I have been breeding for quite some time now and have whelped many healthy litters. Over the years only a couple of them have turned out to need emergency c-sections in the middle of whelping for one reason or another. My question is, I have a bitch that is due any day now, today she is at day 59 from ovulation. Even though I progesterone tested her early on, I decided to start progesterone testing now so she doesn't come into labor and us get stuck in the middle of the night. I tested her on Saturday, (4/24) and her results for that day were 7.6. I am going to pull another test today, but how quickly do bitches generally drop in progesterone. I know going up they can spike, and double once you hit 1.0, but not sure about going down. She is have a good sized litter, around 10 so was wondering if anyone had any records of how fast their bitch's progesterone went down. Thanks
I scheduled a section over Christmas weekend two years ago and we did daily progesterones...
Day 59 12/20 8am 4.5
Day 60 12/21 8am 3.5
Day 61 12/22 12pm 1.1
We didn't get results until 6pm and she wasn't in active labor, so we scheduled the section at 9am on Day 62 and she was just starting to really dig a lot. Her temp dropped at about 2pm on Day 61.
A friend recenly did progesterones for her singleton litter and I don't have the numbers, but I recall it held at 4.5 for two days, then dropped to 0.9 and they sectioned later that day.
Hopefully you can catch a temp drop and/or get her into first stage labor to correlate with the progesterone drop.
Her progesterone was 7.5 on saturday at day 57, was 6.1 on monday, at day 59, I pulled another test today and will get results tomorrow which will be day 61. The thing that gets me is her temperature has been all over the road. It was 100.7 on sunday, then monday dropped to 99.9, monday night 99.4, tuesday morning 99.1 and this afternoon back to 99.9. She isn't doing any digging or panting, but is carrying quite a load. Is 2.0 always the magic number, or can water break before that. That is what I am worried about, getting stuck during the night.
