Just doing some reading, and although everywhere states the room needs to be warm, I'm wondering what temperature should the whelping box constantly be at?

Thank you

I have my central heating thermostat set to 19c & its on permanently (night & day!) I also have a heat pad in the whelping box, mum & puppies all seem ok with it :-)

This useful article says " Some books on newborn puppies suggest keeping the environment 90 to 95 degrees, but most breeders will tell you this is way too warm. I personally try to maintain the box temperature right around 75 degrees. The puppies, of course, get their best radiant heat from the dam and a box temperature of 75 degrees should be more than sufficient! Without the mother, 75-80 degrees should be satisfactory. Make sure the temperature is gauged on the floor of the box. "

This one says "Put the box in a draft free area in a room whose temperature is kept between 90 and 95F for the first week. You can lower it to the mid 80's during the second week and then reduce slowly until it is around 70 - 75F by the end of the first month."

(Obviously those temperatures are fahrenheit, not centigrade!)

We had a brood lamp, and a thermometer in the bottom of the box - and aimed to have it around 80F there.  Others will suggest higher, but with mine, that wasn't needed - or a good idea. If nothing else, the brood lamp kept the area 'dry' so even in Summer, we still had it on.   We did drape a sheet across the very back of the box so mum could get away from immediately under the lamp.   Having it low enough to the pups to be effective could mean for a tall bitch, she'd get too hot - so be careful.    With my low to ground Bassets, that wasn't a problem!!    If the pups are with mum, they can snuggle in with her of course, but I preferred to have extra ambient heating with newborns especially.   If they are warm enough, they should lay around the box, often on their backs, after feeding.   If they are not warm enough, they will huddle together, and may start mewling, which is distressing to hear, and potentially not good news.   Once morbidly chilled, they won't nurse, and will die.

Thanks for the replies, there's such a fine line between keeping um comfortable and pups warm!!

My recent litter born in November I had a thermometer just above the floor 15cms ish. I kept it about 21 degrees. The pen is next to the radiator and we had heat pad in there too. At night by the bed in a poly box with snugglesafe pad. Want to keep warm as possible to help protect against herpes virus. Whether it would or not I don't know but I do what i think is best and it's worked so far

Quite apart from herpes which is an important consideration for sure, size of pups will matter. I have just looked up in "Nursing and had rearing newborn puppies" by Betty Bloomfield what temperature pups would need, and it states:

30 c for the first 2 weeks
26.5 for the third week
22-24 for the fourth week
22 from the fifth week onwards

Now I have noticed that my large breed pups have no problems at all, and I don't have the central heating on at night. If born in the spring/summer I have not even had a heated pad. However my toy pups are very different. Of the pups I have at the moment, two are very small for their age. (Half normal size.)They are 3 ½ week old. Last night we decided to try turning the heating down to just 20 C overnight. Obviously they have heated pads -set to adjust themselves according to room temperature so the colder the room, the warmer the pads. This morning both the younger pups were shaking with cold. And it was definitely cold as as soon as I tuned the central heating way up again they stopped shaking. The pups bigger and a week older were not affected.

Thank you Goldmali, I'd totally forgot to take size into consideration - those guidelines seem like what I had in mind. Just looked up the book too, would you recommend it? I've got Book of the bitch and was looking for another to supplement it. There's also a Bloomfield's Manual on Amazon, have you got that too?

This book is very old, and has now been updated, author now Samantha Bloomfield. Samantha Bloomfield grew up watching her mum handrear hundreds of puppies and kittens for people and then became a vet herself, and after her mum's death updated the book and yes the name is now Bloomfield's Manual of Puppy Hand Rearing. I have not bought the new version yet but I am planning to (noticed it is now in paperback and much cheaper than before at Amazon) as the original has been like a bible to me -so much useful info!

Thanks for bringing this book to my attention, Goldmali I've been struggling to find a book to fill in all the missing bits of Book of the bitch, hopefully this is the one!!