Weaning generally begins between three and four weeks of age, depending on the mother and how the pups' teeth are coming in. Mom will usually decide she doesn't like being with those pups as much as before and will only let them nurse for a very short time. Those teeth hurt. I like to let the mom set the time of actual weaning, but supplemental feeding starts now.

Sometimes a mom will signal its time for the pups to try eating by regurgitating her own food up for the. Many times puppies will begin to experiment with their mother's food when she is fed. If a breeder/owner observes this, this is one signal to start getting serious about teaching the puppies to eat out of a pan. There are many dog people who simply allow the pups to learn through observing their mother and experimenting on their own how to eat. Unfortunately, there are two major objections to this method. Some dams will snarl and snap at the pups for taking, or attempting to take, her food. This does not help the learning process. The other objection is that the food the adult dam is eating is not the food that will satisfy the nutritional needs of the puppies. The digestive system of puppies is simply not ready for this quantum leap. The easy way is not always the right way. In this case, it could lead to malnourished and underdeveloped pups.

The first mad rush!

Red boy dives right in. The raised center of the puppy pan is to help prevent the pups from just camping out in the food. It creates a troth around the bowl. You can do the same thing using a large flat pan, and turn a bowl upsideown in the center to create the troth. (yea, reminds me of slopping the pigs!) ;-)

Some get the hang of it right away, and lick at the mixture. Others dip their snouts in and blow bubbles. Some wait until someone falls in, then they lick the food from a sibling. Its always funny to watch them try to eat the first time!

There are many formulas for making puppy mush. Some mix Gerber's rice cereal with evaporated milk. Any of the milk replacers mixed with baby cereal. (Esbilac, FirstBorn, Nutrience. Later softend puppy food and ground meat will be added. Never use regular cow's milk for the pups. Puppies can't digest cow's milk and will get the runs. If you are lucky enough to have it available, you can use goat's milk. It's even better than canned. Make sure you are using regular evaporated milk (like Carnation or Pet) and not condensed milk (like Eagle Brand Condensed Milk).

Today the food is a mixture of Esbilac milk replacer and baby rice cereal. I will add ground up puppy food later, along with some ground up liver, and later ground up veggies. The pups have little teeth, but don't know how to use them for eating yet. The only way they have gotten nutrition so far is sucking it in from Seger.

Red boy sat in the mash for quite a while. White girl growled at the mash while licking it. She was real funny!
Must have been a good technique, since everyone gave her space, and she had no competition eating!

Seger goes in at the end and cleans up the rest of the puppy food, and then cleans up the sticky puppies!

Yellow girl getting a nudge back in the box by Seger. Red girl looking out.

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5:00pm. 5 of the pups were out of the box when I got back from walking the dogs. Just sleeping in the vari kennel. Yellow girl, Blue collar black boy, Orange collar liver girl, Green collar liver boy and Red collar black girl.

White girl napping on her back until her brother comes along and steps on her!

How rude!

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8:00pm just some more puppy pictures!

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5/4/2002 Day 24

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