104.8 temp in weaning mom
Submitted by bully4beck on October 28, 2010 - 11:38pmPups are 4 weeks. Mom nurses 3x a day only. Tonight front 2 teats on left side are swollen. Mom vomitted. Temp 104.8. No vet until 8am. Any suggestions?
Pups are 4 weeks. Mom nurses 3x a day only. Tonight front 2 teats on left side are swollen. Mom vomitted. Temp 104.8. No vet until 8am. Any suggestions?
weaning
It appears noone was up last night to help. Hopefully you are now at your vet. Your bitch most likely has mastitis. I was informed years ago by my vet that it is better to wean "cold turkey". At 4 weeks of age pups suck is too strong and when allowed to have Mom on restricted basis they go at her too hard. Suck can cause a vacuum affect and when they release this allows bacteria to be sucked back into the mammaries. I know it seems cruel to wean cold turkey and you worry about Mom becoming engorged. In 15 years of breeding I have never had a problem with Mom pulling the pups. If she feels a little too full I might gently hand express a little milk but rarely have I had to do this. By this age mom's milk production has usually decreased some what anyway--which is why the pups are ready to be weaned. The little monsters also have very sharp teeth by now, too. As to last night--I would have given Mom some buffered aspirin for fever and a cool bath until fever was down. Then I would have placed warm towels on boobs to help increase blood flow--or gone to ememrgency clinic to get abx started. Hope she is soon better.
Miriam
omegabulldogs@aol.com
weaning
It appears noone was up last night to help. Hopefully you are now at your vet. Your bitch most likely has mastitis. I was informed years ago by my vet that it is better to wean "cold turkey". At 4 weeks of age pups suck is too strong and when allowed to have Mom on restricted basis they go at her too hard. Suck can cause a vacuum affect and when they release this allows bacteria to be sucked back into the mammaries. I know it seems cruel to wean cold turkey and you worry about Mom becoming engorged. In 15 years of breeding I have never had a problem with Mom pulling the pups. If she feels a little too full I might gently hand express a little milk but rarely have I had to do this. By this age mom's milk production has usually decreased some what anyway--which is why the pups are ready to be weaned. The little monsters also have very sharp teeth by now, too. As to last night--I would have given Mom some buffered aspirin for fever and a cool bath until fever was down. Then I would have placed warm towels on boobs to help increase blood flow--or gone to ememrgency clinic to get abx started. Hope she is soon better.
Miriam
omegabulldogs@aol.com
Mastitis
Thanks Miriam. We met our vet this am. That is exactly what happened. I did the bath and the asprin last night. Unfortunately I erred on the side of caution and did not give her enough asprin. I only gave 1/2 of a 325 mg. ascriptin. This momma produced more milk than necessary for her pups so I thought we would be better off weaning slowly. Never been lucky enough before to have that option, so it was always a matter of weaning quickly due to non production. I guess I made a bad judgement call on the slow weaning. Hopefully someone else may be able to learn from my mistake. Thanks again for the spot on advice.