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Blue Heeler -Pregnant.
My 3 year old blue heeler is pregnant and due in 4 days. She has gained 6.5lbs, and she started at 30lbs. Does anyone have any advice on being prepared for the puppies to come? This is her first litter.
Thanks -Brandi
Thanks -Brandi
With all the information your 1st comment had, we felt sooo much better going through the birth knowing that! (: thanks !
We lost the itty bitty puppy last night, We tried the heating pad and had milk replacer for puppies and we still couldn't save him. We've burried too many animals lately. We had a 16yr old blue heeler that we lost on Jan 13th.,and a kitten got ran over by our landlord on the 16th. So we burried him right next to our old blue! (: if you have any more advice, please let me know! Everything you've told me, has been ALOT of help Ghilly! Thank you sooo much! (:
-Brandi
-Brandi
I'm at work right now so I can't elaborate the way I would like to, but the thing that Ginger was talking about is called a pig rail. It is a ledge that runs around the inside of the whelping box about 6 or 7 inches off the ground and it sticks out about 3 or 4 inches. The idea is that if the mother lays down close to the side, a baby cannot get trapped between her and the wall because he can roll under the pig rail and it will stop the mother from hitting the wall. If you Google "whelping box, pig rail" it will show you examples of what I mean. Meanwhile, congratulations! There is nothing cuter than a litter of puppies!
Ghilly
Ghilly
Brandi, get that little puppy on a heating pad for a while to warm him up. If he's really tiny, he might be fine but he can't box out the other bigger puppies to get to a nipple so you're going to have to help. REMEMBER: NEVER NEVER NEVER FEED A COLD PUPPY!!!!!! When a puppy gets cold, his system starts to shut down and he cannot digest. Before attempting to feed a cold puppy, put him on a heating pad covered with a towel or stuff him in your shirt and walk around with him for a while to warm him up.
Here's what I want you to do for right now: Boil up two cups of water and mix in a cup of sugar. You want to make a STRONG sugar-water syrup. Let it cool until it feels only warm on your wrist and then get some of that into the tiny puppy with an eyedropper. Sometimes the only problem is that they become hypoglycemic and it makes them so weak they can't do anything. I have seen puppies that I thought were dead come back after receiving sugar water. Just make sure you cool it sufficiently before you give it to him, you don't want to burn his insides and it can if it's too hot. Test it just like you would human baby food, on the inside of your wrist. After you give him some sugar water, see if you can't get him to nurse for a while. You are probably going to have to hold him on the nipple until he gets a bit larger and can hold his own against the bigger puppies but it's worth a try. The tiny ones always tug at my heartstrings and I could never let them go without a dilly of a fight.
Ghilly
Here's what I want you to do for right now: Boil up two cups of water and mix in a cup of sugar. You want to make a STRONG sugar-water syrup. Let it cool until it feels only warm on your wrist and then get some of that into the tiny puppy with an eyedropper. Sometimes the only problem is that they become hypoglycemic and it makes them so weak they can't do anything. I have seen puppies that I thought were dead come back after receiving sugar water. Just make sure you cool it sufficiently before you give it to him, you don't want to burn his insides and it can if it's too hot. Test it just like you would human baby food, on the inside of your wrist. After you give him some sugar water, see if you can't get him to nurse for a while. You are probably going to have to hold him on the nipple until he gets a bit larger and can hold his own against the bigger puppies but it's worth a try. The tiny ones always tug at my heartstrings and I could never let them go without a dilly of a fight.
Ghilly
1 Comments
You are great Ghilly.
pictures are posted, and i think we are going to lose one. he is really tiny, wont drink from mom, and wont drink out of a bottle. :( hes chilled even when hes snuggled up to them, he is weak also. but 1 out of 9 isnt bad i dont think.
COMMUNITY LEADER
Great news! I am glad to hear all went well, can't wait to see the pups! 10 puppies! No wonder she is napping!
It would be a good thing if the "nest box" has a lower area all around it, a shallow "dip" all around the edges, just in case she rolls over and lies on top of one of the pups. That can happen even with a good attentive mother, when there are so many pups to take care of. At least then the little ones would have somewhere to roll if they got crowded.
I have forgotten what that is called. I think Ghilly will know and be able to advise you further (in case you haven't already done that of course)
Wonderful news!
It would be a good thing if the "nest box" has a lower area all around it, a shallow "dip" all around the edges, just in case she rolls over and lies on top of one of the pups. That can happen even with a good attentive mother, when there are so many pups to take care of. At least then the little ones would have somewhere to roll if they got crowded.
I have forgotten what that is called. I think Ghilly will know and be able to advise you further (in case you haven't already done that of course)
Wonderful news!
WOW! Okay, she had them starting at the 1st one out at 1145am , and the 10th one out at 655pm! yes, i said 10. 6 girls and 4 boys! holy cow, every one of them were born alive! She is doing GREAT! she started panting last night about 1130 or so, and i knew we'd be close! her water broke on my husbands side of the bed around 930am.. (lol) She is napping now. we got a shot of oxytocin -or something like that- from our vet on Friday to help if she stops and we think there are more in there , and/or to help push out the afterbirth. (: i will post pics soon!
