SO YOU WANT TO BREED A LITTER OF PUPPIES - (Part 4)

So your girl is digging up her papers in her whelping box. She�s shredding them with her teeth. She�s whining and is naturally restless. She might run out of the box and then jump back in. She circles some more. You see her first contraction. Most German Shepherd bitches don�t have too many problems when they deliver their puppies. But there are those few times that things don�t always go as you had hoped. That�s why I said you should have your vet on call.

Some breeders let their bitches do all the work and don�t interfere with the birthing process. I�m not one of those breeders. I am very hands on. Each and every puppy is valuable to me and I want to make sure that I give it every chance for survival. Losing a puppy or even puppies is something we all want to avoid. For the new mother, I believe it�s even more important to be right there when she is giving birth for the first time. I want to be on top of any problems while they are happening. I don�t want to walk in the room after a problem and it�s too late to save a puppy or the mother is in distress.

When the puppy is delivered, the most important thing to do is to remove the sac from the head that the puppy is in. Then I take the puppy and rub him with a soft towel and open his little mouth to make sure it�s not filled with mucous. Normally when I rub the puppy, he will let out a little (or sometimes a big) cry. This is good as it opens his air passages so he can breathe. I also cut the umbilical cord although most of the time the mother will do this. My main focus is that the puppy is breathing normally. I put the puppy down so the mother can lick and clean him. Most of the time the puppy with look to nurse right away. Sometimes you have to encourage them by placing them on a nipple. If he�s still reluctant, I make sure I squeeze the nipple to expel some milk to entice the puppy. Then there are those that take a little longer to nurse. Sometimes the trauma of birth is exhausting to the puppy and he just lies there resting. If all is well, he�ll come around and nurse on his own.

Remember to keep the puppies warm at all times. You don�t want them to get a chill. In between the mother delivering her puppies, I will normally put the puppies that she already delivered in a box with a plush towel in it so they don�t get stepped on while she�s delivering her next puppy. I keep the box in the whelping box so as not to stress the mother and to ensure that they remain warm.

Sometimes your bitch will run into delivery problems. Some of those reasons can be because the puppy is huge and the mother is having a hard time delivering him. This is when it�s wise to have two people there when she�s delivering. Sometimes when she is contracting you can help gently guide the puppy out, but many times because of his size this is a painful birth. So if one person can gently hold the mother�s head while the other person removes the puppy, it can make it easier on everyone. I hate breech births��you see the puppies little feet and tail sticking out of the mother and the sac is already broken. Then she sometime sucks him back up and you�re ready to pull your hair out.

Other problems that can arise is that the puppy is laying across the birth canal and you may have to gently turn him around because he will not be able to be delivered in that position. Then you can have a bitch that has uterine inertia which I�ve already written an article about on this blog. This is when the bitch has delivered a puppy or even several pups and she stops contracting. There are still puppies inside her, but she�s no longer contracting. Call your vet immediately for advice. I told you one of my bitches did this every time she delivered puppies���.that was the biscuit eater that I mentioned earlier in this article. I lost a few puppies with this bitch in her first litter because of this condition. I was better prepared in her next litters. My vet was on call all the time with this girl.

The mother will be exhausted while she is delivering her babies. I like to offer her a little refreshment in between delivering her puppies. Sometimes they will drink a little water. Other times they won�t. The last litter I had, I offered the mother some vanilla ice cream. She loved it and it also helped with her contractions.

When the mother is finally finished delivering her puppies, take her out to go potty while you stay with her to make sure she doesn�t deposit another puppy on the lawn. Sometimes a bitch will eat a little food when she is finished with her delivery. Give her whatever she wants to help restore some of her energy.

Check the puppies to make sure they are all breathing correctly and nursing on the mother. Watch for any puppies that lay off on their own away from the mother. Sometimes the mother will even push a puppy aside. This may indicate that the puppy is sickly. So watch for this. Many breeders will have weighed each puppy and made note of it in a journal that they keep on their litters. I always kept one for each of my litters and I would write in it everyday reporting on their progress.

Normally your vet will want to see the mother the next day and he will give her a pit shot (it helps clean her out). Many breeders have this shot on hand and will do it themselves. It will help expel any afterbirth that did not come out with the puppies.

Okay, so now you have your first litter. The mother and babies are content and resting peacefully. Now the fun begins. The raising of those puppies is when your work really starts.

