Puppies reach a certain stage they are forced to wean. So do you need help weaning your puppy? How to take care of puppies during the weaning period? The following article will help you answer this problem.
When to wean a puppy?
There are 1-month-old babies who have opened their eyes, opened their ears, learned to walk, and they are curious to try other foods that they come across. If the puppy is being raised by the mother dog at this time, the mother dog will begin to give the puppy her soft foods, or spit back the puppy food.
However, puppies need to be breastfed for at least 60 days and you should not wean them prematurely because:
- Weaning puppies too early is very harmful to their health because at this time puppies cannot chew and digest solid food on their own, and homemade food may not be nutritious enough for puppies.
- Puppies that are weaned too soon, with or without the mother, face health dangers and behavioral problems (Texas Gov)
- During breastfeeding and being around the puppies, the mother dog will teach the puppies life skills, such as when to bite, when to bark, when to be afraid and to stay disciplined. From there, the puppy will learn from the mother and be better later. The early separation of puppies from the mother before 60 days can have adverse effects on both the puppy and the mother.
- Competition for daily breast milk in the cubs will help the puppies get stronger.
Instructions for taking care of puppies when weaning
Weaning puppies care is very simple because the mother dog has done most of the work from cleaning, teaching to ensuring the safety of the puppies. The only thing you need to do is make your own porridge for puppies.
Puppies will gradually wean when their owners provide them with complementary foods, and the mother will begin to want to wean from about 3 weeks to 5 weeks. After that, puppies can be fully weaned after 2 months.
The weaning process for puppies will take about 1 month from 1 month old to 2 months old. This is a natural process and you should not force it to be weaned right away because it will be very harmful to both the puppy and the mother.
After 1 month of age, puppies can start eating solids. They will begin to try new foods in their mother's meals, and at this point you should cook a separate food for the puppy.
The quality standards for weaning food during this period are:
- Lots of nutrition.
- Milk.
- Soft / watery so it doesn't need to be chewed because puppies don't have teeth strong enough to eat hard food, can't eat seeds yet
- The dish is warm at a temperature of 37 - 38 degrees Celsius.
Puppies before 2 months of age do not have teeth, so they can only eat porridge. During the 2nd month, the puppies will start teething and will come to try the mother dog food and you can try to start feeding in a different way.
The ingredients of the puppy meal include 30% Pureed skinless chicken, 20% dog milk powder, 50% ground rice. Add more water to cook the porridge and let it cool to the right temperature before serving. For more convenience, you can also use granules for puppies and puree with warm water, then mix 20% powdered milk to feed puppies.
To help your puppy get used to eating solid foods, place the food bowl right next to the puppies for them to crawl to eat. Or you can also gently place the puppy's chin on the food bowl, they will smell the smell and start licking the food in the bowl. Note that you should choose a shallow, low bowl to make it easier for the puppy to eat.
When you first start weaning, you only give your puppy one meal a day. When they are used to weaning, they can maintain 3-4 meals / day.
When feeding puppies, you should separate the mother dog to another place to both avoid the mother dog eating the puppy's picture and avoid the puppy still more accustomed to sucking mother's milk.
In the following stages, you can gradually reduce the amount of milk in the dish and progress to completely eliminating milk from the weaning food.
From the 7th week when the puppy is strong, you can gradually practice eating dry seeds for the puppy or homemade dishes including rice, chopped meat. After the 8th week, they can already eat other foods completely without breast milk. And at this point, you can also start to let your dog learn to chew bones but need to pay attention to safety.
How to separate the puppy from the mother dog
When the puppy is used to solid foods, you also need to schedule to separate the puppy from the mother dog. Keep the puppy alone in a cage or other area to limit the puppy's urge to suckle, and only let the puppy come into contact with the mother dog after eating. By the time the puppy begins to gnaw on bones, you should be able to separate the puppy from the pack.
However, there are also special cases where it is possible to separate the puppy from the mother dog earlier. For example, the mother dog used to be a stray dog, adopted and not cared for much. The mother dog can develop defensiveness, fear of people and this will also be taught to the puppy. At this point, you choose to isolate the puppy and the mother dog earlier (possibly after the 4th week) to avoid negative genetics.
Here is some information about How to wean a puppy that we want to share with you. Wish you have healthy and lovely dogs. If you need to know more about other ways to take care of dogs, please contact http://vanchuyenchomeo.com/ for advice.
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