COMMUNITY LEADER
Oh...any puppies you have to swing will have to be called "Bungee"
Good luck with the birth, and we can't wait to see pictures of the little uns!
Good luck with the birth, and we can't wait to see pictures of the little uns!
COMMUNITY LEADER
Ghilly did a really thorough and brilliant post here a short while ago about preparing for a litter of puppies.It included so many things that I would forget if tried to duplicate it!
I have tried to find that post but so far -no luck.. I'll keep looking. In the meantime, when Ghilly comes back in (which she should do soon) she may be able to help you
I have tried to find that post but so far -no luck.. I'll keep looking. In the meantime, when Ghilly comes back in (which she should do soon) she may be able to help you
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Brandi, here is a basic guide to what you will need for whelping puppies. If you have any other questions, please ask.
With her due date being just four days away, she could actually go at any time now, so I would start taking her temperature three times a day, morning, mid-day and evening. Usually when the temperature drops down below 100 the whelping is within 24 hours I would be on the lookout from here on in.
Since you are new to whelping litters, here is a list of things you should have at the ready:
LOTS AND LOTS of clean towels
heating pad
heat lamp
hemostats
dull scissors
suction bulb
baby scale with a shoebox affixed to it
lots and lots of newspaper
trash bag
a book or magazines
notebook and pen or pencil
You will see her start to have contractions. These contractions can go on for a few hours before you actually see a puppy born. When the puppy comes out, take him and the placenta. Clamp off the umbilical cord with the hemostats and then cut through it with the dull scissors. You want to be sure to cut BELOW where you clamped it off because otherwise you defeat the purpose for clamping it in the first place, which is to prevent excess bleeding. The scissors being dull will serve to close off the end of the umbilical cord as you cut. Sharp scissors leave too clean of an edge and the cord won't stop bleeding as easily. Dull scissors more or less mimic the action of the mother chewing the cord.
Put the puppy in a clean towel and RUB. RUB RUB RUB! You aren't going to hurt the puppy and after a couple of seconds of rubbing you'll hear the puppy squeal. This is good! You want the puppy to squeal to get lots of air into its lungs. This also helps to close the patent ductus in the heart. The squealing is important. Hold the puppy's side up to your ear and give a listen. If you hear anything gurgling or squishing you may need to swing him to get the liquid out of his lungs. To swing him, grasp him firmly in both hands, stabilizing his head between your thumbs and forefingers so that his head can't move. Hold him, nose out, raise your arms up over your head and swing them down in a wide arc. When you reach the bottom of the arc, stop abruptly. If there is any water in the puppy's lungs you will actually see the little droplets of water fly out of his nose when you stop the swing. You can also Google "swinging a puppy" to see diagrams on how to correctly hold them to do this.
After everything is done, the umbilical cord is cut, the puppy is toweled and any swinging has taken place, put the puppy with his mother so that he can nurse. Nursing not only feeds the puppy the necessary colostrum but also stimulates contractions to help the mother push out the other puppies. There can be anywhere from 10 minutes up to almost an hour in between puppies, so don't panic if another puppy isn't right on the heels of the first one. When the contractions start again, remove the nursing puppies from the mother and put them in a separate box that has a heating pad on the bottom on a low setting. Cover the heating pad with a towel so that the puppies are not directly on the pad. Have part of the bottom of the box without the heating pad so that if it gets too warm for any of the babies they can move away from the heat onto a cooler part of the box.
The dog's uterus is made up of two "horns". Each horn contains puppies. The first part of the whelping empties out the first horn. The mom then rests for a while, sometimes up to about 2 hours, and then the process begins again so that she can empty out the second horn. Make sure that each puppy has a placenta to go with it. Sometimes they come out of the placenta inside the mother, so if you end up with six puppies, make sure you can account for six placentae, otherwise there may be one left inside her. It would be a good idea to take her to the vet within a couple of hours of the final puppy because the vet can give her a shot of oxytocin to bring on some strong contractions to clean out the uterus, especially if there is a retained placenta.
As far as the mom eating the placentae, you can let her eat one just because that's what nature tells them they should do, but in general she'll probably recover more quickly from the whelping if you simply throw them in the trash after you cut them from the puppies. Oftentimes there is such a glut of nutrients in the placentae that, even though it sounds like it would be real good for her to eat them, dietetically it throws them into a tailspin and they may develop diarrhea for a few days, which is really difficult for the pet owners to keep up with since they can't always get them outside quickly enough with the puppies nursing from them.
Weigh each baby and write down the time of birth, what the puppy weighed and whether it was a male or female. As the days go on, you should weigh each puppy twice a day to make sure they are steadily gaining weight. An ounce a day or more is a good gain. If there are any exceptionally tiny puppies you need to ask your vet to show you how to tube feed them to supplement them. It's VERY easy to do and it's much more accurate than bottle feeding them in terms of the puppies getting the extra nutrients they need. When you bottle feed them you depend on their ability to nurse and if they are too weak to nurse adequately on the mother chances are they will be too weak to nurse much better on the bottle. If you tube feed them, you can give each puppy exactly what he needs and he gets ALL of it because you're putting it directly into his stomach.
The book and magazines are to keep you from going crackers as you wait for the puppies! :D PLEASE post pictures after the babies arrive! I would LOVE to see them!
Ghilly