abbie has rejected star, she has always been the smallest only putting on 10g a day but today she lost 8g and abbie keeps pushing her away so ive put her on welpi, but she keeps crying now will she have bellyache, ive been topping and tailing her, she is 8 days old
PLEASE HELP
I would do as the first reply advised, hold the mum firmly so the puppy can feed for as long as she wants to and preferably on the best teat as she is behind with her feeds.
When the others are asleep, but easily rousable bring the hungry pup in, rouse the others to wake them up and put one or two under mums nose so she can clean them while you put u/w pup onto a teat alongside another one. Make sure from the moment you put the pup anywhere near mum/the teats to feed, that you keep a hand on the mums head at all times so she does not turn towards the feeding pups - dont let go for an instant as if a bitch is determined to hurt a puppy they can be so quick about it its frightening.
Have the mum laying out on her side and you can feed the mum treats at the same time maybe, if the pup is latched in strongly and you dont have to hold it on. It may take her mind off the pup she doesn't want to feed - but make sure the others are feeding too.
Otherwise its one hand holding the mums head firmly on the floor and the other on the pup so you can whip it away quick if you have to.
Keep the puppy separate in between feeds in a small cosy box and keep the temp 70-75F. A clean childs teddy to snuggle up to is appreciated by single pups kept like this. Remove all bows etc. Rub the pups bottom before and after feeds with damp cotton wool so she can pee/poo. I would do supervised fedds like this every 3 hoursnight and day if you can. If you can keep this going til 14 days you can then start to teach it to lap welpi, though some large breed pups can lap at 11 days +.
Bottle rearing is fairly straightforward if you have to AND the pup will accept a bottle happily, I have always found that my pups hate bottles and droppers ( praps I'm just no good at hand rearing - it never seems to work for me) if they can feed from the mum they wont take a bottle. Its only the ones that are too weak to suck that I have succeeded with a dropper then a bottle. If you do bottle feed make sure you clean her chin neck and chest up well afterwards or the milk can burn the coat off and sterilise all the bottles/brushes and stuff as if it were a human baby..
If mum shows any signs of rejecting the others then dont try to put the pup on mum again - 100% bottle rearing. If this happens I would start weaning the litter as soon as reasonable possible say from 2 1/2 weeks, so that pup can have playtimes with the others after meals when mum is in another room.
, Feed them all togther let them play and when they start sqeaking to go back to mum/go to sleep pop pup into her box and the others back with mum.Get them off the bitch alltogther by 5 weeks. If pup makes it through to 3 weeks I would get a crate so she can sleep safely in there if she is raised as a singleton until she can join the others. Good luck.