Oh Yeah, You Blend

Everybody did well overnight. Zhora has the usual post-whelp diarrhea (partly hormones, partly eating placentas, I’m sure also partly stress, she worked very hard yesterday and this is all new to her) so I catnapped rather than slept so I could keep an eye on the puppies and Zhora and be sure to let her out as often as she wanted.

Popcorn (the littlest girl born by c-section, named Popcorn by Dr Gray because someone burned popcorn and you could smell it everywhere while we were there yesterday) lost some weight overnight. Not abnormal in the first 24 hours, but she’s little, so I decided to top her up with formula. She was nursing very well from the makeup sponge but I had a hard time figuring out how much was actually getting into her as her weight really wasn’t changing much. So I decided to tube feed to be sure she was getting enough. Now she’s active and energetic and a very vigorous nurser, holds on to the nipple tight and fends off her bigger siblings if they try to muscle in. I do with her what I’ve always done for the smaller puppies – let one of the big puppies get an inguinal teat going, and then pull that puppy off the teat, move them to another, and put the little puppy on it. The inguinal teats (the ones closest to the mother’s hind legs) seem to let milk down faster and easier, and are less work for the puppy than some of the others, at least that’s how it seems to me. So she’s getting lots of time nursing, but nursing burns calories and I want her calories to go to making more Popcorn. So I’m going to tube feed her three times a day to supplement her nursing (Dr Gray suggested three times a day to start). I also keep in mind that the other puppies had a good 6 + hour head start on nursing, so it’s not surprising that they all gained well and are fat, round-bellied beanbags. Puppies can go downhill fast, so I am a firm believer in taking all reasonable action early if it’s a “can’t hurt/might help” sort of thing. I’m also using Nutri Drops from Revival – each puppy is getting at least one dose.

Every litter teaches you something! This one’s taught me about c-sections and tube feeding. And that’s just in the first 36 hours!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2017 at 1:40 PM and is filed under breeding, C litter, dogs, puppies, vallhunds, Zhora. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.