Proper Procedures For Bottle Feeding Your Little Puppy

Proper Procedures For Bottle Feeding Your Little Puppy

If you are bottle-feeding your little puppy, you need to check to make sure the nipple of the bottle will produce enough flow so that the puppy doesn't have to work to hard to get the milk. You should start by filling your puppy's bottle with water, put on the nipple, and turn it upside down to check and see if it leaks. You may also want to give it a little squeeze to check for any leaks. You need to check how well the water is flowing from the top of the nipple, if it is smaller than the tip of a straight pin, you can heat up a needle and poke it through the hole to enlarge it.

You should always sterilize the bottles and nipples after washing them in hot, soapy water. When you mix the formula with water, you should pour enough of the formula into the bottle that will produce a single feeding, you should always warm the bottle of milk to room temperature. You can do this by holding the bottle under hot water in your sink, while turning the bottle.

As soon as you have the milk warmed to the desired result, you can begin to feed the puppy. You should pick the puppy up softly and hold him in the upright position, and gently put the nipple to his mouth. Most pups will automatically respond and take the nipple into their mouth, while others may take some persuading. Sometimes, if you squeeze a little drop on the pup's mouth, this will encourage him to start sucking the nipple. You should never try to squeeze milk from the bottle as the puppy is feeding! This can result in strangling the puppy or causing him to choke on the milk.

If you're having problems getting one puppy to drink and swallow the milk voluntarily, put him/her back and pick up another. You should always use separate bottles or at least nipples for each pup. There are several reasons for this.

First, you will know how much food each pup is getting and can better measure how much each pup drinks.

Second, is that one pup may get a disease and you will eliminate the chances of the other puppies getting the disease with the contaminated nipple.

Third, you will need to come back to the puppy that wouldn't eat and try to get him to eat a little more; you will know how much he has already eaten, because you will have the leftover milk in his own bottle.

As your puppy is feeding it should have a bowel movement and urinate. If this doesn't happen you may need to assist it by rubbing his anal area, or you may put it on a warm damp paper towel. The only danger in feeding your puppy with a bottle is the possibility of the pup sucking milk down his windpipe and causing him to strangle. This could actually cause the pup to drown. Even if it is not enough to drown the puppy, it could still harm his sensitive lungs.
When a puppy's lungs are injured, it could develop pneumonia. Several hours after a puppy has been strangled from the milk it could refuse to eat, it could also begin to have breathing difficulties, start to have bubbling and gurgling noises as it breathes, and will soon die. You must try to keep this from happening to your puppy by any means possible.

If the puppy begins to choke or gag, you should remove the nipple from the puppy's mouth immediately! Then you should place the puppy between your hands, with the puppy pointed outward, use your fingers to keep the puppy's head and backbone at a straight line. Bending down you can place the puppy between your legs, and start swinging the pup up and down. This should cause the milk to come out of its mouth, and hopefully its windpipe as well.