Procedures For Bottle Feeding Your Puppy

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Procedures For Bottle Feeding Your Puppy

When bottle feeding your puppy, start by filling the bottles with water and then put on the nipples and invert them to see if they leak. By squeezing the bottle slightly the increased internal pressure aids in discovering leaks. If the stream of water from the hole in the nipple is less than the diameter of a straight pin, heat a needle and enlarge the hole a little. Wash all the bottles and nipples in hot, soapy water and then sterilize them. Pour just enough formula into the bottle that will provide a single feeding and warm it to room temperature. This can be done by holding it under hot tap water, while turning the bottle.

Once the milk is warmed, hold the puppy in a normal upright position and poke the nipple into his mouth. Some pups will get the hang of it right away while others are less perceptive. Squeezing a little drop of milk on to the tip of the nipple before putting it into the pup's mouth may encourage some pups to start sucking on the nipple. Never squeeze milk out of the bottle while the nipple is in the puppy's mouth! This is one of the quickest ways to strangle him with milk.

If you are having difficulty in getting the puppy to suck and swallow voluntarily, put the pup back and try another. Use a separate bottle for each pup. There are three reasons for this. First, you know exactly how much you are feeding each pup and can measure precisely how much that pup drinks. Second, if you get a disease outbreak you will reduce the chance of spreading it from puppy to puppy with an unclean nipple. Third, if you need to go back and try to get him to drink a little more, you do not need to keep close track of how much he already has eaten because the amount he still needs is what is left in his own bottle. While the puppy is nursing he should have a bowel movement and should urinate. If either fails to occur it usually can be provoked by a little stimulation by gently rubbing his anal area or sponging the groin and buttocks with a little warm water. Some owners place their pups on a warmed, folded, terry-cloth towel while they feed them. The roughness of the towel helps stimulate the elimination. The danger in bottle feeding is in the possibility that a puppy will suck some of the milk down his windpipe and strangle. If enough milk is sucked down, the pup will drown outright. Even if the amount sucked in is too little to drown the puppy, it will still injure his sensitive lungs.

When the lungs are injured, pneumonia is almost always the result. Between 12 to 24 hours after strangulation the puppy will refuse to eat, begin to experience breathing difficulty, produce bubbling and gurgling sounds as he breathes and very shortly, die. You must prevent this from happening by every means possible. When a puppy gags or strangles and milk starts coming out of his mouth and nose, take the bottle away immediately. Place the pup between your palms, head outward, and use your fingers to hold its head and backbone in a straight line. Place the pup between your legs, at arm's length, and swing it up and down. The centrifugal force produced by this will sling the milk out of the puppy's mouth and nose and, with luck, out of the windpipe as well.

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Feeding Your Puppy

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Feeding Your Puppy

A puppy always tells his dog owner whether he is getting too much or too little food in several ways. Crying is one of the most often recognized, but least likely to be always accurate. Although hungry puppies do cry, so do cold puppies, hot puppies, puppies that were disturbed from a nap, lost puppies, sad puppies, etc. Crying is simply nature's way of giving a puppy a means of telling everybody that he is unhappy. Anything that makes a puppy unhappy will probably also make him cry, even having his tummy too full. Therefore, to say that a puppy is crying because he is hungry requires a judgment on the owner’s part. And since we do not think like a puppy, we have to use the reactions of the puppy's system to determine whether or not he is getting enough to eat.

Every time you feed a puppy, two things should happen. First, he should have a bowel movement and second, he should urinate. Sometimes a puppy may need a little encouragement by rubbing his anal area, but he should always perform both acts if everything is going right. The makeup and amount of his feces and urine are important clues that tell you how well you are doing when it comes to properly feeding your pet. For one thing, the puppy's stool should be formed as it is expelled, but its consistency should be soft and pasty. The color will depend to some extent on what you are feeding him. But in every case, it should not vary from a pale tan to a mahogany brown. The inside of the stool may be yellow-brown in many cases. Stools that are green, bluish-white or clear signal trouble. Even tan or brownish stools that are watery, lumpy, hard or curdled may indicate something is not right. Whenever either off-color or off-form stools occur, stop feeding immediately and skip the next feeding entirely.

Begin the following feeding with a formula that has been diluted one-half with boiled water. Continue to feed the same quantity as you did the undiluted food. If this fails to produce an improvement in the stool, reduce the quantity you are feeding by 25 % at each feeding. If stools continue to be off-color or off-form, consult your vet.

