
We have a lovely litter of 7 large breed gundog, who will be 2 weeks old this Saturday. All are doing really well & growing rapidly.
I feel such an idiot as when our food supplier called to arrange delivery, I thought it might be a good idea to change her onto the puppy food that the pups will be weaned on. She has been fed Arden Grange Prestige through the last few weeks of the pregnancy until now with no problems at all. In fact, I was feeling really chuffed that she has been eating so well with no tummy upsets.
Well all that changed two days ago, I had a little Prestige left, enough to last through the change over to the new food. I put a few nuggets of the Puppy food into her breakfast & noticed that she was getting a little windy about 30 minutes after. It didn't take long for her to have to go outside and relieve herself! It can only be the food as there was nothing different eaten. Well after administering Pro-Kolin we didn't have any poos at all yesterday much to my relief, but I'd been giving just chicken and boiled rice. Well this morning we're back to diahorrea and frequent trips into the garden.
I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do to be honest. She doesn't want to stay away from the puppies, and is content to lie in the box feeding. It never looks like she's got much milk there but I think that the puppies are just feeding regularly and draining her.
What I'm most worried about is that if we don't get this under control, she'll either become dehydrated (have had problems getting her to drink plain water, and have been giving her drinks of Nutrolac/water which she has been loving (With an upset tum she shouldn't really be having milk), or she will lose her milk supply due to the lack of food going in.
Has anyone else had something similar happen? I will obviously take her to the vet if she needs it, but at the moment, she still seems quite happy. Should the vet be giving her something to help stop the runs?
It's such a shame because we've had a trouble free time of it so far - now I know that trouble free litters must be few and far between!
Trying not to be too anxious and hoping someone might have some good advice.
Thanks