How to bottle feed a weak or orphaned puppy
Sometimes
one puppy in a given litter is weak or failing to thrive under the
mother and you need to step in to save it. Rarely, you may loose the
mother. In either of these scenerios you must be prepared to step in
quickly or you could loose the puppy or the litter. Be prepared before
anything like this happens! This article will help walk you through the
basics of how to bottle feed a weak or orphaned puppy.
As anyone that has had a litter of puppies knows you have to be ready for just about anything.
Sometimes
right away you see that a particular puppy may be in trouble and you
think you should step in to help mom and the poor puppy out.
First
make sure that the puppy can get a good drink of mom's first milk known
as Colostrum. This first milk contains antibodys that the puppy needs
to survive and thrive. A puppy that does not get this first milk is a
puppy at great risk so do everything you can to insure that every puppy
gets a chance to suckle from mom as soon as possible.
This formula recipe is from Leerburg.com and according to Ed Frawley it has 11 calories per cc.
You
can use the formula provided by your veterinarian but I have had much
better success with rearing puppies using Leerburg.com's recipe.
Things You'll Need:
* 1 10oz can of evaporated milk
* plain yogurt
* whole egg
* 1T Mayonase
* baby bottle with nipple of aproprate size for the puppy
For
your little runt puppy you will want to encourage it to suckle on mom
as much as possible. With luck you can get this puppy on mom several
times a day without being pushed out by it's larger siblings.
In
a sauce pan place all the ingredients and slowly warm to boiling, then
allow to cool. Place about 1-2 oz into bottle and put the rest away in
a clean washed container.
Wash bottle and nipple in warm soapy
water, fill bottle with warm water and check to see if it flows out of
the nipple easily. You don't want it too fast as it could choke your
puppy but if it is too slow the puppy will have a hard time suckling
and loose interest.
Pour formula into bottle and close lid.
check against the inside of your wrist to insure it is not too hot. You
want it quite warm but not burning.
Hold your puppy slightly on
his back and try to get the nipple into his mouth, you may need to
squeeze the bottle a bit to get him interested in sucking. A healthy
puppy will push his feet forward and kneed your hands almost like he is
trying to push you away. He will wrap his tongue around the bottom of
the nipple to suckle.
If he seems to be having too much milk
running out of his mouth or seems to have a real problem latching onto
the nipple you will want to put your pinky finger upside down into his
mouth to make sure he doesn't have a cleft palate. Puppies with cleft
palate often do not survive, they typically get pneumonia and die as a
result. If your puppy has cleft palate you may wish to consider
humanely having him put to sleep.
Puppies fed this formula tend
to catch up to the others pretty quickly as long as there are no other
underlying health issues to deal with.
If at all possible leave puppy with the mother dog to care for in between your supplimental feedings.
Resources
* bottle feeding puppies info on leerburg.com
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