Super Sunday at Puppy Grand Central

A danger with ten puppies is that the smaller ones get escorted out of the Milk Bar by the bigger, pushy patrons.

I observed yesterday that the gap between the biggest Bright Star and the smallest was an entire pound. Size differences are expected but that seemed excessive to me, and so I implemented an intervention both to ensure fair weight gain and increase the milk supply.

I divided the puppies into two groups. Claire nursed a group outside the whelping box until they were full and dropped off, and then she rested and refilled for 30 minutes, and then nursed the other group on the opposite side of the Milk Bar.

Repeat.

All day long.

I kept notes of group membership, and also which puppy group and Milk Bar side was next up. This is today’s list…

The data suggests this worked. The puppies gained between 5% - 9% in 24 hours with the exception of the smallest puppy — Lyra gained 15%!

Bright Stars Orion and Perseus with Lyra in the foreground

I do this kind of things with the Moonshadows as well but they are less mobile and easier to contain within the whelping box.

The Bright Stars are motoring around and hard to wrangle without separated spaces.

The process of lactation is all about supply and demand — by increasing demand, we increase supply. Infrequent or lazy nursing slows down supply as does supplementing puppies. Less demand = less supply.

The other part of increasing milk production is ensuring adequate nutrition. Claire and Daisy eat around the clock to support their ability to feed ten plus ten puppies. This is easy with Daisy, who eats anytime and anything.

Claire is harder as she continues to only eat when hand fed and she is picky — none of that is typical for her. She is perfectly healthy and so likely this is hormones and perhaps her injured knee is a factor — who knows?! Regardless, she has to eat to feed these puppies and so hand feeding from the buffet it is — every single hour.

What does Claire eat? During the day yesterday, for example, she had 4 - 5 cups of two kinds of puppy kibble, three tins of sardines, two fried eggs, four peanut butter pancakes, a bunch of meatballs, and so on. All hand fed — even the stinking (literally) sardines. Gross.

Claire won’t eat the same foods for Dear Husband as she will for me and so at night she has 5 - 6 ounces of Swiss cheese, unlimited slices of chicken breast, and animal crackers with peanut butter on them — and whatever else she will eat.

Yes, it is exhausting.