How to Care for Newborn Puppies

by **Steve** Sat Oct 20 2012, 21:44

Interested in raising a litter of cute little puppies? Here's a quick nuts-and-bolts of what it entails, with special emphasis on the requirements for hand-raising them if their mother is not on the job.

Prepare a puppy nest a week before the litter is due, and get the mother accustomed to it. When the mother goes into labor, confine her to the nest. She may prefer to go out and hide under a bush but you really don't want to let her do that.
Amount of room needed for the puppy nest varies by breed. There should be about twice the amount of room it takes for the mother to lie down. There should be walls high enough to block drafts but low enough for the mother to hop in and out easily. Newborn puppies can not regulate their body temperatures and need a 90 degree environment unless a source of warmth is provided. There must be a source of mild heat as well as an unheated area. The puppies will crawl to the heat source if they feel chilly, and crawl away from it if they feel too warm. A heating pad on LOW, covered by a towel, is a good heat source. A good and experienced mother dog will lie with her newborns nonstop for their first 4 or 5 days to provide them with the warmth of her body, but the covered heating pad will serve when she is not with them.
Weigh the newborns (on a postal scale) every day for the first 3 weeks. If there is not a steady weight gain, then they are not getting enough food. Either their mother's milk is inadequate, or if you are bottle feeding, you are not giving them enough.
If you have to bottle feed-- do not use cow's milk. Use either goat's milk (fresh or canned) or a prepared bitch's milk replacement. When you mix canned or powdered milk with water, be sure to use distilled water or you will give the puppies diarrhea. They can not tolerate the small amount of bugs in tap water during their first few weeks. Newborn puppies need to be bottle fed EVERY 2 to 3 HOURS. If there is more than one caretaker available, feed around the clock. If there is just one of you, take a 6 hour sleep break each night. (Lucky you.)
Use a newborn human bottle/nipple, unless the puppy is very tiny indeed. The nipples on pet bottles don't deliver milk well enough. DO NOT tube feed or feed with an eyedropper unless you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Newborn puppies have tiny stomachs and can not close their throats, so if you fill up the stomach and esophagus, the milk will simply flow into their lungs and drown them.
As the puppy grows older and his stomach gets bigger, you can start spacing the feedings farther apart. By the 3rd week you can feed every 4 hours and can start adding a little solid food to their diet.
Start adding solid food by adding a little baby cereal to their bottles and using a nipple with a larger hole. Each day, add a little more baby cereal, then start mixing in some strained baby meat. If the mother is feeding the litter adequately, you don't need to start supplementing this early and can skip straight to the next step.
By the 4th week, mix the milk, cereal, and baby meat like a thin pudding and pour it into a small dish. Hold the puppy in one hand and the dish in the other and encourage the puppy to suck up the gruel from the dish. In a few days, they will figure out how to lap their food rather than sucking it up. Continue to hold the puppy while eating until he can stand firmly on his legs.
Baby puppies sleep day and night and are only awake for short periods around their feeding times. They will wake more than once during the night expecting to be fed. If somebody is not awake to feed them, they will be very hungry by morning. They will survive it but they will be better off if someone can handle night feedings.
It is not necessary to wash infant puppies, but it is necessary to wipe their butts with a damp washcloth after every meal. In order to keep their nest clean, infant puppies do not eliminate unless they feel their mother's tongue washing their butts. If the mother is not on the job, your warm damp washcloth is needed to make them do their business. Once they start walking, they will "go" on their own and will not need your assistance any more.
Feed puppies as much food as they will eat. You can not over-feed a puppy as long as he is eating on his own and you are not force-feeding him. As mentioned above, the first solid food is a combination of baby cereal and baby strained meat. By 5 weeks, add increasing amounts of a good quality kibble. Soak the kibble in goat milk, then grind it up in a food processor, then add to the mixture. Each day, make the mixture less and less sloppy and more and more firm. By 6 weeks, you can start giving some crunchy kibble in addition to the "puppy slop". By 8 weeks, the puppy can have kibble as his staple diet and no longer needs any mixture of goat milk or baby cereal.
Cleanliness requirements. The mother will be discharging for several days after the birth, so you will need to change the bedding in the nest box every day during that period. Then you get about 2 weeks where the puppy-nest stays clean -- but once the puppies are standing and walking, they will be "going" on their own and the bedding will once more need changing every day. Unless you have a simply enormous number of towels or (best) old hospital bed pads, you will be doing daily "puppy laundry" for weeks to come.
Exercise requirements. For the first 4 weeks, the puppies will stay in their nest area. At 4 weeks though they will be walking well and they will need to get out and exercise. They are still too small and delicate to go outdoors though unless is it high summer and they can also be protected from marauding hawks etc. Best to partition off the kitchen or a large bathroom and let the puppies run and play in it. Take up any rugs because you do not want to teach the puppies to pee on rugs. You can put down a layer of newspaper, but the downside is that the ink will get all over the puppies, you will need to change the newspapers multiple times per day, and dispose of a mountain of soiled newspapers. Best is to simply pick up the poops and wash the floor 2 or 3 times per day.
Human/canine interaction requirements. Puppies should be handled and cuddled daily from birth onward, BY GENTLE ADULTS NOT YOUNG CHILDREN. They should be hand-fed from the time they start experimenting with solid food, and played with as soon as they are walking. The puppy should think of humans as its surrogate mother by the time its eyes open. This leads to the best personality in the grown dog. The puppy should also have another dog to interact with during weeks 5 through 8. Minimum requirement is its mother or another good-natured adult dog; best is if it also has its litter-mates. From the adult dog the puppy will learn to abide by rules (don't touch my dinner! don't bite my ear!) and from other puppies it will learn to be confident in doggy society. Puppies should NOT be separated from their mothers and litter mates before they are 8 weeks old, MINIMUM. Weeks 5 through 8 are very important in learning how to be a "good dog".
Immunization requirements. Puppies start their life with immunity inherited from their mother. (Note: therefore make sure their mother is fully immunized before breeding her!) Somewhere between 6 weeks and 12 weeks of age, that immunity wears off and the puppy becomes susceptible to disease. You start giving "puppy shots" at 6 weeks and continue until 12 weeks because you can not know when he loses his immunity. Before he loses his immunity, the shots do no good. After he loses his immunity, he is in danger until the next shot. Hence the shot every week to 2 weeks. The final shots (including rabies) are given at 16 weeks and he is then safe from disease. "Puppy shots" are not complete protection and therefore you should KEEP YOUR PUPPIES QUARANTINED from 6 to 12 weeks old. Don't take them out in public, don't let strange dogs come into contact with them, and if you or any of your family members have been handling strange dogs, wash your hands before handling the puppies

Tips

When grinding soaked kibble for "puppy slop", add a little baby cereal to the mix. Its glue-like qualities prevent the wet kibble from gushing out of the food processor and making a mess.
During weeks 4 to 8 when the puppies are running all over the kitchen making messes, a Hoover Floormate is an absolute lifesaver.
A litter of puppies is so cute, but make no mistake, raising a litter is VERY HARD WORK and very demanding on your time.

Warning

Healthy, happy newborn puppies are silent except for little grunts when they are suckling. If your newborn litter squeaks or cries all the time, there is something wrong. Maybe the mother has mastitis. Maybe the mother is not producing enough milk and the puppies are hungry. Maybe the puppies are not warm enough. Or, if it is a hot summer day and there is no A/C, maybe they feel too hot. Not much you can do about that one, but in general, if the puppies cry all the time a vet visit is called for. If a single puppy cries, he has probably gotten lost behind his mother's back and is trying to find his way to the milk bar. Go help him out and he'll shut up.