You have an 18 day old yorkie puppy He is not nursing How much puppy milk replacer should you give the puppy and how often?

Answer 1

First of all, you need to ask yourself why is the pup not nursing? Try taking out all the other pups and just leave in the one who is not nursing and see if he will nurse then. If not, then you should take that pup to your Vet to make sure he is ok health wise before you do anything else. Make sure he is nice and warm. He should be offered a puppy milk replacer such as Esbilac every 4-6 hours at that age (use a human baby bottle, works better). At 3 weeks of age you could start offering the entire litter a mushed up dish of soaked (until very very soft and mushy) puppy food with some canned evaporated milk or canned goats milk, both diluted one part milk to one part water). Do not use regular cow's milk, is not good for them and will cause diarrhea. If you do get some diarrhea, after starting them on this, then add a little human baby dry rice cereal and mix up into the gruel. Just make sure this gruel is nice and soft at first and enough liquid in it so they can lap it up plus chew a little too. As time goes on, you can make the puppy food drier and drier. Make sure to use a good name puppy food. Don't forget to deworm the pups too at 4 weeks, 6 weeks and a final dose at 8 weeks.