When the entire litter is deprived of the mother’s milk, if the mother dies or her milk does not come in (agalactia), is not sufficient (hypogalactia) or is toxic (mastitis), use of a milk substitute adapted for dogs usually ensures the survival of the puppies, although there may be a slight slowdown (less than ten percent) in growth compared to the average of the breed, which is often regained later by spontaneous consumption of a weaning formula.
On their own, puppies will nurse more than twenty times per day. It would be difficult for the owner to keep up with such a feeding schedule! A schedule of feeding once every three hours for the first week should be adequate, as long as the feedings are regular and the sleep schedule is respected (puppies sleep more than ninety percent of the time during the first week) so the puppies get the rest so essential to bonding and imprinting.
While it is possible to adapt cow’s milk for puppies, powdered puppy formulas are much better, especially since their lactose content is limited.
In addition to saving time and money, powdered puppy formulas are packaged dry. This limits the risk of diarrhea in the puppies, whose stomach acid is not yet strong enough to completely sterilize the digesting food.
After adding water and heating the formula to 37°C, the owner can feed the puppy either by means of a bottle, or by gavage, using a probe (urinary probe), if the puppy refuses to nurse. If the milk is given by mouth using a syringe, it should have the consistency of rather thick baby cereal to trigger the swallowing reflex and limit the risk of food “going down the wrong way.” If food enters the respiratory tract, bronchial pneumonia may result.
The following are a few points that will help decide how much milk to feed the puppies:
One kilogram of bitch milk contains about 1350 kilocalories.
A puppy needs three to four millilitres of milk per gram of weight gain.
The caloric requirements of nursing puppies are more than two-and-a-half times greater than the maintenance requirements of an adult dog of the same weight.
For example, if a one-month-old puppy weighs three kilograms (adult weight twenty-two kilograms), its daily average weight gain is about six grams per kilogram of estimated adult weight, or 130 grams per day.
To gain this much weight, the puppy must eat 4 x 130 = 520 grams of milk per day, which is equal to 0.52 x 1350 = 600 kilocalories.
A household recipe that can be used temporarily as a substitute for bitch milk.
270g Unsweetened Evaporated Milk
70g Fresh Cream
450g Nine eggs without shell
56g One egg with shell
154g Mineral Water
TOTAL 1000g
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