Maximum age of breeding females - Page 2

If you use your own stud (believe you do), do more frequent breedings with the older females. Pay attention to more exercise. With age a lot of dogs slow down, fitness is especially important in the older brood bitch. Make sure she is not overweight **at the time of breeding**, rather on the lean and fit side. Don't overfeed while preggy. Keep her fit and lean while in whelp. No signs of birthing after day 63 means a trip to the vet for a check up. Day 68 of nothing should never have happened. When doing prewhelp x-rays and you are not doing a C-section right away, always take two! One from the belly side and one with the female on her side. It should give you more of a sense of a 3D view and show any possibly hidden pups - what you could not see in one view you should be able to see in the other view. If the last pup had not been produced naturally you could very easily have lost your female after a few days. Birth defects are mostly an higher incidence of developmental defects and small birth weights of the pups. Small litters ie single pup can be responsible for not inducing the proper birthing process. All sort of age related issues could be responsible for smaller litter sizes and birthing problems - hormones, uterine cysts, weak uterus, etc. All females are born with a predetermined number of eggs, but the number is huge (millions). As the body and its cells mature and ages, so do these undelevloped eggs. Over time some will degenerate, some will ripen and make it into the fallopian tubes to hopefully be fertilized, and eventually some will not ripen and fertility is lost. A female will not stop being able to conceive because she has no eggs left. Yes with age, fewer eggs are left, but fertility is lost or compromised because those that are left are not viable for conception. Fertility treatment for example will not make a female produce eggs all of the sudden, but it will "activate" the undeveloped eggs that she already has, but are not developing into mature viable eggs on their own.

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Slightly off subject. I see a lot of reference to x-rays to check for the puppies. How many do ultra sound instead? I would think that is a maybe safer alternative to x-rays. Your input will be appreciated.

I do ultrasound with a repro specialist who has the best equipment and training to be able to read the ultrasound, count puppies and check heartrates. He is accurate within one puppy. Usually his guess is right on the money, or one puppy less. He rarely misses one. I have x-rayed in the past but have not liked the process of turning a heavily pregnant female on her side and restraining her. Ultrasound is done at about 30 days. molly