Hi all, my girl had her second litter of 6 pups five weeks ago now and before pregnancy she was slim, fit and competing (med type gundog breed), she was started on Arden Grange puppy food when four weeks pregnant but was a bit fussy near the end so we supplemented with things she would eat like scrambled eggs and chicken. With her first litter of 8, she really didnt want to feed them very much past four weeks and started to put weight back on quite quickly even as soon as a week after pups were born. However, this time around things are different, she is on four meals a day of Arden grange weaning puppy kibble, 200g per meal, which she wolfs down, but she is still very very skinny looking despite eating all that and what the pups have left. If I feed her any more grammes than this, she just ends up with sloppy poo, so too much in quantity. When she was spending all her time in the whelping box she was getting a meal in the middle of the night as well, together with bowls of water with a slosh of goats milk and glucose in it to ensure she kept up her liquids. She is still wanting to feed the pups morning and evening and maybe a couple of comfort suckles during the day. She seems much more 'into' the pups this time and plays with them and lets them crawl all over her. The pups are on five good meals a day now and eating really well.

I just wondered if anyone could suggest anything else which would put weight on her, as you can see her spine and hip bones and even compared to my lurcher she looks underweight, it appears that every calorie Im pouring into her, she is giving the pups. I dont feel like I can take her away from the pups as they are in the kitchen and for their development she needs to be able to play with them and she actively chooses to give them the odd feed. I am not going to give her raw food as I just dont have the freezer space (only have a two and half drawer freezer in my fridge freezer). She has been wormed properly together with the pups as well and Ive had her checked out by the vet to see if there is any thyroid issue but there doesnt appear to be.

Just not sure what else I can feed her that is high calorie but wont upset her stomach.

I hope I can reassure that I had this exact problem. I posted here that I was worried about how thin mine was and the more I fed her and other things I gave her the runnier she was. At the time I gave her pro-kaolin a few times a few times over a few days in an attempt to try and settle her down. I also don't feed raw and feed Arden Grange and had her on puppy food.
I can only say that the pups are now nearly 12 weeks and she is back to normal although her coat is s**t. She is pretty much back to her pre mating weight and back to her old self. It was her first litter.
I put her back onto adult food with her normal small addition of meat. I cut out any milk as don't think that was helping. I would still,, as I did, keep her checked out by the vet but in my case it just took a bit more time than I had experienced previously for her weight to return a bit normal.
Hope it is the same for your girl. Yours has carried on feeding them for longer than mine did. She more or less stopped at, if I remember, approx. 4=4.5 weeks and then was not interested. They were weaned by then.

I too in recent litters have found it better to fee their usual diet in increased amounts rather than then puppy food which seemed to make them looser.

I don't understand why people are so set against feeding the girls whatever they will eat whilst pregnant and/or rearing puppies.  I personally do feed raw and have never had any problems with weight after puppies, if anything mine are always too fat during the 8 weeks after giving birth!  Maybe the fact that my girls are used to a variety of foods makes that easier for me, no problems with squitty tummies, etc due to a change in diet?  I'm not being antagonistic or judgemental, just curious.  I'd be really interested to hear from those of you who have successfully had litters from girls who have kept their weight on with a diet of purely kibble.  People often ask me what to feed their girls whilst pregnant/rearing as mine always look so good throughout.  I am happy to explain what I do but feel that if their bitch has always been on kibble, changing suddenly to raw isn't necessarily the right thing to do. I tend to suggest they get advice from someone who regularly feeds a kibble diet and is an experienced breeder (I think some people may call that "passing the buck")!

Mine keep good weight on whilst rearing, and I do base their diet on a good kibble.

They also get goats milk puppy milk and anything else I happen to have, including meat eggs etc.

Just over the last couple of litters I have found they were less likely to have cow patty poos from the huge increase in volume of food (usually 5 - 6 times their normal diet levels), if I feed their normal adult kibble, or feed half and half with the puppy, seems to vary with the bitch, but it does seem to be with second and later litters when the bitch is older she seems to do better digestion wise on adult food.

>I don't understand why people are so set against feeding the girls whatever they will eat whilst pregnant and/or rearing puppies.

During pregnancy and puppy rearing my girls are fed ad lib.  They get minced steak, white fish poached in milk, scrambled eggs, full cream rice pudding, sardines, etc.etc.

They really get through my money during this time.  :-)  But they seem to go right off kibble altogether.  Normally they would get half and half wet food, and complete dry food.

My girls do tend to be quite chubby after the pups are weaned, but I find it does help when they lose their coat and look awful, it just seems that the extra weight helps the slump they all get after having a litter.  If they do get a little loose, I use pro-kolin.

