bottle feeding/weining questions
 

I start the puppies on a gruel of the puppy food I will be feeding, baby rice cereal, and a jar of baby food turkey or chicken, made very thinly for the puppies to lap up. As they develop their teeth, I reduce the thinness of the gruel for them to start chewing. I give them a bowl of the dry food to begin to play with it and learn that they will eat it.

Hi Nikki -- I feel like I have found a sister of sorts. My puppies are 4 weeks old today too and I have been bottle feeding them since their 3rd day. (Sadly, we lost the momma dog, Sadie.) I have been giving mine diluted goat's milk in a saucer/bowl for the last couple of days and they are doing fine with that. Today, I added Rice cereal with it. I let them drink from the bowl as I offer one at a time the bottle. They all still want a little from the bottle to finish up. For timing, I usually just keep checking and when someone is sucking on someone else, it is time to feed them. If in doubt, i talk to them and put my hand in the play pen. When they all come running to my hand, I know they are hungry. That has gotten to be about every 4 hours or so.

I am going to use my blender (actually a smoothie maker) to grind up some of the dry food to a meal for them to try tomorrow. I will just leave that in their pen for them to try whenever they want. I will still be giving them the milk every 4-5 hours and adding the cereal in the evening. I will probably continue to offer the bottle for a couple of weeks if they want it. As I see they ar eeating more of the dog food, I will cut down further on the milk I offer them. I think they will sort of show me what they need.

I almost don't want to wean them. I have grown very fond of our feeding time, holding them, petting on them and talking softly as they take the bottle. They put their little paws on each side near the nipple like they are holding it on their own. It will be sort of sad to have them do it all by themselves. And then I guess I will have to go back to things like cleaning the house and cooking meals. :rolleyes: Seriously, I will miss the bottle feedings -- our time together. But it is SO much better now that those every 2-3 hours days are behind us! I am too old for that!

Sorry if I sort of ran on and on here. I am excited that someone else is going through the same experince as I am at the same time. We'll have to compare notes.