mom eating pups - Page 2

Sorry but idea with muzzle is stupid. You must have good relation with pregnant female and she will control her behavior in that case, so you can cooperate. If you are afraid of your female do not breed her. And in all case you are just birth spectator who will help your female to grow her assurance specially for first litter. For all other help you could not be novice.

Amir, I do not mean anything about relationship with the female. All I was thinking is worst case scenario.....if she has to deliver pups and mom eats them she will not have enough hands. Just a worse case scenario,that's all.Not a matter of control so much as having her mouth unavailable if she has her hands full and middle of the night and pups come quick. I know this is unlikely but I have delivered enough babies over the years to expect the unexpected.

I had a maiden female that required an emergency csection. She was muzzled the first couple of days that she was allowed in with the pups until her hormones kicked in. After that I didn't need to muzzle her, but if I had not used it the first couple of days, I would have lost the litter. So there is a need for it in certain situations, but natural whelpings I've not ever had to use a muzzle.

thank you all for your input I'm just trying to be as prepared as possible-definitely not afraid of my bitch and I do plan on spending every waking moment with her and the litter. She also is still presenting the nesting and scratching and chewing on her whelping box. She loves tuna and sardines which I use for reward in tracking so I gave her a can of tuna- she ate the whole can and seems to be drinking plenty of water. Just playing the waiting game now.

Hi ColeHausGSD, You will probably find that when your bitch is within 24hrs of whelping she wont want to eat anything, not even her Tuna! Have you tried giving her some raw liver (this gives the Iron needed to build back the blood), also red meat (ox heart is a good source), this helps promote milk. Your bitch may go through a period of nesting for a few days, nesting is thought to be stimulated by the opening of the uterous in readiness for whelping. When the uterous is opening it can be very uncomfortable and this scratching & ripping (known as nesting), helps the bitch ease the discomfort. If you are vigilant you might even see the mucus plug being expelled from the vagina. This is a long string of a sticky, gluey like substance, sometimes seen on the bitches trousers. Another indication of whelping within a few days. Normally I find my bitches have what I call an aggitated day, followed by refusing to eat anything (even their most favourite food), though some will carry the food off towards the whelping room as if wanting to save it for later. The next stage tends to be a day of rest, not even wanting to go out to play ball. I call this day, the calm before the storm!! The storm been the actual day she whelps. :-)) The early set of contractions are often missed by a novice breeder as at first much more is happening on the Inside than can be viewed on the outside, but more noticeable early on is the bitch will be panting, then sigh, perhaps even stop panting for a few minutes, then start again. You will also notice that she will give the odd groan and if you look carefully you may notice some movement of the fur towards the back if her loin in a type of rippling motion. Finally, the panting and deep groans, followed by the bitches excessive licking of her vulva will tell you whelping is imminent. Don't worry too much about what your vet said regarding her eating her pups, I cant believe a vet would say such a thing without cause. As for the afterbirths, I normally find my bitches are keen to get the afterbirths first, so whilst they are busy doing that I nip the chord between finger and thumb close to the pups body, this stops an over enthusiastic mother chomping too close. Good Luck and let us all know how you go on and what you get. Regards Sue B

Not to say anything bad about your vet but alot of them have never bred, and when it comes to birth the only time they get expierience is if something goes wrong and a c-section is needed. I have had many litters and have never had this happen, yes an imbilical hernia here and there or a pup gets stepped on but thats it. I don't know about you but I could not stay awake for 24hours a day for 7 days. Be a spectator for the birth, leave her alone, be quiet, and don't have a big crowd watching. Best advice, she will know what to do.

I understand you. But I am do not want to stand by muzzled female. We have practice to observe litter non-stop 24 hours per day in first seven days by person as spectator, four days for second litter and two days other litters if we do not have any complication before with same female. And other period we observe litter 0-24 hours by live cams. We try to breed and to decrease possibility of accident and lost babies. And how much you care you never stops accident in all. I just do not understand how muzzled female could care about puppies. She will be madden muzzled and could trample newborns. If she starts to eat puppies you must in a moment pull her necklace and separate her from litter. She will become soon from shock and take care about puppies. Hormones will rise in body and hormones will rise in female feelings for newborns. If she do not want care about puppies then muzzled female do not help you. In that case you must separate female for all growing period and feed them with dogs prepared milk (we use Bosch), massage stomach to avoid spasm, clean refuse...

We'll just have to agree to disagree. I observe all my litters as well. The female I muzzled was able to nurse her puppies. We cleaned the puppies the first day or so. Once her hormones kicked in (she suffered from uterine inertia and was never bred again) she took over the cleaning and care of the pups, but if I hadn't muzzled her after the csection (when hormones weren't activated) she would've attacked them since she wasn't herself after the anesthesia. I did not leave her in the box with the puppies, I brought her in every few hours to feed them. I am talking about the females that can take over feeding pups,cleaning them etc after being properly monitored after a csection. There are some females that if they eat their young after a natural whelp or do not accept them after a csection (within a reasonable time) should not be bred again.

the worst that could happen has happened= I saved 5 from a litter of 8- she ate 3 She did calm down enough for about 3 hours to let the pups nurse- then she started stressing again and walking around grabbing onto the pups kinda viciously. This has been a horrifying experience and PLEASE just keep me in your prayers. Needless to say, no more breedings from this dog.

My friend had a similar case. His female (just turned two years old)had her first litter, five pups. He "got rid of" 3 females and kept 2 males. (I was furious with him !!!) When pups were abot 7 days old one "went missing". We did nor suspect that she might have eaten it. Four days later he found the only remaining puppy with its head bitten off. That expalined the dissaperance of the first pup. She comes from a family (mother side at least) which never had those problems to my best knowledge. She is , I have to say,a bit problematic. She does not like company of other dogs. Even the mating was a problem, I was not present but they told me that she was veru agressive towards the male. When they wanted to repeat the mating the next day she made a "spectacle" they thought she went competely crazy. She is VERY attached to her owner and the one thing that came to my mind was that she did not want anything to stand between the two of them. Against my advice he is thinking to bread her again.