U have been well prepared before so obviously this info wasnt new to you. Ill be alot better prepped next time after my experience with Leo, first litter, first loss, think i was a bit naive to thinking that maybe, just maybe he might turn it around but unfortunately it wasnt to be. This site was a great support to me at the time and everyone was routing for Leo to make it and it was literally around that time or just shortly after he passed that i noticed your thread. When i researched FPS i recall it saying that the donor dog has to have had recent injections, how recent do you reckon that needs to be? xxxx

dont know for definate what the time span is for getting the blood I did it the day before she delivered the pups, but if you have a dog on standby, then it dosnt take long to spin it down, the only thing I would say is make sure the vets have the equipment, I am sure most do, but judt in case, also I beleive the vest in the original post, are prepared to advice other vets on the proceedure, so your vet can phone them.

Mo

Thanks for all the info, i dont intend to have anymore puppies till at least next summer maybe after but its good to know for when the time comes. xxxx

My bitch has had a litter of 10 but we have sadly lost two. My vets are of the oppinion that there was something wrong that prevented two of the pups from growing at the rate they should,
I ended up having a puppy put to sleep at four in the morning under the vets reccomendation, it was in distress hypoglycemic and the vet said it was the kindest thing to do.
They are 7 days old now and topping the pups up with whelpie is fairly difficult as they are reluctant to feed from the bottle, the mother is doing such a good job on her own they may have had their fill? The vet thinks I should intervene but if they are well fed and the pups are reluctant to feed am I just causing the bitch extra stress? I am giving her extra calcium and vitamin D. I have purchased a booster syrum for the pups just in case for later. I'm in a dilemma should I leave well alone if the pups aren't crying and make sure mum gets enough to eat and drink? when they are bigger and more demanding i will certainly try bottle feeding again as 8 large pups will certainly cause to much strain on the bitch. I've hand reared many pets before successfully but i don't want to jump in unnecessarily. I tried bottle feeding the one that had to be put to sleep every two hours and my bitch becomes distracted by this wanting affection from me, if i took the pup away from her sight she would become distressed by this, I don't want to cause more harm than good.
I have many breeder friends that are very supportive and I ring the vets constantly but i value everyones oppinion. I guess I want to know if she will be able to rear her 8 remaining puppies without my interferance? has anyone got any experiance with large litters?
I sleep downstairs with her so if a puppy is crying i will get a bottle made up straight away no messing but right now they are snug, warm and contented.
ps i own mum and dad, both dogs checked by vet and bitch is fed on vet reccommended puppy food throughout the day, plus she is als having whelpy to keep up her liquid intake.

My bitch had 6 pups she dealt with them herself I had no need to interfer with the feeding, so long as the mum is producing milk, the pups are feeding and growing(I weighed ours every day and kept a record) I see no need in getting involved, if you feel the pups are not thriving then of course get involved, the more the pups feed off the mum, usually the more the milk will let down, as far as I am aware, taking pups off the mum can actually assist in reducing the milk provided by the mum.

Mo

Thanks for you message.
I totally agree with not taking the puppies away but that was not really the issue, it was whether to top them up with whelpie, remembering my bitch had 10 puppies with is four more than 6 and her bottom 2 teats don't produce any milk. even just topping up with whelpie at such a young age has it difficulties as some teats the milk runs too fast on some its too difficult for them to get any milk then they are sucking air and will become collic.
The vet advised me to top up with whelpie as a litter of 10 put too much pressure on the bitch, however I agree with spaniel mads advice to rotate the pups and this is working well, the little two get a head start.
xx

[HI Mo,
my name is Deb and Ive just read your post about the fading pups and wow ive never heard of anything like this before,I breed pugs and for anyone who knows about pugs,to whelp and raise a litter of these little darlings is never a straightforward matter so its always good to gen up on what other people are doing,I had a litter of fading pups about 2 years ago its a horrible thing to go through and you feel useless because nothing seems to work so its nice to know that vets are progressing with new treatments and people like you mo care enough to bring it to our attention so thank you.



QUOTE=moboyd;1019263]fading puppy

I recently saw something regarding fading puppy syndrome, and thought it would be worth while putting on here for future reference. its an article from someones site, I have heard of this happening in a few litters and feel the treatment is worth considering if anyone happens to find themselves with a litter with this problem.


When Cath Keeley died so tragically and suddenly, her bitch Tip was in whelp. Frank didn’t feel confident to whelp the puppies, so Tip came to us a week before she was due to deliver. Early on the 1st March 2004, without much warning, she began to have very strong contractions and a short time later she discharged amniotic fluid heavily stained with meconium. There was no puppy in the birth canal and something was obviously going badly wrong. The vet was here in 5 minutes and eight puppies were delivered by emergency Caesarean Section within the hour. The problem became clear during the surgery - Tip had a very large male puppy in one horn of her uterus, and seven bitch pups in the other.

Unfortunately Tip had not been maternal with her previous litter and the section didn’t help matters. From the start she totally rejected the puppies, and was aggressive to them. We hoped that she might settle when she had fully recovered from the anaesthetic and in any case were determined that the pups would get some colostrum, so we tried restraining her while the pups fed. It became obvious however, that she was quite determined to kill the puppies, and was not about to change her mind on the matter. So Tip was sent home to Warrington where she recovered from her surgery without incident.

