繁體中文
Welcome home, new members of the family have arrived home, your dog has become a mother and now it is time to help her to look after her puppies. During the breastfeeding period, it is important that you ensure that she is suitably well fed and that the puppies are drinking their mother’s milk.
The breastfeeding period is not just a question of food, it is a key time that involves a learning process and where essential emotional ties are established for the puppy’s mental balance and later maturation.
Irrespective of the number of pups, a healthy new mother that is well fed is able to nurse her whole litter. Medium or large breeds can manage to breastfeed six or seven pups without any special support.
FEEDING THE MOTHER
It’s a simple formula: if the mother is well fed, then the puppies will be as well. The vet will guide you with regard to the amount, quality, type and frequency of meals that you should provide for your dog; there will be between four and five meals per day of calorific food that is rich in proteins and calcium, which is what they lose the most through their milk. Advance Mother Dog & Initial contains all the nutrients that your dog needs during this phase.
Puppies and breastfeeding
On the other hand, the size and competitiveness of the puppies can vary, which is why you should try to ensure that they all receive their fair share of maternal milk. The simplest way of verifying that your puppies are adequately fed is to weigh them daily during the early days and then every 4-5 days to check that their weight is progressively increasing.
The first ten days is the most important period of nursing and it serves to introduce the vital antibodies and nutrients that maternal milk provides to the puppies, immunising them against the most common illnesses.
On some occasions, your puppy cannot spend this stage of their life with their mother. In such case it is important that you feed them with a very nutritious product that contains nucleotides with the profile of colostrum; which is to say, of maternal milk. Advance Mother Dog & Initial
LEARNING
During the beginning of breastfeeding, the mother spends a lot of time looking after her puppies, licking them continuously to stimulate them to do their business, keeping them warm and protecting them.
As the puppies grow and their teeth begin to develop under their gums, little by little the mother will try to distance herself from them for short periods of time so that they learn to be independent.