Hi all, I've never experienced this before, my bitch whelped on day 60 she whelped 1 pup then was pushing for too long for my liking so took her in at 2am for emergency c-section as pups had not come down at all after 40 minutes of contractions and 3 hours since birth of first puppy, she had 8 healthy puppies altogether, which is a lot as this is a toy breed, I tried to get pups to suck but mum had no milk however she enjoyed cleaning them and being with them, I bottle fed the rest of that morning, let the pups suck again, still no milk! So I done this everyday the pups are now 4 days old and mum has got milk this morning, I put pups straight on mum making sure the smallest had their fair share, they were sucking for a good 10 mins, I then tried each one with the bottle to make sure they had got milk, they ALL refused! Thank god, mum has been in and out the whelping box feeding them, so my question is should I stop bottle feeding now and assume they'll be getting enough from mum? They have been putting on weight every day and are doing really well, but then they have been feeding every 3 hours around the clock! So tired!;)

Personally id monitor their weight and make sure they are gaining, mums milk works on supply and demand so try and let the puppies feed from her and top up if necessary,

Thanks Claire, I'll do that. :)

We tried to top up some of our litter of 9 but they didnt want to know. Its can be surprising how much a bitch will give, if the pups are suckling little & often. Dont need much for the first weekish then it all seems to flow into place. :)

Keep doing what you are going :) Monitor weights and make sure if any are smaller, they are put on the most productive teats near the back end and make sure their bigger siblings don't push them off.

If you have to top up it may take a while for pups to get used to the different sucking technique with bottles. Hopefully you won't have to, the milk supply increases as the days go by. You may not see any milk at all because the pups are having it all.

Fingers crossed they'll all take milk from Mum, but as someone else has mentioned, don't be surprised if they reject a manufactured silicone teat after 4 days on Mum's teat :-O But, if you do need to bottle feed just be prepared to be patient and perserve with a bit of determination, once they realise the goodies coming out the silicone they will start to such :-)