Nutrition for pregnant dogs and for puppies

Getting nutrition right for your pregnant dog and her babies is essential to their health and to give the puppies the best start in life.

Feeding the pregnant dog

Pregnant and lactating (nursing) dogs need more calories and nutrients than normal as these activities place big demands on their metabolism. A good quality, balanced, commercial diet is best. Home-cooked or raw food is not recommended as it tends to be variable in nutrient content and may contain food-borne diseases that are dangerous to the dog, puppies, and owners.

• Early stages of pregnancy: Dogs will become hungrier after week 3 of pregnancy, but don’t need a huge amount of extra food at this stage. Make sure you don’t overfeed – dogs can become overweight during pregnancy and unfortunately overweight dogs tend to have more problems giving birth. Keeping your dog fit is most important. 
  
  
• From week 6 onward: Your dog will need more from their diet now and the simplest approach to this is to slowly change her over to a reputable puppy food, to be fed from now until the puppies are weaned. There are also purpose-designed foods made for pregnant and lactating dogs.
  
  
• From week 6: She can have about as much of the puppy food as she would have of the adult food. Thereafter, add 10% more food to each meal per week. Again, make sure she is not becoming overweight. Feeding more frequent, smaller meals tends to be best. Remember plenty of water access too! 
  
  
• After the puppies are born: She can stay on higher rates of food during nursing too as making milk is again very energy-demanding! Puppy foods provide for her needs but also mean that when the puppies start to investigate Mum’s solid food, it is already the right food for them too. 

Do I need supplements?

If your dog is having good quality, nutritionally complete and balanced food, supplements are usually not necessary. The most important one is to avoid giving too much calcium, as supplementing calcium unexpectedly makes dogs more prone to eclampsia (low calcium). 

Feeding the puppies

Sometimes puppies need a helping hand in the first few weeks while they are still only having milk. In this case, it is useful to have a reputable purpose-made puppy milk in stock, so you can supplement the puppies with bottle feeding. Make sure you mix up and use these products to the exact instructions as they can cause problems if not mixed correctly.

Puppies will usually start to be weaned at about 3 – 4 weeks and as above, they will investigate their Mum’s food first. If this is a puppy food already then they are off to a good start. Feeding puppies again requires a purpose-designed, high quality and reputable puppy food. Usually, this is wet food but as they get older and teethe, a dry food is also fine. It is a good idea to feed smaller amounts 3 – 6 times a day. Again, raw food is not recommended as it tends to be nutritionally variable and more at risk of being unbalanced, which is very dangerous for growing puppies. 

If you have any concerns about feeding your dog or her puppies, speak to your Vet for expert advice.

By Greg Steele MRCVS, practising Vet in the UK.