| Re: lots or puppys
14 is a lot of puppies!! I remember my Jenna's first litter was 14 and one was born stillborn but the rest survived with a LOT of hard work from us. Our "little" puppy should have better been described as our "miniscule" puppy being born at a mere 120grams (about 1/4 of a lb). We had to do a ton of supplement feeding, helping mom clean, and checking weights 3-4 times/ day on the weaker puppies to ensure that they kept gaining weight. Checking weights once/day on the entire litter. The tiny pup ended up having to be tube fed for about a day and a half as he kept trying to nurse but then would fall asleep and not end up nursing and within hours was dehydrated.
In my experience, 14 is too much for one mother to feed by herself even with the best of maternal nutrition so be prepared now to supplement these babies. We tried several different "formulas" of puppy milk replacers but in the end we found that goat's milk was the easiest replacement on the babies systems.
I would advise weighing your babies repeatedly and tracking that each puppy is gaining weight. What I did with Jenna's first litter was I would put half the litter on her to nurse while I bottle fed the other half and then would swap and top up the babes that had just nurses and let the 2nd half nurse.....IT WAS A TON OF WORK every 2 hours!!
Fortunately we had a waiting list of 10 great homes so it was only a matter of finding two more (as I kept 2). Best of luck in the LONG weeks you have before you!!!
Heather Peters  |