I know I've told the story here many a time before so apologies if I am repeating what you have already read, but I will NEVER again feed a pregnant/nursing bitch on puppy food, as the last time I did it she nearly died -she lost that much weight I have never seen anything like it. The one thing that saved her life in the end was a chicken wing every hour of the day. This time, with the third generation bitch having her first litter,(her mum and granny having lost scary amounts of weight both with their first litters) I stuck with giving her one or two extra meals of chicken wings (2 or 3 depending on the size of them) during the last few weeks of pregnancy and for as long as she was still feeding the pups. It worked -I've had to cut her food DOWN to lose her the extra weight she had once pups were weaned. She's just about perfect weight now, just needs her coat back. Pups are 11 weeks old and she had 7.

I've not found anything to work as well as chicken wings.

My dogs are all fed the same way. Kibble with the addition of some meat and this was the first time I had a problem with any of them being too thin.
Mine have what they will take during pregnancy and while rearing in as much I offer them other things and usually come off it all with good weight sometimes a little extra. I have even had comments from people including puppy buyers as to how good they look compared to Mums they have seen previously.
I have put this down to feeding quality food throughout. I have never desired to feed raw or felt the need as not had any problem but of course each to their own.
I do not know why this girl had a problem and went down on her weight but feeding the puppy food and milk ( which I have done before ) was not helping her. Getting back to her normal diet with bigger helpings seemed to be the turning point.
I was concerned for a couple of weeks but after that things started to improve and now she is fit as a fiddle. She is a very active dog and from the point of view of activity with the other dogs this resumed after a couple of weeks and so she continued to run off her food as well.

Sounds similar to my recent experiences.

Thank you all for your replies, the only thing about going back to her normal diet is Arden Grange puppy/weaning is higher in calories and protein per gram than the adult version. Feeding 200g of puppy food gives her more calories in a smaller kibble than 200g of her normal food. So by going back to her normal food she may lose more weight and won't be able to fit as much food in?

As for the chicken wings, I don't have the storage here for those and looking the calorie content up, they are only about 94 calories each and quite big in volume for what they are, so not sure they would work for us, she isn't used to a raw diet and perhaps now isn't the time to change to one.

Will continue looking and researching.

Ps. One thing I might try Goldmali, reading your post again, perhaps I might try the addition of a small wet food meal in between the kibble meals. She does enjoy natures menu, it might be a way of spreading out the food intake so it doesn't all try and pass through too quickly. That may have been why the chicken wings worked, not necessarily the actually chicken, but the spacing out of the higher number of meals, just an idea?

As for the chicken wings, I don't have the storage here for those and looking the calorie content up, they are only about 94 calories each and quite big in volume for what they are, so not sure they would work for us, she isn't used to a raw diet and perhaps now isn't the time to change to one.


You don't need storage space! Buy a tray at the supermarket, takes up about the same space as two packets of butters and can be stored in the fridge as they will be gone in a few days, or buy a 2 kg bag at the pet shop. (Natures Menu have 2 kg bags and a lot of petshops stock their products.) :) The supermarket trays have roughly 10 wings in each so a few days worth.

Ps. One thing I might try Goldmali, reading your post again, perhaps I might try the addition of a small wet food meal in between the kibble meals. She does enjoy natures menu, it might be a way of spreading out the food intake so it doesn't all try and pass through too quickly. That may have been why the chicken wings worked, not necessarily the actually chicken, but the spacing out of the higher number of meals, just an idea?

I don't think so, because the thing with the chicken wings is, the bones inside them helps to bung the dog up as well, so prevents loose stools or diarrhoea, whereas wet food might cause it when they are not used to it. I've never looked into the calorie content but have had plenty of experiences of chicken wings adding weight or even making dogs fat. For instance if I was to feed a 30 kilo dog (with normal body, not thin or fat) an entire meal of just chicken wings, all it would take would be 2 large ones or 3 smaller ones. I started with them when I had the bitch with pups that lost so much weight we feared we'd lose her -I wasn't feeding raw then, so just added the wings.

Ditto others, my girl never loses weight as some dogs do whilst rearing pups, as her diet is kept the same as when she is in whelp for weeks after the pups have gone, never just kept on a complete food, always added goats milk drinks, chicken/meats with rice/chicken wings and fed puppy complete to give her all extra vits, minerals and proteins needed.

If she is skinny, she is not getting enough, feed her 3-4 meals a day until she fills out again......  :-)

>the only thing about going back to her normal diet is Arden Grange puppy/weaning is higher in calories and protein per gram than the adult version.

The calorie difference is not enough to matter if they can use the food better and not get loose.  Higher calories are doing no good if going straight through.

I assume your giving her 4 - 6 normal size meals, and she isn't trying eating too much in one go.