What should the weight of a 4 week old lab puppy be? It has been a long time since I have had a litter, I checked back in my old litter records and I only have puppy weights up to 2 1/2 to 3 weeks recorded. Currently I have a large litter and when comparing my puppies weights and size to some of my breeder friends puppies mine seem to be "mini labs". At 4 weeks they are weighing 3.75 to 4.8 pounds. Does this seem on the smaller side?

Puppies are no different than children. My kids may be 80 percentile when they go to the doctor and your might be 35 percentile at the same age. Alot has to do with the sire and dam or the litter. Are they big boned huge dog or just moderate? I have always heard a good rule of thumb would be they should weight at least how old they are at 4 weeks they should be a minimum of 4 pounds. Once you start them on food they should double or even triple very quickly. JMHO

For the last few litters I have had my pups were about 6 lbs by 4 weeks. But like Bree Der said, it depends on the sire and dam. My girl has always produced a lot of really rich milk so when my pups were born they were monsters, all weighing a little over 1 lb at birth! My pups go home at 8 weeks weighing 20-25 lbs. They seem like monsters! They are all different!! Good luck!

I am breeding for a more moderate dog and I think the litters out of my girl have been smaller than most at birth at 9-12 oz's. For the first few weeks my rule of thumb is at least their birth weight and 1 lb per week.

They really start to rock and roll once they start eating puppy gruel and by the time they go home they've well surpassed 9 lbs, probably closer to 12-15 lbs.

Personally I think size has more to do with the bitch line. I have a bitch whose puppies were slow to grow...she does not give alot of milk and we get those puppies on cereal/gruel alot sooner. They tend to be in the 15 lbs range when they go home. Her mother was the same way. I have another bitch who...for lack of a better term...is a milk cow. She has cream for milk and her puppies are always very bloomy and fat. In fact I have to monitor that they do not get overly heavy as this poses issue as well. They go home 20-25 lbs. Again, her mother was like this as was her grandmother.

Puppies from both of these girls grow up to be very similar in size and bone as adults. Both of these girls are specialty class winners and their get have followed suit. I think in the grand scheme, by maturity you are not going to see a difference.

No doubt the fat, bloomy pups are certainly cute but it really is the end result that is most important...well at least that is how I see it.

Litter size makes a really big difference. The girls can produce just so much milk. If there are only 2 - 3 puppies to feed, they will most likely be huge. If there are a dozen puppies, the puppies will not have the same weight gain. So you can't compare the weights of puppies from a 4-5 puppy litter to puppies from an 8 puppy litter.

My pups are 5 1/2 # to 6 # at this age. My girls usually have the same size puppies at the same ages no matter who the stud dog is. They wind up growing slower over the 1st year or 2. I'm so used to it when I see the huge girl pups in the 6 to 9 month class I laugh it off b/c I know what is coming. My girls wind up around 80 # at full growth tho and are quite balanced. Boys are 84 to 95 at age 2 to 3 years.

So it's not todays weights that count, you just want to be sure they're gaining properly now.

Absolutely! I currently have 2 pups a week old, one weighs 3 1/2 lbs, the other 2 3/4 lbs. Last time bitch had 11 pups, I figure about a lb at birth and 1 lb per week. Last time largest pup was 2 1/4 lbs at this stage.

Are pups on soaked food yet? If still nursing, are you giving mom enough? With a large litter (9 or more), my moms get an extra hard boiled egg and 2 cups of ice cream per day plus 30% protein, 26% fat food as much as they want.