Hi, I have two 2 week old puppies that are feeding well, sleeping well and growing every day.

Their mother is unable to produce enough milk for the puppies after C-section & spay hence I started bottle-feeding them since they were 3 days old. All along their stools were pretty normal, yellow soft stools. However, since a couple of days ago, their poop started to turn out dark green and slightly runny. Is this something to be concern about? Although they are still acting the same and gaining weight.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Have you just wormed them? The wormer can affect the colour of poop.

That's not what I'd want to be seeing.    I've had a number of C.Sectioned bitches, although none was spayed at the time, and I ALWAYS got the puppies on the teats.   In fact after a disasterous whelping (vet), the locum who visited that evening to see how things were going, was amazed to see the 4 surviving puppies happily nursing from mum.   There was no need to be bottling/tubing them.   As long as the puppies are doing well, nursing should encourage the milk to let down, regardless of the 'Section.

https://pets-wiki.com/diarrhea-in-newborn-puppies-causes-treatment
Scroll down to Causes of diarrhoea in puppies.

Also, did they have any milk from mum - it's vital they have the first milk (colostrum) to give them the natural immunity they need through the first weeks.  If not, you may have to talk to your vet about having at least vaccination against Parvo and Lepto by around 6 weeks.

Sadly I think you supplemented too soon.  It can take a day or two for milk to let down anyway, even without a c-section - and a c-section is known to often delay milk production further.  It WILL come in, though.  But milk is about supply and demand.  If you leap in and supplement, then you remove the demand for it and it will dry up or lessen even more and become a vicious circle.

Really you shouldn't have supplemented from day 3 (or if you did, just giving a little to help the pups), you should have persevered to help your girl produce milk and given it longer - you could have added oatmeal, goat's milk and fenugreek capsules - all known galactagogues.  The best nutrition for puppies, is mum's milk - there is no substitute for it so you should only supplement in an emergency and when really necessary.  (If you look at the ingredients of formula, you will see things like soya and vegetable oil etc etc - that stuff shouldn't be a part of any dog's diet let alone neonatal puppies.)

It's also not ideal to spay at the time of a c-section.  Sometimes you get over-zealous vets who encourage breeders to do this because they just want to spay and neuter everything everywhere... Sometimes it really is medically necessary (ruptured uterus for eg) and in those cases there isn't a choice.

If the pups nursed at all from mum in the first 3 days, then they would have had colostrum so you don't need to worry about that.

As for the green poop, I would see if that continues beyond a day or two if they are well in other ways - and if so, speak to the vet.  They should be able to lap gruel very soon so you shouldn't need to have to continue feeding for much longer.

> Sometimes it really is medically necessary (ruptured uterus for eg) and in those cases there isn't a choice.

With the disasterous litter (already mentioned on several occasions here!) our bitch wasn't spayed at the time of the C.Section.   In fact we let her have one season after she'd finished nursing that litter, to give her a chance to recover from the ordeal she'd had, and then midway between that season and what would have been the next, she was spayed.   At that time (new vet!!) one horn of her uterus was paper thin and we were told she'd never have carried another litter in any case.   So it was just as well we didn't try - not that we did after a 'Sectioned litter.   At least we still had her, and two of the four surviving puppies!

When we did a litter, we always had Whelpie or other, on hand - and a good source of fresh goats milk from a neighbour down the road.   But always had the puppies nursing - actually it was marginally good that after a C.Section mum was pretty much zonked, giving the puppies a good opportunity to get at the milk bar!   And even with the couple of big litters we had, we didn't have to supplement.

Puppies from a C.Section often drop an ounce or two initially.

Thank you so much for the input. I have some questions..

Was it unsafe to assume that she didn’t have any milk as I couldn’t see any when I gently pinched her teats numerous times?
If yes, is it too late to stop supplementation and let them nurse fully?

As of now, my girl still regularly gets into the whelping box to try and nurse them.

> Was it unsafe to assume that she didn’t have any milk as I couldn’t see any when I gently pinched her teats numerous times?

Yes, uit was unsafe to think that.  It's the act of suckling that helps bring down the milk.   It's easy to panic when milking a bitch doesn't produce milk.

If she has a need to react to them being hungry, why not let her?   At least until you are well into the fourth week, and the weaning process.

>Was it unsafe to assume that she didn’t have any milk as I couldn’t see any when I gently pinched her teats numerous times?

That was the wrong assumption.  Firstly, it is notoriously difficult to express a bitch - that is why you don't hear of breeders (often) using breast pumps or expressing milk from bitches for puppies.  If puppies can't nurse, then formula is used.  You are unlikely to get milk out of a bitch unless she is literally overflowing with it and it's bursting out of her - which isn't going to happen in the first 24-48 hours after birth. 

As MamaBas says, sucking and nipple stimulation (in an ongoing way) is what causes milk to come down. 

>If yes, is it too late to stop supplementation and let them nurse fully?

Of course you should be keeping puppies and mum together as much as possible and allowing mum to act naturally and feed them.  It's not just about feeding them, it's about licking them, nurturing them, cleaning them, mothering them generally.  Research shows that puppies whose mothers have licked them and cleaned them a lot and been 'good' mothers grow up to have better stress responses and immune systems than puppies with 'bad' or neglectful mothers.  Mothering is not just about feeding.