{"id":3845,"date":"2020-11-10T09:26:34","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T14:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/?p=3845"},"modified":"2020-11-10T09:26:34","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T14:26:34","slug":"day-1-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/?p=3845","title":{"rendered":"Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>(I call the birthday day 0 which makes today day 1)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_132431952-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3847\" width=\"384\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_132431952-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_132431952-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_132431952-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_132431952-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_132431952-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We had a bit of a rough night, what can sometimes happen is low calcium can cause restlessness and anxiety, and that&#8217;s what happened overnight. I&#8217;m so thankful to have the amazing resource of the Canine Repro group on Facebook. So I was up all night getting calcium into Alice until we reached the level that relaxed her. Since about 5 AM she&#8217;s been calm and mothering perfectly. Today I&#8217;ll make her some special food (Mother&#8217;s Porridge) to help support her milk supply and calcium levels in addition to the Doc Roy&#8217;s Healthy Bones I&#8217;m using (they&#8217;re a balanced calcium\/phosphorus supplement and they&#8217;re tasty too).  She&#8217;ll stay on the calcium supplement until the puppies are weaned, and then I&#8217;ll gradually wean her off it. She may not need to be on the amount she&#8217;s on right now, I will try reducing it gradually after a day or two to find the sweet spot. Short term calcium supplementation is safe, and dogs (especially with large litters) are at risk for eclampsia, especially around the week 2 and week 4 marks, which is when the puppies really grow and put a lot of demand on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the calcium she&#8217;s getting 1 sunflower lecithin capsule twice daily to help prevent mastitis, plus her usual DHA supplement and probiotic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_130350079-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3846\" width=\"512\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_130350079-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_130350079-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_130350079-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_130350079-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/PXL_20201110_130350079-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>She&#8217;s got a bowl of her regular ProPlan Sport food available at all times and I&#8217;m giving her Royal Canin Gastrointestinal Puppy canned food, which should be easy on her system (they often have diarrhea for a few days after whelping, and she also ate the placentas), so far she hasn&#8217;t even pooped though!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hDkpzl5HuPs\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AP5M2jiWP0o\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>The lucky sevens all did GREAT overnight, everyone gained which is very unusual (usually they lose a bit in the first 24 hours then start gaining again). The average weight of the litter at birth was 194.7 grams (I weigh them in grams because I&#8217;m from Canada originally and because it&#8217;s easier to track small changes in grams), average weight this morning is 211 grams and average weight gain was 6.45 %. I have a nerd spreadsheet that calculates all this stuff for me, because math.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I generally don&#8217;t like to put collars on at birth and usually you get enough markings etc. to keep track of who&#8217;s who, poor Jim is the note taker while sleep-deprived I calls out what sex they are and what markings they have. Unfortunately this can mean that you end up with descriptions that can fit more than one puppy. I try to refine this on day 1 now that they&#8217;re dry and plumped up, so that even if I mixed up puppies between birth and day 1, it&#8217;s at least accurate going forward. Tracking weights is important because it can give you an early warning of someone not thriving who might need some extra help. I will hand feed them all a bit eventually anyway because I think it starts them feeling good things about people early on (thanks to my Rottweiler breeder friend Diane Richardson who does this and who told me about it)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(I call the birthday day 0 which makes today day 1) We had a bit of a rough night, what can sometimes happen is low calcium can cause restlessness and anxiety, and that&#8217;s what happened overnight. I&#8217;m so thankful to have the amazing resource of the Canine Repro group on Facebook. So I was up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,53,48,76,62,51,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alice","category-awesome","category-breeding","category-d-litter","category-dogs","category-puppies-dogs","category-vallhunds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3848,"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions\/3848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alkemi.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}