When do dogs stop breeding

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Back To Top. Your bitch may also exhibit restlessness, nesting behavior and lack of appetite for hours before parturition starts. There are three stages of the birth process:.

Stage 1 : hours. Panting, restlessness, onset of contractions. Usually below F. Stage 2 : hours. Contractions and expulsion of fetus. Pups come every minutes — often two will be born in a short period of time, then the bitch will rest for 45 minutes to an hour. Allow the bitch to break the cords and clean all the puppies. She may want to eat the placentas. This is normal, but not necessary. Do not allow her to eat more than 2 or 3, or an upset stomach is likely. Count to be sure there is a placenta for each pup.

Call us IF:. Stage 3 : Expulsion of remaining placentas and uterine involution. Call IF 12 hours go by without expulsion of all the placentas retained placenta.

Handle the newborn pups as little as possible for the first few days. Do not allow other dogs in the nesting area. Keep the number of people visiting to an absolute minimum, and do not allow them to touch the pups for the first weeks to avoid disease transmission. Milk starts forming in the mammary gland weeks prepartum, and may drip for a day or two before birth. If the bitch has insufficient milk for a large litter, special milk replacers such as Esbilac must be used. Healthy, satisfied pups will wake, cry for a few moments, nurse, then sleep again.

Unhealthy or hungry pups will cry for extended periods, then fall quiet as they weaken. These pups need immediate attention! Some bitches will experience hypocalcemia low blood calcium , especially if they are nursing large litters, in the first weeks of lactation.

These bitches are nervous and restless, progressing to panting, whining, incoordination and collapse. This is a medical emergency! Feeding calcium supplements during pregnancy increases the problem. Ensure a good-quality ration for your bitch, not a local or elevator brand.

Feed her normally for the first weeks of pregnancy, then start adding puppy food to the ration for the last 4 weeks. Some people believe that because their bitches blow their coats that means they need more recovery time.

If you read the post cited above about caloric requirements, most often blown coats have less to do with recovery and more to do with lack of adequate calories and other nutrients during gestation and nursing.

I always stress the importance of consulting a qualified reproductive veterinarian, and this is absolutely no exception. The opinion of a good repro vet should be your number one consideration for whether to breed back-to-back or skip a cycle, and you should have your bitch evaluated by your repro vet before every breeding. Other people also feel a bitch may need a break after a C-section.

Again, talk to your vet. She can examine your dog and give a veterinary opinion on whether she should be bred or rested. Besides breeding back-to-back, Dr. Hutchinson also advises to start breeding at a young age.

Hutchinson gives a specific age to start, there are a couple of studies on the subject that suggest breeding your female dog between 1 and 2 years of age. A Cornell University study presented at a Theriogenology conference in studied dystocia difficult birth in almost litters.

The study showed that bitches having their first litter after 2 years of age were 2. Dr Cornelius had a journal paper in on dystocia risk, however the paper did not include age of first litter data. There are also good reasons to wait until later to breed. In some cases, these reasons have nothing to do with the health of the bitch, although some do.

Examples for reasons to consider breeding later include. Health concerns for diseases or conditions that only appear later in life and cannot be cleared through other means of testing such as Addison's disease, some seizure disorders, some eye disorder, some heart disorders.

If you have a breed or line that is prone to some of these disorders, you may want to consider waiting to breed until your dogs are past a certain age to help reduce the breeding of dogs with these conditions. Dogs bred for conformation competition will need to be evaluated at 2 years of age or older.

This is not a health concern for either parents or puppies, but it is a goal for some breeders. Working dogs are often not bred until titled. Again, this is not a health issue but is important to some breeders. There is no one set age recommendation for when to stop breeding that I have ever been aware of.

I would rather miss out on having one last litter than risking dystocia or other problems. Adding to this the information from Dr. Hutchinson about trying to start early, breed back-to-back, then retire early, I try to retire my bitches by 4. To summarize, current research is telling us to consider:.