The continuing saga of Moonshella and her pups

On a sad note, we lost the last puppy born – probably because he was not vigorous enough to compete having been born 36 hours after the first pup.

The smallest pup today is Mighty (as in Tiny but Mighty). She is resting after a filling meal.

All the other pups are doing great though and we are now being very vigilant about making sure the smallest pups get some alone time with Mom.  The weight difference between the pups is slight so we just picked out the four smallest at the time to nurse alone about four times throughout the day.  The bigger pups take that time to sleep and dream of eating.

Well, Moonshella is quite thin after her efforts and she has to eat to keep up her milk supply so we are trying to get her to eat at least five times a day plus snacks.

Serena feeds Moonshella Raw Green Tripe from a spoon to encourage her to eat.

She is eating at least two kinds of A Place for Paws Raw mixes during the day.  Today was Green Tripe and Beef and Bone.  We will also feed her Just Turkey. We are mixing her Fastrack Liquid Dispersible with the ground food because she won’t touch it if she sees it.

She is also getting at least four chicken backs in two meals.  She doesn’t particularly want to make the effort to eat them but we want her to keep eating the backs for the chewing action and the fat content.  With her backs we give her a multivitamin and her Grizzly Salmon Oil.

Moonshella’s treat jar is full of wonderful snacks such as Freeze Dried tripe and Beef Heart. Yum!

We also keep a treat jar near the whelping box.  In it is Freeze Dried Tripe, Turkey and Chicken as well as Turkey Heart and Beef Heart and a small amount of Freeze dried Beef Liver.  We basically give her a snack any time we think of it.  This is, of course, her favorite thing to eat.

So far, two days after whelping, Moonshella is still far to slim but we hope with some effort we will get her up to a comfortable weight to be able to feed these hungry puppies.

Tomorrow we do dewclaws – I’m not looking forward to cutting off ten sets of toes.