What kind of supplies do you have on hand.

1. alcohol
2. sterile gauze pads.
3. small sharp scissors. for cutting the cord.
4. unflavored unwaxed dental floss, for tying the cord.
5. Hemostats for clamping the cord and preventing the placenta from going back into the mom.
6. Bedding Changes (you'll need alot)
7. Nutri Drops
8. Oral Cal Plus
9. Baby Nasal pump.
10. Throw Away Piddle Pads.
11. Whelping box
12. Some type of containment so that you keep you girl confined in, such as a puppy playpen, x-pen.
13. Draft Free location for mom and babies.
14. Scale
15. Dry clean hand towels.
16 Betadine Skin Cleaner
17. Iodine to apply to umbilical cord to aid in drying and kill germs
18. Sterile cotton balls, baby bottles/preemie nipples,
19. Goats Milk
20 Rectal thermometer
21 Ky Jelly
22. Room thermometer to monitor temperature of whelping area, which should be approx 80 degrees
23 Syringes - 1cc and 20cc for giving medicine and measuring forumula
24 Pure glycerin
25 Eye droppers
26 Blood stop powder
27 Silver Nitrate sticks to stop bleeding at umbilical cord
28 Sterile surgical gloves


Whelping Pudding - see the breeding section for sticky
Goats Milk Recipe -

Have you cut down your girl and shaved her belly?

Complications: Call your vet:

1. Constant hard labor for more than an hour with no results
2. Green or odorous discharge from the vulva before the first pup is presented
3. An interval of two hours between pups with occasional hard labor
4. Any part of a pup stuck or protruding from the vaginal canal
5. One hour of hard labor and no puppies
6. Three hours of no labor between pups and you think there is another pup.

These are few things to be on the alert for.

Welcome to Yorkie Talk. :) Just wanted to say that everyone here has given you lots to think about and some great information. Please read the link given by the other poster as it has some great info. You will be very busy in the next couple weeks. Good luck!

GO HUSKERS:)

Welcome to YT...........great to see another fellow Nebraskan!

Renee (rbelland) and I both just had yorkie litters. Not sure where in Nebraska you are; sure would be nice if you were close enough for us to help. You do need to stay calm; your yorkie can sense your nervousness and it could make her more nervous too. Stay calm and do not leave her alone.

Just stopping by to see how you are and if your puppies have arrived. :) I see you have been given lots of great info.

You can expect, even under the best of circumstances, to tear open sacs, cut cords and clear the pups airways. Many pups are born breach and a small girl will have a harder time delivering them. Also, you can expect to have a pup born with very little cord showing and it can be difficult to cut in that case. What you'll have is a pup hanging just outside the Mom...in its sac...with Mom trying to get back there and you have to deal with the sac and cord with all this going on. There are many other things but what I just described would not be considered complications but a fairly normal whelp.

You haven't yet responded as to whether you took her in for an x-ray to see how many and how large the pups are. With a small girl, it would not be unusual for her to need a c-section due to the size of the pups.

With your lack of experience and lack of preparation, your girl would be best served to have her pups delivered by your vet. You will need advice once the pups are born and anyone here will be glad to help you. For the safety of your girl and her pups, please just let the vet handle the delivery. You need to know the signs of labor so you'll know when to bring her in but attempting this delivery on your own could have disastrous consequences.

Best of luck and please keep us updated.

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup: I agree!!!

A large litter brings its own set of problems. I hope you're prepared for the whelping and especially the care of Mom and babies after. If you have any questions, feel free to start a thread.

FYI...we all get nervous with expectant Moms. The more experienced I become, the more nervous I get. Every pregnancy and every whelp is different and you can't assume anything. It's a matter of prepare for the worst, pray for the best.

Best of luck to you.

You are so right, it's bad enough with a small litter.

With large litters there is the worry of premature delivery, mother pooping out attempting to deliver the last couple and requiring a C-section anyway. Then making sure that she is eating well and babies aren't draining her of Calcium. So, your work is really cut out for you; starting with the whelp and for the next 12 weeks.

