Hi guys, I'm hoping you may be able to shed a little light on something which is puzzling me, my bitch recently whelped 7 very healthy puppies, it was her first litter and she was a little slow to break open the sacs, so naturally I helped out, only to discover that the sacs were on some puppies double and on two - triple !!

The birth was classic textbook, other than the fact the puppies were surrounded by more sacs than is usual, all was fine, in fact the puppies were exremely robust for new borns.

I have never seen this before and was wondering if anybody else has, I am very interested to know if it was just a quirk of nature or something else which caused this to happen.  Any info would be appreciated :-)

I think it's quite common.

I have only whelped one litter, and some of the sacs seemed to have endless layers.

More experienced bitches will rip open the sacs themselves and so I can't comment on how many sacs were present on theirs, but in the births which have needed help, I have never seen this before and have helped to whelp many litters.  I was wondering if maybe it was something to do with the food the bitch was recieving during pregnancy ? just a thought.......I swapped over to raw a few years back, this bitch is 3.5 and has had a raw diet most of her life, do you think this could contribute? 

I have to say that I thought I was imagining things when I whelped my last litter as a couple of puppies seemed to have double layers.  When I rethought the whelping through afterwards I thought I must have been wrong and just over anxious but to read your post suggests that no I wasn't going mad.  Very interesting, my girl was fed Arden Grange Prestige so I dont think it can be connected to feeding.

One of my now retired girls always had pups with double sacs, I can remember breaking through the first one to find another, I used to feed Burns at the time.

I really don't think it's diet related.  I had a girl last year with a triple layer, I thought I was never going to get open in time!  The sacs were the strongest I've ever had to tear. 

My friend's line is the opposite, they come out backwards and with the bags missing or at least mostly off already - means a panic if anyone gets stuck halfway!!!

me too , four out of the five puppies came out backwards with no sack last pup head first with sack complete.

Around a quarter of pups per litter from my fawn btch have double sacks and some are also incredibly strong! Good thing mum relies on a helping hand, theres no way she'd do it by herself.

Its very odd, I wonder what the scientific reasoning behind this is?

It's puzzling me too !!

I have just helped to whelp two litters and they couldn't have been more different, one litter all had double/triple sacs, the other litter, half were missing and like above a lot came out backwards.

I would love to know what the 'key' ingredient in the diet goes towards making the bags stronger, stands to reason it's got to be some factor that is contributing, or is it just random ?

I know with birds, the diet they receive contributes to the intergrity of the shell, just wondering if it's the same with 'sacs'

most of my litter were born without sacks and i think thats why we lost the 13th pup as she took along time to be born but the 14th followed almost immediatly he was in his sack and it was double