bottle fed puppies

[gwd]

I'm going to swim against the flow and say I think that it can make a difference.

Firstly I'm going to give my personal story. Baby girl was a bottle baby. Her dam had a uterine infection that require, 'not safe for puppies-antibiotics' she and her litter mates only got to nurse on momma for 48 hours. ..............baby girl is an insecure ***** and when stressed, she sucks on my fingers. You can tell she does this as a way to sooth herself. Of the six puppies, 4 that I know of have some security issues.

Now, the dam had two other litters (boy dog was out of her second litter). Of the two litters (total of 15 puppies) all are confident, secure, well adjusted Springer's. I know the sire of the 3rd, bottle fed litter and he's a well adjusted boy that has a successful show career, has obedience and agilsaity titles.

My thinking is that the act of nursing (puppies nurse a lot) releases oxytocin in both the dam and the puppies. If you've ever seen a litter nurse, they'll frantically feed for awhile to satiate and then they'll do a fair amount of lazy nursing....... with bottle feeding, they'll suck down the formula in about 3-4 min so they don't get that long, slow nursing experience.

Also, I know in humans, the content of the milk changes during nursing........ the first few min is one type of milk and then as the baby nurses, the fat content changes. .......I can only assume it's the same with b*tches.

I fully believe that the act of nursing has value........... something bottle babies miss.

[emmabeth]

Yeah I think theres a whole package that is so valuable to a puppy - not just food, and how it is delivered but social learning, comfort etc..

Wasn't there an experiment with neonatal monkeys that showed they would prefer a fake mother that was comfy and warm but couldn't feed them, over a hard cold mother who could!

And then of course it depends on the pup themeselves too, breed type and personality traits that might mean one pup can gain all the comfort and security he needs from spending time with appropriate adult dogs whilst being bottle fed by a human, another pup REALLY needs to feed from a *****..

And then when people say 'I'm raising some bottle fed pups' - are they allowing them to mix with adults, if they are, are those adults actually appropriate, certainly I doubt mine would be - only two of them showed a 6 week old Womble puppy anything resembling comfort and care, two shunned him entirely and one allowed him to climb all over him and be a pain in the butt without any objection... but of course he was well weaned by then and had spent six weeks with mum! Other people (and sadly rescue fosterers im look at you!) ... a lot of them are already crammed to the gunwales with anxious needy dogs and either these are not appropriate dogs for tiny puppies to mix with OR they are not mixing with dogs at all because the fosterer has to keep things separate for a variety of reasons (sanity!).. All too often as well, litters that end up in rescue because mum has died, will then be split up more so instead of all 11 puppies going to one person, you get two going here and three off over there and so on, AND they are isolated from suitable adult dogs!

I'd have a bottle raised pup from certain folk... and I wouldn't touch one with someone elses bargepole from others!