My staffie had her first litter of 7 with no problems at all.  Just had a caesarian to birth only one pup which she killed this morning by biting its head.  Does anyone know the reason for this?  Has it happened to anyone else?

I've always felt that when a bitch does this that there's a problem that they know about instinctively and we don't,  they are only doing what they would do in the wild.  Especially as I presume this is her second litter and you've only ended up with one maybe she absorbed the less strong ones due to a problem.  Has your vet thoroughly checked her over?

Not so sure about instinct killing it right away as I have heard of a bitch killing all the puppies and I would doubt all puppies in a litter could have something wrong with them.

I personally think they may be confused, frightened, imbalance in something whether calcium, homones or in the worst case senario they are just bad mothers.

She may have still been under the influence of the anaesthetic and suffering confusion :(

my gsd bitch had her first litter and there was 10 in that litter and she was brill with them, when we bred her again a couple of years later she had 12 in that litter, one of the pups was very weak and i was so shocked at her when she dispatched  it very quickly and settled down with now 11 and brought them all up she never went for any of the other pups only this one.
carol

In this case I think it may have been confusion following the C section, bitches often take a while to accept a litter after one.

We had a whole thread recently of a bitch acting aggresively towards her pups for several days before accepting them under supervision until the bond was formed

Yes, i agree that it is probably down to the anaesthetic/ c-section. In my breed [bulldogs] following a section we never let mum go anywhere near the head of the pups, but slowly introduce the back end to her first, until we know she's fully recovered then we'll gradually introduce the puppies head.

I agree with every post but i definitely think as Blue said it could also be due to a hormone imbalance.

Warm regards Susan

Wouldent the vet have checked the pup before giving it to the owner after the c section . I know mine checked all of our pups :) to check if there was any problems .