Cocker Specific Discussion > Puppies

Bottle feed or not?

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NinaW:
Hi

As some of you know, one of my bitches got 5 puppies 12 days ago. 4 big one and 1 tiny, little girl.  To make it worse, she lost lots of weight the first day (much more than what is “normal”) so she was nearly down to half the weight of her brother and sisters.  But she seems to be a fighter, and for the first week I put her to the mothers teats every two hour and made sure that she was “eating”, she did find the teats herself, but was easy pushed away by the others, that is why I had to “guard her”.  So since then she have gained some weight every day (if you count pr cent of her birth weight, she gain more weight than the others)  
I have been asking other breeders if I should have been given her some “extra” (bottle feed her) but most of them says no, but I would like to hear your opinions.  
She is about 450 gram now, but all the other girls are well over 600 + the boy is 800!  She is very “active”, and looks to be the first one that is open the eyes, and she is very cobby (but little).  So should I just “relax” and think that she more or less will catch up with the others or should I start to feed her “extra”?

Kind Regards
Nina
Norway                    

Jane S:
Hi Nina

I have been looking up the weights of our last litter where we had a tiny girl too. At 2 weeks old, she was about 375g so smaller than your little one :) She never really caught up with the others & stayed small but she was the first to open her eyes & the first to climb out of the box ;D I didn't bottle feed her as I though it best she had her Mum's milk - I used to put her on the best teat when the others had fallen asleep so she could drink as much as she wanted :) I think she was destined to always be small which may be the same for your baby? Here is a little pic of her at about 8 weeks old showing how small she was against the toy she liked playing with :)                    

NinaW:
Thank you Jane!
It is nice to have somebody that can calm down a worried mum  :)
I guess that fact that the others one are bigger than what I am used to, make the little one, looks tiny.

Best wishes
Nina                    

NinaW:
Hi

I just wanted to tell you that our little baby is now 4 weeks and over 1000gram!  Still the smallest one, but so cute ;D                    

Pammy:
Nina - she looks lovely - glad she is doing well                    

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