They reject any other child you give them except the one they are feeding; the child does the same to another nanny-goat. The other day I saw an infant who had lost its own nanny-goat as the father had only borrowed it from a neighbour: the child rejected a different one which was provided and died, certainly of hunger.
after reading this, I did a preliminary google search for “nanny goats” and found no productive results on the topic of goat milk being a substitute for breast milk.
Interestingly, the wikipedia article on goat milk had this to say:
Breast milk is the best nutrition for infants. If this is not an option, infant formula is the alternative. EFSA (European Food Safety Association) concluded in 2012 that goat milk protein is suitable as a protein source in infant and follow-on formulas.[5] Ever since, goat milk-based infant formulas have rapidly gained popularity around the world including: the UK, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, China, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. These formulas are not produced by the infant formula multinationals but by companies that focus on specialty infant formulas. In the U.S. goat milk infant formula is not yet available.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recognizes that goat infant formula has been thoroughly reviewed and supports normal growth and development in infants.[6]
There is only information on this topic from the 2000s and later. There is no mention of goat milk being historically used as a substitution for breast milk.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but no, my preliminary google search did not bring up Galen on the first page of results. My comment was more expressing surprise that something that was so commonplace for such a large part of human history has zero references on Wikipedia.
In the article for breast milk, the introductory paragraphs leading to the chart explaining alternatives are spent explaining why cow’s milk is an inadequate replacement. Goat milk is one of the columns there, but you actually need to parse the numbers to see that it’s much more appropriate, and the text does not help you at all.
Galen’s wp article also makes no reference to goat milk.
Mostly it makes me wonder how many other Wikipedia articles are missing huge sections.