I snapped a bunch of photos as I performed various tasks.. A few good. Many not great. It was a pretty full day and as a result my update late.
To begin our day, following the morning linen change each pup received a fresh collar and a brief sponge bath. While Getka appears to clean them, I get the feeling she does more slobbering on them than actually cleaning. But she's got a lot of little bodies to manage so I think it's reasonable to step in and give her a hand. The pups seemed to enjoy their bath and the extra stimulation and handling good for them.
Next up weights followed by the first of a series of de-wormers. Their first taste of something other than mothers milk is generally not readily accepted. Round two normally goes down a little easier because their used to eating by then and maybe the meds familiar or at least not completely foreign. Fortunate they take to it though because as their size goes up so does the dosage.
Regarding size... there seems to be something up with the red genes in the litter. The two red girls are maintaining their edge and one, the blue collared girl has surpassed the weight of all her male siblings. That's somewhat unusual. And to top it off, White collared red girl is tied with the largest male for weight. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues. For now though, it's a situation that bares monitoring and I've actually started some rotational feedings so the smaller pups are assured their fair share. With a large litter as mentioned before the big pups can really start to out maneuver and over power the smaller ones. It can quickly turn into a snowball effect as the big ones always get in there first and by the time they get their fill, mom has had about enough of them leaving the little ones hungry. While I don't plan to starve any of them in order to even things out, I do need to make sure the pups that gained the least this week don't get pushed to the side. Irish is still little but definitely holding his own. I was happy to see his gain which was equal to that of Purple and actually surpassed that of Tan who apparently hasn't been very aggressive at the milk bar this week.
So that's the update for the day. I know you're all anxious to see some photos so I'll work on them next. None though are as cute as the single I posted earlier today. :-)
To begin our day, following the morning linen change each pup received a fresh collar and a brief sponge bath. While Getka appears to clean them, I get the feeling she does more slobbering on them than actually cleaning. But she's got a lot of little bodies to manage so I think it's reasonable to step in and give her a hand. The pups seemed to enjoy their bath and the extra stimulation and handling good for them.
Next up weights followed by the first of a series of de-wormers. Their first taste of something other than mothers milk is generally not readily accepted. Round two normally goes down a little easier because their used to eating by then and maybe the meds familiar or at least not completely foreign. Fortunate they take to it though because as their size goes up so does the dosage.
Regarding size... there seems to be something up with the red genes in the litter. The two red girls are maintaining their edge and one, the blue collared girl has surpassed the weight of all her male siblings. That's somewhat unusual. And to top it off, White collared red girl is tied with the largest male for weight. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues. For now though, it's a situation that bares monitoring and I've actually started some rotational feedings so the smaller pups are assured their fair share. With a large litter as mentioned before the big pups can really start to out maneuver and over power the smaller ones. It can quickly turn into a snowball effect as the big ones always get in there first and by the time they get their fill, mom has had about enough of them leaving the little ones hungry. While I don't plan to starve any of them in order to even things out, I do need to make sure the pups that gained the least this week don't get pushed to the side. Irish is still little but definitely holding his own. I was happy to see his gain which was equal to that of Purple and actually surpassed that of Tan who apparently hasn't been very aggressive at the milk bar this week.
So that's the update for the day. I know you're all anxious to see some photos so I'll work on them next. None though are as cute as the single I posted earlier today. :-)
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