Hello, I have a 4 year old bitch with 2 pups at 7 days old. The boy is quite a bit bigger than the girl now which is worrying me.  I left Mum in, what I thought was, capable hands.  However I found that he was not feeding her enough.  I have now given Mum a lot of food to compensate but I fear she is not making enough milk. Her teats shrunk but the ones nearest the hind legs have now gotten a little bigger again.  The pups seemed to be sucking for dear life and tugging for ages.  I understand that supplementing may lead to the milk drying up completely so I thought of supplementing the bigger of the 2 to give the little one a chance to catch up on mothers milk.  They sleep contentedly which gives me the impression they may be absolutely fine and that I am just being paranoid.  They both make snuffling and squeaking noises but the little one makes more.  I am wondering if this is normal. When I say squeak, I don't mean crying, it isn't that sharp.  It reminds me of Sweep from the little puppet trio; Sooty, Sweep and Sue. Sorry, its hard to describe in a message!! Mum leaves them from time to time, though much less than when we had her in a separate room.  Right now she is asleep outside of the whelping pen and the pups are inside fast asleep amongst the cosy covers.  I was just hoping for some advice or reassurance.
Thanks
Suzie

Are they gaining weight? Weighing daily is the easiest ad surest way to check they get enough milk. If it's only 2 pups, and they prefer to use the two back teats (that has the most milk anyway) then yes there will be less milk in the others, so that's not really a worry. Sucking and tugging a lot is how pups feed, that doesn't sound unusual at all -and yes they do make all sorts of little noises.

Make sure the dam has plenty of fluids, I find that goats milk goes down well when they won't touch water.

I agree that daily weight gain should reassure you that they are getting enough to eat.

I agree fluids is very important for the bitch.For the first few days mum had goats milk,honey amd a whole egg beaten up.
Daily weight checks will give you a better idea of weight gain/loss.

I only had two survivors in my litter and I did find the milk started to dry up too soon (the mum was also unwell which might have contributed)...
I kept putting the pups on regularly to different teats to stimulate the milk production, empty them all(to avoid infection) and also to make sure I knew the smaller one got regular feeds and the weight kept going up.
I managed to keep the milk flowing long enough but did start weaning reasonably early as I had a feeling the milk she had will not be sustaining them for very long.
Good luck with your little ones!

agree 100% with ppl here drinking planty will help with mums milk ,i had a bitch that had 10 pups she didnt eat much for the 1st 2weeks but drank 2-3 litres aday of mixed goats milk plus her food was soaked in water she had so much milk it would drip out from her she could of feed 20 pups lol with the amount she had x

I syringe feed my girls water to ensure they keep their fluid intake up during those early days when they do seem more reluctant to tend to their own needs.