Newborn Goldens

Question
Our female has just given birth to 10 healthy pups (24 hours ago).  This is her second whelping this year.  We are amateur breeders.  The first time around, the 9 surviving (out of 11) pups were all easy to bottle feed. Our female had (and has again) only 4 teats with milk. We found bottle-feeding formulas (which the previous pups prefered to commercial products), but this litter is having a hard time focusing on food.  We've given them bottles every 3 hours since birth, but 7 out of 10 seem to have very small appetites in the last 26 hours.  The average is supposed to be about 30ml each for each meal, a meal every 3 hours, and the 7 haven't surpassed 10ml per feeding yet.  Most were between 380 and 420 grams at birth (their mother was well fed and had supplements before the whelping), but the "runts" who were born with 310 or 320 grams have good activity but really need to eat.

Any ideas?  (It's normal for the humans to pass on sleep for a canine homebirth like this, but we're getting worried and missing what little sleep we can still get for the moment.  The first litter was much easier.)

Thanks in advance.

Corson

Answer
Hi Corson. I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but if you breed a dog on each heat cycle, you're setting yourself up for problems. The pups may get weaker with each litter, the mom may not be able to produce enough milk. If you choose to breed her again, I'd give her at least a full year off inbetween pups.

If mom still has milk, I would let the pups take turns on the breasts that are working. And then top them off with the bottle. First thing to do is to determin if the pups are warm enough, never feed a cold puppy. You have to warm them up before feeding. What type of formula are you using, exactly what's in it? You may need to get these guys to the vet to make sure they don't have an infection of some sort, making them act this way. You may also have to end up tube feeding to get them going good. If you don't know how to do that, let me know and I'll help.