A puppy's urination is an indicator of his water balance. The quantity should be about the same each time the puppy urinates. It might be pale yellow to almost clear, but should never be deep yellow or orange. Also, it should always be like water and never like syrup and should smell like urine. Urine that is scanty, dark in color, or syrupy, indicates that the pup is not getting enough water. More water should be supplied, either added to the formula or fed separately. If the urine seems excessive in amount, unduly clear, or thin, the water concentration of the formula should be re-checked to make sure that he is not getting too much water. If urine production stops altogether for longer than four feedings, take the puppy to a vet as soon as possible.

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Your Puppy’s Diet

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Your Puppy’s Diet

Liver is a very important part of your growing puppy’s diet. Whether it is chopped, raw or slightly braised, liver adds an essential nutrient to his meal that cannot be found from any other source. The only problem a dog owner may encounter when feeding liver to a puppy is diarrhea. Because of this, they should be trained slowly to eat liver and should not be fed amounts so great that their quantity, alone, produces a loose stool.

If you are feeding your puppy commercial foods, such foods should be improved by adding one tablespoonful of liver and one tablespoonful of corn oil per pound of dry matter. This is equivalent to approximately ผ tablespoonful per can of canned food and 2/3 tablespoonful per 16 ounces of soft-moist.

The amount of good-quality protein may also need to be increased in some commercial foods fed to puppies. This can be achieved by adding two ounces of any one of the following to each pound of canned food: cottage cheese, hard-boiled egg, processed American cheese, ground chuck, fried or baked fish or chipped roast beef. Four tablespoonfuls of dried, skimmed milk also add an adequate amount of extra protein to a dry food being used to feed a fast growing puppy.

Feeding Methods

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Feeding Methods

There are two common methods that are being used to feed nursing puppies: Bottle feeding and tube feeding.

Bottle feeding: Bottles and nipples have been used for feeding newborn puppies for many years. The form most often used today is the toy doll's bottle. Most of these are made from plastic and some have real rubber nipples that are made in the same shape and form as the larger baby nipples. Bottle feeding a newborn puppy is not much different from bottle feeding an infant. Keep in mind that all equipment should be very clean. The bottles and nipples should be sterilized, the formula boiled, and the hands and utensils washed in hot soapy water.

Tube feeding: Another way of feeding a newborn puppy is through feeding tubes. With the proper equipment and experience, a pup's entire feeding can be placed into its stomach without getting the milk anywhere close to the trachea or the lungs. Once the dog owner is used to the technique of feeding the newborn puppy with a stomach tube it is unlikely that he will ever again feed a puppy with a bottle and nipple. The feeding tube eliminates bottles and nipples that have to be cleaned after each feeding and sterilized before the next. Also, the danger of inhaled milk, which sometimes happens during bottle feeding, is greatly reduced and the feeding time is reduced by 75 %.

Weaning Your Puppy

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Weaning Your Puppy

Whether a newborn puppy is fed by his own mother or by his owner, he must eventually be taught to depend on something besides milk for his food. This learning process is called "weaning", and represents the changing of a puppy's diet from liquid to solid. At about three to four weeks of age, as soon as their eyes open and they are able to move about with some ease, most puppies will begin to experiment with the solid foods being fed to their mother. When this happens it is time to begin to teach the puppies to eat from the pan.

Instituting such an early feeding procedure accomplishes four important things. First, it allows you to feed the puppies a food that is more satisfactory for them than the food you are feeding their mother. Second, it speeds up the weaning process because the puppies will learn to eat solid food at an earlier age. Third, it begins the social interaction between the puppy and his owners. And finally, it allows you to reduce the mother's intake of food at the same rate you increase that of her puppies. The latter prevents the mother from overeating as the early feeding of her pups promotes reduced lactation.

Weaning is a learning process in which the pups' digestive system is trained to eat solid foods. Before the puppy is born, he is fed by his mother with pre-digested nutrients. When he is whelped the puppy drinks the mother's milk. The mother's milk contains some of the most digestible nutrients that a puppy can eat. At weaning the puppy's digestive system must learn to handle each new food in turn, as it comes to him. Similar to all learning processes, the weaning process cannot be taught faster than the puppy's ability to learn.

In formulating the diet, the ingredients that make up the food fed to a puppy that is starting to wean must be highly digestible and non-irritating. An excellent weaning diet can be made easily by preparing slurry using a specialized dietary animal foods designed to be fed to patients with gastro-intestinal disorders, mixed into equal parts of the mother's milk substitutes. "Half and half" coffee cream can also be used. High-quality ration-type commercial foods also make adequate solid foods to mix with the liquid part of the diet. In all cases, ผ to ฝ tablespoonful of grated, raw liver should be added to each can of food just before it is mixed. The slurry can be either beaten with a fork or mixed in a blender.