To be continued��.


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My rating: Breeding puppies: (1 - 4)

SO YOU WANT TO BREED A LITTER OF PUPPIES - (Part 3)

Most German Shepherd �mothers to be� are good eaters while they�re carrying their litter of puppies. However, not all of them are. This is why it is important to make sure you are feeding her a top quality food to ensure that she is getting the proper amount of nutrition. Supplementing her food with vitamins is important also. Some bitches will go off their food at certain times when they are pregnant and the owner is about ready to pull her hair out worrying that her puppies are not going to be healthy. I had a bitch do this every single time that she was bred. Because she did this, I knew she was in whelp. Like some women who get morning sickness when they are pregnant, there�s no reason to think that some dogs don�t go through the same thing. Any and all food that I would offer her, she would refuse, EXCEPT��.dog biscuits. She loved dog biscuits when she was pregnant. So dog biscuits are what she got along with her vitamins. Just as long as she was eating something, I didn�t care! If anyone came to my house and looked at her, they must have thought that I abused her because she looked so skinny.

Anyway, let�s assume that your girl continues to eat; you should increase her food the last couple of weeks during her pregnancy because she�s eating for a whole litter now! Sometimes a bitch may go off her food or cut back during the last few days of her pregnancy.

By now you will have set up a whelping box for your bitch in a quiet area of your house where she is free from unneeded stress or other distractions. You will have bought a heating lamp for the whelping box as it is important to keep the new pups warm and toasty. Make sure that the whelping box that you invest in is large enough for the mother to stretch out and big enough for her growing puppies. Another thing the whelping box should have is a rail that goes around the inside of the box. This is where the puppies can lay under so they don�t accidentally get squished by their mother. I know some breeders use a kiddy pool for the mother and her puppies. They swear by it, but I don�t understand how those puppies don�t get squished.

Hopefully you have been in contact with your veterinarian about your breeding of your bitch. You have let him know when she is due to whelp. As the actual time of her whelping draws near, you should be in contact with him to let him know how she is doing. Also you should know what his procedure is if your girl should run into an emergency situation. Will he come to her aid and meet you at his office during the evening hours after his office is closed? Or do you have to rely on an emergency vet to take care of her needs? Find this all out BEFORE you actually need help! A Vet that works with a breeder is a God send!

During the bitches last few days of pregnancy it is a good idea to monitor her body temperature. Normally you can do this using a rectal thermometer. The normal body temperature for animals is generally higher than for humans. The normal rectal temperature of a dog is 99.5� to 102.5�F. What you�re looking for is her temperature to drop to 98 degrees from her normal 99 � 101 degrees. You may even see her temperature fluctuate going up and down. It�s when it stays down, you normally have 12 � 24 hours from the time that she first started to drop her temperature. When it goes down to 98 or 97.9, then you may expect the first born in 2 � 12 hours. This is just a guideline as all bitches are different.

When your bitch is getting closer to whelping, you may find she goes from periods of sleeping for hours to becoming restless pacing back and forth. She may look stressed and excited. She will have to urinate more because of the pressure that she is feeling. Make sure you go outside with her when she goes potty as you don�t want her running off somewhere in the woods to deliver her first puppy. When her water breaks, you might not even see it, but if you check her, right before she�s ready to give birth, you will normally see a white mucous like substance. Stay with her. Your litter of puppies is getting ready to enter this world!

To be continued�..


From the book: "THE COMPLETE BOOK OF DOG BREEDING"....... A veterinarian with many years of canine practice experience offers guidance to novice and professional dog breeders, emphasizing the responsibilities of reputable breeders to their dogs and to the buyers of the puppies they produce. Topics covered include: the choosing, health, quality, and conditioning of brood stock; practical DNA use, and Canine Health Information Center (CHIC) surveys and data storage to scientifically improve the selection of healthy brood stock and puppies; potential breeding problems; artificial insemination; pregnancy and its duration; embryonic and fetal activity; pregnancy nutrition; physical changes during pregnancy; stages of labor; normal and Cesarean-section births, and how to assist in both; nutrition of dams and puppies and how to recognize and prevent potential problems in both; neonatal puppy care; lactation and weaning the puppies; socializing the puppies; pedigrees, registration, and titles; and much more. Filled with color photos and line art.


My rating: Dog breeding: (1 - 4)