What you might not know...
By Laura K. S. Shaw of Bellaclan Border Collies
After getting asked over and over again in the past 16 years about what I bottle feed with, and having to write it over and over again I decided to write this for my breeder clients and breeder friends!! Having years of experience taking on multiple rescue litters with NO MOTHER all at one time (even 23 cross bred motherless puppies at once) from 3 days old and having them ALL live, well as you can imagine, I learned how to bottle feed pups and how to take care of neonates rather fast! On top of this I have whelped litters of Great Pyrenes and Newfoundlands for breeder clients and this has worked like a charm. A million times better than any canine milk replacer on the market!
#1 thing is to make sure that you weigh them 2-3 times a day from birth and find out if they are actually loosing or gaining weight as you go on. You will see a weight drop the first day after they are born but this should bounce up to a steady weight gain right away. My pups generally weigh 12-15 ounces at birth (Jackson was 1lb and 1 oz!). When bottle feeding weight them before you start and then again BEFORE each feeding! It is really hard to tell by looking as it took me 5 days to really see that Felicity during her 2nd litter had next to no milk, the pups seemed like they were drinking and didn't look like they were getting smaller but they were also not getting bigger. Within 2 days of formula I had them nearly double their birth weight and that's what made me realize how little milk she actually had...she definitely was not producing enough!!
Start formula ASAP and replace the water in the formula with childrens pedialyte for the first couple days to boost them! Pinch the skin above the neck before each feeding to see how hydrated the pup is. If the pup is willing to nurse but the skin in not snapping back then I mix the formula in half with infant pedialyte for that feeding as it is more important that the pup is hydrated then anything else! Or feed the the normal meal but I will also inject ½-1 oz of electrolyte under the skin.
Mix in liver water with the formula for the first couple days. Boil a chunk of liver, you want all the blood, filter out any chunks and store in fridge. Feed cooked liver to mom mix with chicken broth or condensed milk for her. I find that feeding a dam 1 cup of half high fat cottage cheese mixed with half cup natural full fat yogurt and 1 cup chicken broth to 1 cup water twice a day will help drop milk!!! Sometimes just dog food won't cut it, I actually feed cottage cheese to my bitches the whole time and lots of ground beef from the time the pups are a week old till 5 weeks.
I use a Gerber bottles but I remove the nipple and buy and replace the nipples with the kind for premature babies, also Gerber brand. I will switch back to the bigger nipple for bigger and/or older pups. I have tried to use every bottle on the market and (learn from my mistakes) these are the best and the cheapest too! I even tried the Dr Browns bottles!! Do not even try and use the tiny bottles found at pet stores, they might work for small breeds but they are far too small for Border Collie pups and they can’t latch on!
ALWAYS BURP them, hold them head up and firmly tap their backs don't stop till you get 2-3 burps, they ALWAYS get air from bottle feeding and will cry in pain from it if you don't burp! You might have to stop mid feeding and burp the pup and then finish feeding the rest of the meal and burp them again!
Trick-this worked amazing after having pups have a hard time gripping the nipple.
When you bottle feed put the nipple into their mouth and then wrap your hand around the pups muzzle and light but firmly hold the pups mouth around the nipple the entire time they are feeding, this helps SO MUCH to avoid them swallowing air and takes less effort for pup to nurse! They cannot latch onto a rubber nipple the same way they do their mothers but this seems to make it so much easier!
Below: Showing this technique
Be careful with heat lamps, if she is not making enough milk/fluids and you are warming the pups that will only dehydrate them that much faster. Just put them in a draft free place, I would put in a humidifier if possible to help prevent dehydration especially if you really need the heat light to keep them warm. If they are on the floor I would raise the whelping box off of the floor a bit. (I put a wooden pallet under mine.) As long as they are draft free Mom should keep them warm!
Warm the milk to body temperature, only warm the amount needed per feeding, I like to place a filled bottle of milk into a pot of HOT water. If you get it too hot you will cook the egg in the formula! I make enough formula for a week and just store it and warm as needed.
If you need help tube feeding please contact me, or ask a breeder that knows how. You can also ask a vet but there are many vets that don’t have as much experience tube feeding as a good long time breeder does. Same with putting fluids under the skin contact me or go to a breeder or vet! Being able to administer fluids is so important and I think all breeders should know how to do this as it is truly a life saver. More pups die from dehydration then anything else. If a pup is sick it should get warmed fluids FIRST before anything else, do not worry about it not eating that pup will not starve in one day but it will get dehydrated so hydration is #1.
Do not ever bottle feed a cold pup. If you find a pup away from the litter and it is a bit cold then you need to warm the pup up slowly, you can put a few drops of “liver water” mixed with caro syrup into it’s mouth every ½-1 hr or so, administer warm fluids under the skin, massage the skin and if the passage way seems blocks or the pup is sniffling then I would also give the puppy some oxygen. I make an incubator out of a large clear plastic Rubbermaid bin and punch a small hole, and run the oxygen on low into it with the puppy inside. When you feed a puppy the puppy uses energy to suckle and digest food. If the puppy is cold or sick it is using energy to warm up etc so you don’t want to use more energy to digest food. This is why when you are sick you loose your appetite!
Below: A content bottle fed puppy!
Formula:
10 OZ of WHOLE goats milk (preffered) OR evaporated canned milk (do not use cow milk no matter what)
2 raw egg yolks (only the yolk NO WHITES!)
1 cup of plain natural yogurt with all the probiotics (don't use the fat free kind unless you really have to)
1 tsp of corn syrup
10 drops of infant multi vitamins
1/8 cup of the liver water
I also like to crunch up 1/4 of a vitamin C tablet and melt into hot water then mix into formula
Feed every 4 hrs till 2 weeks old then every 6 hrs till 4 weeks. Start puppy mush food at around 4 weeks.
*if using goats milk mix everything together as is, IF USING CONDENSED MILK mix 4 oz of distilled or boiled (sterilized) water into formula (pedialyte for the first 3 days*) Don't blender, hand mix, blending puts air bubbles into it and we don’t want air in the stomachs. You want the puppy to drink until it's stomach is full not BLOATED! You are better to feed many small meals VS big ones that cause the pups to be uncomfortable.
BEFORE FEEDING POUR FORMULA THROUGH FINE TEA STRAINER TO GET THE EGG MEMBRANES OUT OR THEY WILL CLOG THE NIPPLE!
If you get runny stools mix in 1 package of Knox unflavoured gelatine into your formula mix, if the pups seem constipated or if you live in a dryer climate add an extra 2-4 oz of water to the formula, the main reason for constipation is not enough fluid!!! This is enough for about a week and should be refrigerated and then tossed after a week, feed whats left to momma dog then make a new batch!
Questions? E-mail anytime: Bellaclan_bcs@yahoo.ca