Restraining a large deerhound bitch with violent infanticidal desires is no easy matter and I honestly don’t know how much colostrum the pups got from Tip in the 48 hours we kept her here. They were supplemented with bottle feeds from the moment they came home and were also given commercial colostrum on the first day.

Once we had given up on Tip, the pups were fed 2 hourly on Esbilac. Constipation was a problem and they were given Liquid Paraffin for this. The smallest pup, Hooker (because she was tiny but tough) gained very little weight and died on Day 4. The others pups on weight steadily but I was not completely happy with their progress. When compared to my own litter born the previous October and raised by their dam, the weight gain of the pups was slower. Also the sites where the dew claws were removed never healed properly, forming little sloughy pits.

On Day 9 the pups began to fade. All of them lost weight, they were less keen to suck, and Gremlin the second smallest bitch pup was limp and not willing to feed at all. I took Gremlin up to my vet, John Reed, and suggested that we try a method that I had heard about via the internet.

This method of treating FPS pups came from Anne-Marie Brannon. Anne-Marie knew about plasma transfusions commonly done in foals when the foal is fading due to lack of maternal antibodies, and had persuaded her vet to try it with her fading litter of DDBs. Basically blood is taken from a healthy adult, preferably recently vaccinated, and ideally the dam of the pups. The blood is then spun down and clotted to produce serum. This serum is then injected into the fading puppies, thus hopefully giving them the healthy antibodies they need. Anne-Marie and her vets attributed the survival of her pups to the transfusion and the vets had subsequently used the method on other fading litters with success.

John was willing to try the transfusions and rang Anne-Marie’s vets at Swanbridge for technical details. Tip was obviously not available, so I rushed home to get Teelin as donor. Teelin had reared a healthy litter born the previous October and had just been vaccinated. When I got back to the surgery with her John took 200 ml of blood from her jugular vein using cattle vacuum tubes. He had found out that the lab could not spin down the blood immediately so he raced off to do it himself. I went home to leave Teelin off and get the puppies but sadly while I’d been at the surgery Gremlin had died. By the time I got back with the pups John had the serum ready, and he injected all of them. 200mls of blood does not produce much serum, but each puppy got about 1ml. John was able to get a vein on all of the pups, but according to the Swanbridge vets it can be given trans-peritoneally if no vein can be found. We discussed starting the pups on antibiotic prophylaxis, but as Anne-Marie had described a very fast response we decided to hold off for a few hours.

Had we not seen the results of this treatment ourselves, we would simply not believe it. Within hours a litter that was sluggish, a bit limp and unwilling to feed had been transformed into a mass of lively, pink, warm, wriggling pups who were feeding voraciously from the bottle. When John called out that evening to see how things were going the improvement was so radical, and the pups so clearly normal that again we decided to hold off with the antibiotics until the next morning. By then it was obvious that antibiotics would not be required. The pups had all gained weight, were obviously well and the little sloughy pits where their dew claws had been removed had completely healed overnight

From then on the pups never looked back. Their weight gain continued, and this time it was at the same rate as the healthy litter reared by Teelin. The weights also quickly evened out with the smaller pups catching up with the bigger ones. They were weaned at 2½ weeks and took to solids avidly. Because they effectively had no dam, Teelin and my maternal little sheltie Marble were given access to them from the time their eyes were opened and they ‘adopted’ the pups happily. When they went to their new homes I told the new owners to tell their vets and insurers about the transfusions, and all of the various insurers were happy to accept the pups without exceptions on their policies.

All of the puppies have developed well physically and mentally and all are big deerhounds. One pup, Big Bird, developed intermittent lameness when she was 9 months old but despite extensive investigations by a specialist orthopaedic vet this cured itself with no definitive diagnosis except ‘a strain’ being made. She is a big girl now and was the biggest pup. Another has chronically itchy feet and allergy testing has shown her to be (in the words of her owner) to be ‘allergic to life’ This pup’s vets wonder if the allergies may be related to early compromise of her immune system. Apart from this all of the pups have been entirely healthy. The quietest pup, Punk, always goes to sleep sucking the corner of a favourite blanket, and I can’t help wondering if this comfort behaviour has something to do with her being hand reared.

This method of treating FPS has now been used in seven litters that I know of, all with the same remarkable, fast results. Unfortunately it has not to the best of my knowledge been written up for the veterinary journals and until it is it will not be routinely used although it is normal practice for fading foals. There is little to lose with fading pups and, apart from a small theoretical risk of acute anaphylaxis, the only possible future consequence I can think of is if a transfused pup later needed a blood transfusion. Should anyone want more information they are most welcome to contact me, and I will happily put their vets in contact with mine.

With thanks to Anne-Marie Brannon of RedRoar Dogue De Bordeaux and Castlestaff Staffordshire Bull Terriers who was at the end of the ‘phone, her Swanbridge vets and John Reed MRCVS who spent an entire afternoon on something he had never heard of before.


Mo[/QUOTE]

Hi my name is Deb,
Have you tried Lactol gold instead of whelpie,Ive never had any success in getting new puppies to take it and find lactol much better and ive done a lot of hand rearing in my time as many pugs are not great mothers,I find the bitches like it as well, it keeps their energy levels up,especially if they get picky about food

I have just read that to my husband that was a very interesting post x

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think this post is in the wrong section?

Mo