ive just been talking with anoughter breeder and im gobsmacked!!! wanted your take on this...ok our pups are now coming up to 3 weeks and from dam having them shes been eating 250g of a good dry puppy food (soaked) plus a full tray of nature diet puppyfood and eats the lot plus loads of warm water with goats milk in it ....well we was taking and i told her what my girl was eating and she nearly had a heart attack :/ my girl is only 4.1/2 -5kg when at normal weight and when i told her im going to give more kibble she laughed at me ,she only feeds her bitches 2-3 times more when pups on the grownd and dont give anymore even if her girls are wanting more food i wanted to say she was being crule ,im i right in thinking this??..my girl looks great yes i might have to put her on a diet after but surly for pups sake mum needs plenty of good food and if she wants more is it wrong to give her?? i will lower her intake once pups are older and eating themselfs ,after all she has 5 pups to feed ,they are are nearly 2pound each apart from a little boy but hes only 4oz behind ....look forward to seeing what you guys think! x

I leave puppy kibble available 24/7 on top of all the extra stuff she gets through the day, some days she will eat more than others, she was never overweight and cut back herself once back to peak condition.

We dont weigh the food but give the bitch as much as she wants, without making her upset stomach..particularly with a larger litter. Once the pups are weaned then get the weight off if needed. Maybe this person wants to show the bitch early so not giving her enough?? My bitch was getting loads & still looked half starved, as she was putting everything into the litter...even though we started weaning early, as there were 9.
I would say do what your doing & ignore this other person.

Mine always from almost day 1 have between 4 and 6 times their normal rations (depends on size of litter) but it's basically ad lib, if the bowl is empty then it gets filled, and other stuff is extra.

At 4 weeks if Mum getting plump and pups eating a lot, I cut down a little, once she starts rationing milk bar privileges then I cut again, so by 6 weeks she is eating double her rations, and if lean will stay on that until her coat is gone, and if plump then will stay on 1 1/2 times normal diet until the coat starts returning.

I found in the past if I cut them down to trim weight too fast they lost condition when they dropped theri coats..

This is a really interesting post for me.  My girl is actually far too plump at the moment and I'm considering cutting her food down despite the pups being 3.5 weeks old.    I'm not talking a little well covered, she is really well covered!  She has been having as much as I can get her to eat, raw fed so slightly more difficult to guage how much she's having.  A rough guess would be 6 times usual amount, litter of 8 large breed.  Would anyone worry about this?

She will loose a lot of condition once she drops her coat. 

I certainly would not cut a bitches food down until it is obvious pups are pretty much fully weaned (pups eating nearly as much as an adult in my breeds case).

Ok thanks Brainless, that makes sense, just don't like seeing her so fat!  Her mum hardly ate anything when she had her pups so I think I've gone a bit over the top with her daughter!  Just kept worrying she was going to go off her food and it hasn't happened!

I'm so glad that we are all singing from the same hymn book here.  Sounds like the person you spoke to doesn't want to spend too much on food (or maybe I'm just cynical.)  :-)

Rhodach seems to do exactly how I recommend when asked.  I never let a bitch run out of kibble.  But she always gets plenty on top of that.  I agree with Brainless that 6 times the normal quantity of food is needed when they are burning up calories rearing pups.

So, white lilly, I understand totally why you are gobsmacked!  :-)

I have had people come to buy a puppy who have told me how good my bitch after rearing the pups in comparison to their last pups Mum. I know some bitches are difficult because they are not good eaters but would hate to see mine really thin. If it is  a big litter then we always help out and she can eat what she likes once she is feeding. I think it is very difficult for us to say how much it is taking out of them. I'm sure you will get the weight off later when she is back to normal and excercising and feeding as she was before the pups.

My girl got quite podgy when she had puppies, I was very keen not to let her go to skin and bones, and went a little too much in the other direction! Easy enough to take it off once she was out and about again!