Hi all, I have a litter of 5 chihuahua pups all hand raised as mum has no milk, they are 12 days old and the last 2 days the smallest pup and biggest pup are screaming all day and night long. They’re on worming medication and we believe they have colic. The vet has said vegetable oil in milk and gripe water which we have done and still no relief for my 2 pups. Mum is cleaning them before and after every feed and they are all pooping and peeing & feeding perfectly. I rub their belly, try to burp them over the shoulder and I’m at a loss, I can’t get my boys out of pain. Any advice would really help. Thank you!!

We didn't worm our puppies until they were 2 weeks using Sherleys gentle wormer.  Mum was wormed with a normal wormer when the puppies had their first worming.  It sounds as if something isn't suiting those two puppies.  What are you feeding them - hand rearing can be difficult.   Are you feeding them every 2 hours right round the clock?  Goats milk is close to bitch milk although it perhaps doesn't have all that a bitch replacer milk would have.    Does mum really have no milk - sometimes (especially after a C.Section) it can take some time coming in but the very act of nursing should stimulate lactation.

They were born at 51 days via Emergancy Csection, mum had no milk to start and unfortunately hasn’t still today. We are feeding them formula every 2hrs with the recommended brand from our vets. They was seen by Emergancy out of hours vets 3 days ago who said they needed to start wormer a little bit earlier than 2 weeks just to cover all grounds. Mum has been wormed too.
I’m currently waiting for the vets to call me back for extra support with the 2 boys who deffo have colic, they’ve agreed that the vegetable oil in the milk and gripe water is good and to continue but they might need buscopan or another pain relief to help.

> They were born at 51 days via Emergancy Csection, mum had no milk to start and unfortunately hasn’t still today.

I'm assuming there was good reason to deliver these puppies by C.Section that early ...... anyhow, we've had a number of C.Sections (mine would go into secondary inertia meaning the puppies had to come out other than naturally) and in every case, putting the puppies onto mum which was comparatively easy with mum very often still zonked out, giving me a chance to latch the puppies on and that encouraged lactation.   In fact with one litter which was a disaster (long story but the vet on duty messed up), the locum vet who was on duty when the vet we normally saw in that practice was on vacation, visited that evening and was gobsmacked to see mum happily nursing the surviving 4 (or 9) puppies.

Still if you've gone down the hand-rearing road it's enough for mum to be attending to helping the puppies empty!

I've never, again, wormed at under 2 weeks, and with a premature litter, wouldn't have risked doing that.  Yes, if they've not had mum's colostrum, you should be looking at interim vaccination against Parvo and Lepto at around 6 weeks.

Hope they survive.

Given the breed hopefully jeansw will see this and may be able to offer a suggestion