How to Teach a Puppy to Eat Puppy Gruel
Transitioning a puppy from their mother’s milk to mush isn’t a matter of teaching. Instead, the puppies typically figure it out through exposure. Your job will mostly be to expose the puppies to the food and ensure that the correct amount is available. You may also need to ensure that all the puppies get the appropriate amount, especially if some pups seem to be bullied away by their siblings.
The most you’ll need to do is coax the puppy to try the new food. You may put some on your finger and then offer it to the puppy, who will likely try and suck your finger, consuming the gruel in the process.
Understand that puppies will not quite understand how to eat effectively for some time. For this reason, you’ll need to prepare for plenty of clean-up. The puppies will likely get more on themselves than they actually consume. For this reason, you’ll need to ensure that you have plenty of towels and prepare to support their learning process.
It may take a few times for some puppies to even try a little bit. However, you should continue to offer it regularly. Repeat exposure is exactly how puppies wean, even if they don’t eat very much at first. Eventually, the puppy will recognize their new food and recognize it when you offer it.
There will be little actual teaching when it comes to weaning the puppies. Instead, your job is to offer the right food and provide puppies with plenty of chances to eat it.
There are several ways you can go about making puppy mush, though many of these recipes are incredibly similar. Several breeders will have one recipe they swear by. However, all of these recipes are appropriate for most puppies.
You should use the same food you use to feed the mother, as this food might have affected her milk flavor or smell. If the new food tastes and smells closer to what the puppies are used to, the odds are that they will take to eating it faster.
The first step to making gruel for puppies or puppy mush is to choose the perfect ingredients. The ingredients matter substantially when it comes to feeding your puppies properly. There are a few essential ingredients any puppy mush is going to include.
Firstly, you’ll need some high-quality puppy dog food. The food must be designed for puppies, as this sort of formula contains more of certain nutrients that puppies need, like DHA. It also has a different protein and fat level which is essential to support the puppy’s growth. You will also need water, make sure it is clean, drinking water. The amount of water will depend on the food. Some take a bit more water to become mushy, while other types take less. Experiment to figure out the best amount of water for your mush’s desired consistency.
You will also need a puppy milk formula. Some breeders use goat milk instead, which should work similarly. You don’t want to use cow’s milk, as it can upset your pet’s stomach.
To feed about 6 to 8 puppies, you’ll need 2 cups of dry food and about 12.5 ounces of milk. The exact amount of water will depend on how mushy you need to make the food.
The milk, water, and kibble make up the base of the recipe. However, there are several other things you can add as well. Many of these things are considered “superfoods,” but whether they do anything is debatable. Scientific studies have not been done on these ingredients, so the benefits of adding them are not known.
Many breeders add broccoli and dog-friendly seeds. These are added to increase the dog food’s overall nutritional value, as they are deficient in calories but high in nutrients. Types of organ meat are also added, but you have to be careful about pets overeating vitamin K and other vitamins. Organ meats are a little too high in certain circumstances.
Some breeders may add raw meat, but this is not recommended because it can introduce diseases that the puppies aren’t yet prepared to deal with.
In most circumstances, it is best to use a high-quality puppy food that is already complete instead of adding in a whole bunch of “superfoods.” If you’re using good puppy food you shouldn’t need to add in extra stuff.
How Often Should Puppies Eat Puppy Mush?
Puppies are growing quickly, but they only have small stomachs. Like human babies, they need to eat a little bit often. Even if it doesn’t seem like your puppies are consuming much of the gruel, they are likely taking in a decent number of calories.
Preferably, the puppies should eat the mush three to four times a day. This is a lot and will require plenty of clean-up from you. If the puppies are tiny, you may need to increase this amount but lower the amount of food you offer at one time. Be sure to weigh the puppies as they grow to ensure they’re on track. You may need to adjust their food intake based on this information. More is not necessarily better, as it can cause health problems down the line if the puppies develop too quickly.
Throughout the puppy’s development, you will want to increase the amount of food per meal but lower the overall meals. They should be eating only two meals a day when they are ready for their new homes, though smaller breeds may still need three meals a day.
What is Puppy Mush?
Puppy mush and gruel are often interchangeable, but the process for making them is slightly different.
How to make puppy mush with your own kibble
As your puppies’ weaning process is around the corner, you may be looking for homemade puppy mush or puppy gruel recipes. Weaning is the time when puppies will be introduced for the first time to food other than milk, and its important that this process is done gradually. Generally, puppies can start being weaned at around 3 and a half to 4 weeks, and the puppies should be fully weaned by 7 to 8 weeks when they are generally ready to go to their new homes. Just so you are prepared: expect puppy weaning to be quite a messy project!
Depending on the size of your puppies, you may start serving their food using a regular food bowl, but if your puppies are quite on the small side, you may prefer starting with a shallow and wide pan.
An aluminum pie pan may serve the purpose well. As mentioned, be ready for this to be quite a messy ordeal, so have your paper towels handy to clean up any messes.
As puppies dunk their faces and paws in their food the first times, you must be ready to clean them up but ensure they stay nice and dry to prevent them from getting dangerously chilled.
Puppies may be quite interested in the smell of dry puppy dog food (usually the same brand of food the mother is on), but its texture can deter them from trying it. After all, who can blame them: all they have consumed so far has been liquid, warm milk from their mothers!
Heres why you need to find to a compromise so that the puppies are enticed to eat but without having to worry about something thats hard and different. To help the pups transition to dry puppy food, you must therefore start with a diet that is very liquid, the consistency of gruel. Heres how to make it in two ways.
Option 1 entails simply making a layer of 2 cups dry puppy food on the bottom of the dog food bowl or aluminum pie pan. On top of this layer, you would then pour about 12.5 ounces of puppy milk replacer and let it soak for about 10 minutes. Wait for the kibble to swell up and add warm water until it feels soft and squishy and then smash it with a potato masher.
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Option 2 entails grinding the dry puppy food with enough warm water/warm milk replacer until you obtain the consistency of gruel that is very wet. Then, let it cool down and offer it to the pups in the bowl or pie pan. Here are the exact instructions from veterinarian Dr. Race Foster.
As the pups get used to eating the gruel, its time to move on to making mush. Mush is just a thicker version of the gruel and can be easily obtained by increasing the amount of dry puppy food while decreasing the amount of milk replacer and water added.
The goal is to obtain food that is thicker and thicker so that by the time the pups are 7 weeks old they are eating exclusively dry food. During this time, its important to provide puppies with access to water as they will be more thirsty since they are nursing less and less and theres less water content in the mush.
As the puppies nurse less and less, mother dog will also start decreasing her milk production. The process of drying up mother dog can be further expedited by gradually weaning mother dog back to an adult food versus the puppy food.
As always, this must be done gradually starting with replacing 1/4 of her puppy food with adult food and then over the course of the next days, increasing the adult food and decreasing the puppy food until shes eating exclusively adult food by the time the pups are 8 weeks, reaching a dosage of almost the normal maintenance levels fed to a non-nursing dog.