Whelping, Feeding and Nursing Doberman Puppies

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When the puppies were born, I tagged each puppy with a colored ribbon for identification.

During the first few weeks of the of the puppies' life to ensure the puppies survive I kept the puppies in a warm and dry place. I bought a plastic bin and installed heating provided by an incandescent bulb. The temperature within the bin was kept warm at 28 deg Celsius. The bin also protected the puppies from wind.


I was fortunate that the weather in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia was warm everyday, except some night when it was raining and very windy. Anyway, I kept the puppies indoor for the first 4 weeks.


Feeding and nursing the puppies
Fortunately, the dame has a natural mother's instinct of protecting, feeding and nursing the puppies. But, I have to earn the trust of the dame that I was helping her to look after the puppies.

The puppy sucked and is attached to the nipple very strongly 

In the beginning, the dame was reluctant to let me take the puppies away to the puppy bin. What I did was, I placed a new unfed puppy into the dame's cage each time I took a fully fed puppy away into the puppy bin. The dame learned very fast and trusted me.


The last litter was 9 puppies and I have to divide the puppies into 2 batches for feeding. The first 2 weeks was a lot of work changing each batch on an hourly basis. The last feeding of the day was done at 2 am and the first feeding was done at 6 am.


When the puppies was 2 weeks' old, the dame's milk was not enough for 9 of them. I have to supplement with hand feeding them with goat's milk. Please do not supplement puppies with cow's milk.

With bottle feeding, we have to make sure :-
1) the milk flow very slowly from the bottle
2) that the puppy is held up so that the milk will not rush to their lungs. Otherwise it can be fatal.

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