Would appreciate your thoughts on this please guys. My large breed girl whelped yesterday on day 55 a litter of 11 beautiful puppies (9 boys and 2 girls). All seem absolutely fine and mum was a superstar.

My question is this? Is there a pattern through the generations for early large litters with a preference to one sex?

The reason I ask is that Echo's mum Piper had 3 litters, all early, the earliest being day 55 and a litter of 13 and all three litters had mainly males in the litter.

There can be no doubt of dates as I only ever do one mating ( usually as I have to travel a fair distance to the stud and if I am honest I don't enjoy the mating process, especially maidens lol).

Both bitches have seasons every 4 months, not sure if this has any relevance?

Thoughts please.

Lucy x

I'll wait for someone more knowledgeable to fully answer your post.  But, as far as sex is concerned, I have always believed that the sire is responsible for the sex of the pups, and the bitch is responsible for the number in her litter.

If I was getting all male pups I think I would try a different stud dog, just to satisfy my own curiousity.

Do you progesterone test so know for sure these litters are early, 55days from ovulation?
Will be interesting to see what peoples experiences are :-)

Numbers are to do with number of eggs released (timing must of course be right) so this I can see being inherited in the bitch line.
Maybe it is not inherited that the bitches whelp early but purely the large litter size (which is to some level inherited :-)) making them go slightly early?

sex of puppies comes from the sperm so from the male.

Pregnancy last 62+/-  a day from ovulation, so if the bitch was mated at the end of her fertile time (about 4- 5 days later) pregnancy would be 57 - 59 days from mating, and due to a large litter a few days before that, as it is puppies that start labour off due to stress hormones when things get too crowded.

It has been said that if you MATE early in the season, you are more likely to get males.    Certainly my experience would suggest this - I was always eager to get on with it, in case my bitches went over!!    But my bigger litters were pretty much 50/50 male/female.   Perhaps one more male than females ..... I had 2 litters with 9 and they were both 5 m and 4 f.   There was one other, but due to vet incompetence (C.Section - long story which I've written about here before) which was again a litter of 9, and we ended up with 2 of each sex.   I don't know what the others were except there was one other male who made it home with us before we lost him.   These bitches were all related - down the generations.

I've never had a litter whelped early - most of mine went to around days 63/64.

I only ever had one bitch who came into season bang on 6 months (whereas all her other relatives came in at 8 months) and she started cycling every 5 months (again the interval with the others was around 8 months).   I couldn't be doing with that and as she really wasn't that good, I had her spayed.    Coming into season every 5 months was clearly pulling her down as she'd no sooner got through one season and settled down again before it all started up again.

Your girls are ahead of themselves, with everything lol.

>I've never had a litter whelped early - most of mine went to around days 63/64.

Yet I would be having a seizure if I had a bitch who hadn't whelped by day 64!  I have only ever, in many years, had one bitch whelp on day 63.  Probably breed specific, as my litters have usually been born on day 56.

Most of mine have whelped the night of day 62/early hours of 63

> xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> I would be having a seizure if I had a bitch who hadn't whelped by day 64!

pmsl made me chuckle lol