Puppies will be 3 weeks old tomorrow. Won't be much longer and we will be starting them on a mixture of canned goats milk Esbilac and powdered Esbilac 2nd Step. We usually start this around weeks 3 to 4. Right now the 5 puppies can nurse Anna dry in less than 10 minutes. Once we start feeding them ourselves, the time we spend goes up significantly.
I will be out of town with my family tomorrow and Kris will be here at home with her family and the puppies, one of the down sides of puppies over a holiday. Kris and I, Anna and the puppies would like to wish everyone Season's Greetings. Have an enjoyable and safe holiday.
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Bruce
MysticKnight Cavaliers
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Posted: 28 Dec 2005 02:22 am Post subject:
12/27/05
We have started the puppies on just liquid goats milk Esbilac once a day as a supplement to Anna's milk. We warm up the Esbilac to about 98 degrees F, Anna's approx. body temperature, in the microwave. It's a little hard to do because you don't want it too hot or too cold. It's heated in a measuring cup, then transferred to a very small, shallow bowl. We hold the bowl up to puppy's nose and away they go, lapping like a pro! Sometimes we have to start by dipping a finger in the bowl and letting the puppy suck on our finger (called finger feeding), but all of these puppies started lapping right away.
Right now we are only feeding them the liquid Esbilac once a day. We want to start them on other food gradually to try to avoid any issues with diarrhea or constipation. After a few days we'll add a little powdered 2nd Step to the liquid Esbilac. A few days of that and we start increasing the amount of 2nd Step and the number of meals.
This period of time feeding them is really time intensive because its one puppy at a time for maybe 5 minutes each, with time in between for re-warming the Esbilac. It will get even more time consuming when they go on 2 times a day. And I love every minute of it!!!