How to Feed Newborn Puppies

Video Transcript

"We are ready to feed the puppy. What I've done is I've I have a nursing kit here. You want to use a bottle from the pet food store. These are specifically made for puppies and their size of mouth, and they come with about usually several different styles of nipples. I personally find for a puppy this size; I like the large one that looks like this. And you can take a razor blade, which I've done. I've taken, actually a scalpel here, and cut a "X" on it. I've cut an "X" on the nipple okay, so that we have an opening for the milk to come through. These do not come with an opening, so you do have to make an opening. But you do not want to make too large of an opening, because you don't want that milk just pouring into the puppy's mouth. They need to nurse, and pull it out themselves, okay? So again, I've been keeping this in nice warm water, to keep it nice and warm, and I'm going to test the milk, just like we would with a baby, okay? And it's nice and warm, okay? And it's nice and warm, but just I didn't feel it to the touch of my hand of my wrist there. It was just pretty much the temperature of my own body temperature. All right, now the puppy is really ready to eat. What I'm going to do is I'm going to hold the puppy just like it would on its mom's stomach. I usually like to prop them up, okay, so their mouth is up high. She smells that milk, all right, so we're going to, there we go, and this puppy looks like she's going to be a really good eater. And I'm going to give her a few seconds so that she's not just eating too quickly. And you want to prevent them from eating too fast, so that she doesn't get air in her stomach, and milk goes in; she you don't want it to aspirate, which means it to goes into the lungs or to the nose. Okay, now once we've finished feeding her, and I'm going to feed her a little bit more later, but you want to make sure that you also stimulate her to go to the bathroom, and this helps them digest, okay. So you're going to rub her stomach with a cloth, and get her to go to the bathroom again, okay. And I often do this throughout the feeding, because I just don't I want them to make sure that they're digesting well. And I can see that she's still pretty hungry, so I'm going to feed her a little bit more. She's, you can see she is just chowing down, and that's a really good eating puppy."