discharge after whelping - Page 1

My girl just whelped 10 puppies on the night of Dec 22, morning of Dec 23. All went well, she is a fantastic momma, I noticed just this evening that she has a thick dark brown discharge, I havent noticed before as she as been keeping herself extremely clean. I have been checking her everyday. There is no odor, her temp is normal, no sign of blood. She is eat/drinking normally, her stool is runny but I suspect this is due to eating so many placentas, it is however, a normal color. She is still quite active but doesnt like to leve her babbies for to long, 15 mins top but checks in at least every 5. Is this normal?

I was told it was; Rose's discharge lasted about 3 weeks.  Others more experienced than I will give you good advice.

ok thank you, I was also wondering about handling the pups, they are about 3 days old now, I like to handle them a little every day, I stay in the pen with momma and she allows me to handle them, she usually falls asleep while im in there with her, I think it relaxes her a little. Should I be handling them this much? Is it normal for a firt time momma to realy on her owner to aid sometimes with the pups? For example, the one night one pup got stuck ibetween the blanket and momma was going crazy, the pup was half out of the blanket with the top half under, the baby was "screaming" ad momma was whinning, I helped her remove the pup and showed her the pup was ok, after that I placed the pup at mommas tits to eat and momma quickly fell asleep. She relys on me often though, is this normal, should I back off and let momma try to do all the "rescuing" herself?

Congrats on the babies and a healthy whelping!  Did you count all placentas and did you make sure they were all accounted for during whelping?  Did you give her oxytocin within 24hrs of her last born pup?  If not, you could have a retained placenta, that could account for the bleeding. Some bleeding, without a temp, is normal for bitches that just gave birth....but some could indicate infection...keep on taking her temp.  As far as involvement, you should be there helping as much as possible.  The mom is really still a puppy, she needs help, you should be very involved on every single "mom" duty....if you see a pup in distress, don't expect the PUPPY mom to know what to do....put the baby on a nipple, clean the baby, if there is not enough milk then bottle feed w/an appropriate formula.  You should be sleeping in the same room as the mom/babies if you are not already doing so.  If at any time a baby cries, put the puppy on a nipple and make sure the room is warm enough, make sure mom is cleaning the pups properly.  Like I said, mom is a baby herself, she will need your help with that litter...with a litter of 10, most likely you should be supplementing with formula.

It's normal as long as it doesn't smell and she's not running a temp.  I've had it last until the puppies are weaned.  I have a female w/ 2.5 week old puppies, and the mama still has discharge.  

For the first 10 days to 2 weeks, I expect the mom not to want to leave her babies...she's their source of warmth and nutrition.  

I did a lot of handling with Rose's pups in the beginning, because she got sick.  I then ran into kind of an issue with Rosé starting to expect me to take care of the pups.  Happy moderation is a good bet.

All the placentas were acounted for and eated... gross... and all pups are eating normaly, I am sleeping in the same room as her, I bought some puppy formula and a feeding bottle because I noticed one wasnt growing as well as the others and she is being pushed around and not eating as much, i tried for 45 minutes to get her to latch on to the bottle with no luck, I tried having momma put her scent on bottle, warming it a little, squeezing the teat to get milk on the nipple for pup to smell, i also tried to put some of mommas milk in to make it smell a little more appealing to the pup, no luck. momma loves the milk but baby does not :( any ideas?

my females have no issues nurseing 11 puppy litters but i weigh the puppys daily and the smaller ones i will take the big puppys off and put them in a box with a heating pad and let the littles nurse till they fall off and then put the big ones on 3 times a day

When I hear them start squealing for momma i go and moniter the feeding, placing the smallest pups on the fullest nipples and the largest on the smallest nipple, after the small ones fall off i allow the bigger ones to take over the fullest nipples
still trying with the bottle just to get extra nutrience into the pup but she still wont accept. I guess this is a good time to just keep trying.