I can echo that! I've got a litter of 6 that will be 10 weeks tomorrow. There's one (isn't there always) that I have to coax to get her to eat enough. She prefers the 'good stuff' over her dog food and won't eat well if it's not to her liking. So, I find myself cooking eggs, boiling chicken, adding goat's milk or broth and using canned food to dress up the kibbles. I won't feed only her specially so the whole litter is getting whatever I concoct. She's a willful child but is just precious. I think she was born with the Princess gene.

This is after supplementing the smaller ones until they caught up...feeding Mom 5 to 6 times a day while she nursed them...making sure they all eat well after weaning....on and on.

I thought I had put that we had done an xray.....two actually....two possibly three pups...the vet did say the heads looked a little on the large side...

I saw where you mentioned the vet said 2, possibly 3 pups but you didn't say whether he had done an x-ray or just felt to see.

Well we have PUPPIES! She went in for a csection this evening and had 7....one didnt make it....but we brought home 6!!! Far off the two or three I was told. She didnt want anything to do with them for a few hours but has finally layed down and let them eat : )

7..oh poor mommy but thank goodness you got her to the vet...and I am sorry about the one little one.:)

Just make sure mom and the pups are out of a traffic area..she will want to feel safe and secure and away from people coming and going..

A 4.5 pound pup had SEVEN puppies? YIKES

They must be very very tiny for 7 to come from such a little girl :eek:

I have been following your post but not commenting because I dont breed but wanted to say congratulations on the new babies :) im glad it all went well and my sympathies to the one that was lost :( do post us some pictures of the new litter!

Oh..YES...congratulations! So happy to know that all is well and will look forward to puppy pics! :)

Boy was that vet ever wrong..LOL:D

Oh, boy, .....now the work starts. Getting Mom to eat enough to feed all those babies can be a challenge. Also, you may have some small ones there that will need supplementing right away. I just went through one of my girls (a 5 pounder) having 6 babies. I was worried from day 1 about Mom and the babies. I started right away with calcium supplements for Mom (I used PetCal) and fed her as much as she would eat. She ate well for the first 2 days and then got picky on me. What worked for me with her was feeding boiled chicken, beef liver, scrambled eggs, goat's milk and canned food. By the second week after giving birth, she was eating 5 to 6 meals daily.

Your babies may look fine for the first day or so due to pre-nartal nutrition they got from Mom but can drop off really quickly. If you see any that aren't gaining, supplement them right away. Don't wait for them to start going downhill. With my girl, there were 2 smaller ones and I supplemented them starting the first day. I let them nurse but made sure they had enough with supplementing. I used the canned goat's milk (mixed with equal parts water) and added a little karo syrup to it. I used an eye dropper for feeding them and went slowly so they didn't aspirate the food. I warmed the formula to about the temp for baby formula. I use the inside of my wrist to check it.

I would think that the biggest things to watch for in your girl would be infection from the c-section and eclampsia (low blood calcium). You'll find the signs of it in the link posted earlier. You can hopefully avoid it by giving her calcium supplements and calcium rich foods. There is also a recipe for whelping pudding at the top of the forum here that is very good. With the PetCal tabs, I fed 1/2 tab twice daily. My girl did fine and had plenty of milk for her babies until weaning.

Not sure of the temp where you are, but the babies need to stay warm. They are unable to regulate their body heat for the first 3 weeks and need to be in a warm room (about 78 degrees) with no drafts. I also use a heating pad but make sure Mom can get off of it so she doesn't overheat.

Congrats on the babies and good to hear Mom is doing well. Best of luck!

Just to answer your temp setting. Start with the room at 80-85 degrees, and lower one or two degrees each day.

Pup Body temp. Weeks 1-2: 94-99 degrees Fahrenheit
Weeks 3-4: 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

An alternative to a heating pad is a 100 watt light bulb in a safe goose neck lamp a couple of feet above the nest.