Are there twins in a litter? - Page 2

Well one of my dogs just had pups and yes we got twins... Same placenta but not identical in appearance.  They are actually mirrors of each other... kinda cute (not gsd, Akita)

Wow!

This got interesting quick, I was wondering?......

Here we go....

If you have 2 pups in the same bag, how do they come out?

It just seems that there is just room for one at a time to come out, is the bag intact and one comes out
and then the other without the bag breaking?

Never seen twins before, and I've had a few litters!

Here's a good explanation of twinning in the dog world:

http://www.ashgi.org/color/twins.htm

To my understanding they all share common gene pool and hence we can say that every litter consist of twins, triplets...Etc etc... Or many more.

I have had twins on more then one occasion. With some it was no problem coming out. With the others ohhhmyyyyyyyy what a hellasious event. In any case not sure what rare is... I like my medium well. Now you have news for your daughter that yes it does occur in German Shepherds.

Likewise, a Happy Spring and Happy Easter all.

Debi at the sherman-ranch.com

Thank you for all the input, it has been really interesting to hear of your experiences.  I can put my daughter in the picture now, and I have gained knowledge along the way too.

Regards Ann.

Puppies sharing the same bag and placenta are called freemartins are usually sterile .

The only dogs from the same litter that can share the same exact gene pool are those that are identical twins contained in the same placenta. Regarding the rest of the litter, or in the case of a litter with no identical twins, none will share the same excact gene pool although they have ths same parents. That's the reason why canine siblings often produce and look differently from one another.  If this weren't true, you would get the same results from breeding to Yasko's brother ,assuming he has one, as you would breeding to Yasko himself. Same in humans, both my sister and I have blue eyes and blonde hair, she is 5'6", I am 5', we were born 5 years apart and are full siblings.

Since dogs normally have multiple births, each pup in each litter or more than one pup could be termed a fraternal twin, triplet, quadruplet, quint, etc depending on how many there are total. I've never heard of identical triplets in dogs, but I've never heard of so many sets of twins either as there seem to be in this breed. Maybe it's because there are more GSD's born than most other breeds, I don't know, but it sure sounds to me as if there are a lot of identical twins born in this breed compared to others. I've know breeders who have bred other breeds for 40 years and have never seen a set of identical twins. I'll have to see if I can find the odds of that happening in the dog world. That makes a good arguement for the tendency to produce identical twins being  genetically influenced.

wouldn't know on the most of this.... the one set I just had was my only experience with twining in dogs.  My brave girl didn't seem to have a problem delivering them.

I assisted with whelping a GSD litter that had not one but three pairs of twins.  The dog had one pup, then had two together three times, then had a last single pup.  The three pairs were same color, same sex, shared same bag and placenta and in each pair one pup was much smaller then the other.  Two of the smaller twins died within a few hours.  Only one pair both survived, they were identical except the smaller stayed small, matured about 40 lbs, did not display dwarf characteristics though.  Far as I know that sire never gave twins again, the mother was put in a pet home, she had such a hard time whelping that litter and with it being her first, they didnt want to risk it happening again. 

In most species, a freemartin only occurs when a male and female are twinned, the male is fertile but the female is sterile.  I have seen identical twins in beagles, male and female with exact markings down to the spots on their legs, only way you could tell them apart was to pick them up and see which was the male.  The female in that pair had a big masculine head and chest, looked like a male pup, she probably was a freemartin.