ORPHAN LITTER
On the 1st September 2007 Misty whelped 14 live puppies by C section. The reason for the C section was a twisted uterus both sides. Although she came through the operation, Misty only survived for a few hours after the birth, and slipped away quietly at about 3:30am.
So there we were, in the early hours of the morning, left with a dead, much loved family companion, and valued working bitch. This was Misty’s second litter at 5 years old, her first being two years earlier. After getting to grips with the fact that we had lost Misty, the cold realisation swept over us that we now had 14 puppies to hand rear! We had always helped our bitches when they had a litter to rear, so how hard could it be? The answer to this is VERY HARD!
The first thing to consider was keeping their temperature right, ok, you would do that with any litter, but without mum to snuggle up to we had to watch the litter didn’t huddle and smother any of the smaller pups. The next thing was feeding. Every 1-2 hours. With 14 pups it took two of us 1 & ¼ hour to feed and top & tail. This meant that an hour later we had to start again with the first few pups! And so it went on like this for a few days. We were tired but copping.
Then it started, the bum sucking, horrid I know!
At first we thought it was because the goats’ milk they were on wasn’t satisfying them. We soon found this wasn’t the case because at one point I was sitting in with them and feeding any head that popped up. This still didn’t work. We then thought about it, when pups are with mum, upon waking they instinctively move towards heat and suck what ever is soft and sticking out . With out mum there, the heat was their litter mates with their bums & Tums! Needless to say, they very quickly became covered in what ever was coming out as well as ingesting it also. This made a few of the bigger pups very ill indeed. So it was then electrolytes every ½ hour to replace the fluid that was being lost. To over come this we devised a crated system. Each pup had its own bed vet bed, paper and a soft toy to snuggle up to. Peace reigned at last. By the end of the first week we had a good little routine going. Feeding every 2 ½ hours, day & night, bath once a day, changing bedding at least twice daily more often if needed.
By the end of three weeks, all pups were doing well and had been docked with no ill effects. By the end of the fourth week we were trying to get them to lap puppy porridge. Do you think they would, no way! When you wean a litter from mum, you can take her away if pups are reluctant to lap. With our bunch we were mum, so they would just make a big fuss and scream their heads off until we gave in, little monsters. This went on for a few days but eventually they got the idea and started to lap, so by 5 weeks old they were on solids as well as their milk. The next few weeks was just like having any other litter, with people visiting and then eventually coming back to pick up their new charges.
Ten weeks after that fateful day, we were left with just the one pup and normality resumed, with the usual hustle and bustle of the shooting season as if nothing had happened, except we were missing one very important family member. Some thing that we shall probably never get over!