I recently lost a mother of five day old puppies to cancer. Her health appeared perfect to everyone who knew her. She never showed any signs of being sick until after she whelped the litter and then never resumed eating. To make a long story short. She had carcinoma tumor that originated in her kidneys then spread to her ovaries. She carried puppies to full term, whelped with no problems. I was lucky to have a friend who let me use a mother that she just weaned puppies off of. This mother took to the puppies as they were her own. The problem is that along with the milk that the puppies get from the "new" mother I have been supplementing them with fresh (lucky to have neighbors who milk goats) goats milk. They are now three weeks old and do not seem to be gaining weight as they should. Is there something that I can add to the bottle to help increase the weight? They are all very healthy, but rather small. I have started gruel, but they just seem to want to wallow through it and just lap a little. I am just looking for some suggestions from others who have had to deal with orphaned puppies. Feel free to e-mail privately if you would like. Thanks to all.

at three weeks old they can be started on gruel.Just soak some kibble and throw it through the blender. i like to add in some plain yogurt and a little bit of canned food. offer it up to puppies on your finger and place some in a pie tin for them to lap from.

good luck i'm sorry to hear about your girl.

Ryan,

COTTAGE CHEESE - easy to digest, protein, and fat. It is close to mothers milk

Mixing Cottage Cheese, soaked food and perhaps more goats milk should be ok. Try warm gruel.

So very sorry to hear about your mommy dog :{.... might try using goats milk with some gerber rice cereal, might be that they just aren't ready for dog food yet.... try making a very wet mixture of the goats milk with the rice cereal in the bottle and making the hole in the bottle nipple cross cut so it is large enough for the mixture to be sucked out but not so large that they'll asperate.
Prayers for your puppies.
Aloha,
jackie

I would only use goats milk esbilac, as it has all of the nutrients that puppys need in it. You can get it from most cataloges like JB wholesale, Revival and many more.

You can buy the goats milk at any grocery store. They all seem to play and walk through it the first day or two and then they really catch on. I would just keep trying them with the gruel about like you would eat oatmeal yourself and warm like someone else said. I start feeding mine at 3 weeks no matter the size of the litter. They should be ready for it.
Sorry about the mother dog. Very sad.

Sorry to hear about the mother.