Rearing Orphan Puppies...................................by Sheilagh Nattrass What a disaster! Your wonderful new mother either dies suddenly or is too ill to look after her puppies.To lose a bitch at this time comes as a terrible shock. The first thing must be to pull yourself together[very difficult] and then decide you are going to have a 100% success rate in rearing the new puppies for your bitches sake.Occasionally,if you are very lucky a foster mother might be found and your problems would be half way to being solved .Any foster mother should be healthy and maternally inclined.I have found that an older bitch,while not being able to feed the pups herself will happily clean the puppies,keep them warm and love them.This is a great help. When I lost my Champion bitch ,the first dilemma was to decide how to keep the new-born puppies warm,with a constant temperature as they have very little temperature control of their own.I achieved this by using a large seed propagator with a thermostat,using vet bed on the base and sticking a thermometer on the side .I found this to be most useful as I could see the puppies at all times.Be careful to leave the lid slightly open to prevent condensation. Once I saw them sleeping on their backs,I knew that they were happy Feeding times were almost constant as there were nine puppies to feed every two hours ,I found I had 20minutes rest after they had all been fed,encouraged to urinate by pressing on their bladders,helping them to defecate by pressing on the anus,and put down to sleep. Then I had to start again. Feeding orphaned puppies is probably a personal decision,I used Whelpi,finding that my bulldog puppies would take almost exactly twice the ammount recommended on the tin. At first I used a normal eye dropper for feeding,gradually moving onto a syringe,firstly a 5ml,then on to a 10ml size .Obviously after each feeding session,the droppers and syringes were placed in a solution of Milton to steriise them.I was lucky in that the puppies all went straight to sleep after their feeds .I never heard them cry . When the puppies were about two and a half weeks old,all surviving and healthy,I started to add a little Farex or Baby rice to the Whelpi,at this stage I was very fortunate in finding that they were able to lap and take the feed from a saucer whilst sitting on my knee. At about three weeks of age ,I started to feed the puppies on raw minced beef,my butcher actually minced his best minced beef a further three times to make it very soft,then I rolled the mince into little balls about the size of a walnut,the puppies thought this was wonderful,I found difficulty in not overfeeding them at this stage. At three and a half weeks I felt that they needed more food,I decided to add Eukanuba to the diet[any special puppy food with the necessary protien and vitamins would be fine ] I placed the puppy Eukanuba in a mug and soaked it until it was like gravy,then added this to the minced beef.This was a very messy process but very rewarding to see the puppies growing well and obviously happy and healthy.At this point I stopped feeding them with milk,just giving them water to drink. Gradually the puppies grew and grew,as puppies do, they soon learned to feed themselves and my old bitch was wonderful at cleaning them and playing with them.,I was very fortunate that they all survived,two puppies became champions and one had 2 CCs. None of this makes losing your bitch any better but it helps !! |
First published in the British Bulldog Club magazine 1996 |