For larger breeds, it may be more practical to use the higher quality, expanded dry foods in combination with the canned foods to blend with the liquids. Addition of dry foods may also help these larger, faster-growing puppies to get sufficient nutrients in the quantity of food they are able to consume in. Whatever the mixture used, the quantity of milk substitute in it is gradually reduced, so that when the puppy is about six or seven weeks old, he is only eating pure, solid food.

Tube Feeding Your Puppy: Part 2

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Tube Feeding Your Puppy: Part 2

So far, we have discussed the first three steps for tube feeding a puppy. Listed below is the four remaining steps on how to properly administer the procedure.

Step 4: With the puppy’s mouth open, insert the end of the tube into the groove formed by the top of the tongue. Carefully push the tube back into the pharynx. You have to push the tube straight in until it reaches the depth of the pre-determined mark. If it does not go down smoothly to the depth of the mark, it is not where it should be. If the tube is accidentally inserted into the trachea, healthy puppies will cough and struggle violently. In addition, a tube that is inserted into the trachea will usually stop about half-way to the mark where it encounters the division of the trachea. Once the tube is successfully inserted to the depth of the mark, slip your thumb and forefinger from the cheeks to the tube, and hold it firmly in the mouth at the level of the mark. Slide your other fingers up and around the puppy's head, leaving the little finger behind the front legs to give it a steady hold.

Step 5: While the tube is held firmly in place, stick the open end of the tube into a small jar of water. If a series of bubbles are produced in the water, it is likely an indication that the tube has slipped into the trachea. It may also indicate that the puppy has a little gas in his stomach. In any case, however, the tube should be removed and blown clear of water, then reinserted until no air bubbles appear in the water.

Step 6: Once the tube is safely inserted in the stomach, continue to hold the tube firmly in the puppy's mouth with the thumb and forefinger. With the other hand, place the open end of the tube between the forefinger and middle finger of the hand that holds the tube in the puppy's mouth. Once again, with the opposite hand, pick up the previously filled syringe and insert it snugly into the open end of the tube.

Step 7: With the syringe firmly attached, apply gentle pressure with the thumb to the syringe plunger and deliver the substitute mother's milk. Continue to deliver the food until the correct amount has been administered. Then, draw back slightly on the plunger and gently slip the tube out, still attached to the syringe.

Tube Feeding Your Puppy: Part 1

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Tube Feeding Your Puppy: Part 1

A safe way to nurse a newborn puppy without the risk of strangulation is by using a feeding tube. The equipment needed for tube feeding an orphaned or abandoned puppy is quite simple. You will need a #8 or a #10 French infant feeding tube, a hypodermic syringe, and a substitute for mother's milk. The tube and syringe are disposable and can be thrown away after each use. On the other hand, there are also reusable equipment such as glass barrel syringes and rubber feeding tubes that are available but must be thoroughly cleaned right after each use. One great advantage of these feeding tubes is that they can be placed in water and boiled, along with any other equipment, when sterilization is required.

After the proper equipment has been gathered, the feeding of a puppy with a stomach tube is performed by applying the following steps:

Step 1: Fill the syringe about ฝ full of the warmed mother’s milk substitute and put it aside for future use. Then, determine the proper depth to which the tube should be inserted by measuring, with the tube, the distance between the puppy's nose and a point just behind the elbow or just in front of the last rib. This is approximately where the stomach of the puppy is located. Continue to hold the tube by your thumb and forefinger. ;

Step 2: The next step is to mark the tube at the correct depth measured in step 1. This can be done using a marking pen, or with a tiny piece of tape.

Step 3: With the marked tube still held between the thumb and forefinger, hold the puppy with the opposite hand, placing the thumb and forefinger on the cheeks, one on each side of the puppy's mouth. Use the remaining three fingers of the same hand to grasp the puppy. The middle finger is placed around the puppy's neck, in front of the forelegs. The fourth finger grasps the rib cage just behind the front legs. The little finger is placed in front of the hind legs, either in the groin or around the abdomen, depending on the puppy's length. Once the puppy is held firmly in hand, pry its jaw open with the little finger of the hand holding the tube. Gentle and steady pressure is placed on the sides of the mouth at the same time. By maintaining this light pressure, the mouth can be held agape once it is opened.