Pre-whelping preparation

Now that you have found a mate to breed with and you have established how you are going to breed it is time to prepare your home.

You need to choose a room or area suitable for whelping; the room needs to be dry and warm with no draft. It is important for the puppies to stay warm to the first few days after whelping. Newborn puppies need to be kept warm the temperature of the whelping box during the birth needs to be around 30°C or 90°F. The temperature can be decreased by eight few degrees every other day. It is possible to use hot water bottles or wheat packs to keep the box warm.

You should have a sturdy clean and suitably sized whelping box for the litter. It would be wise to line the box with a plastic or paint the box with a heavy duty washable finish. It should include  pig rails to stop the bitch from crushing the Pups. The dimensions of the whelping box need to be large enough to allow the bitch to turn around within the box however small enough to prevent the puppies from straying too far away from the mother. As a rule about give her about 6 inches play each side; head and tail when she is laying in the prone position when feeding her pups, and about 12 inches play each side; back to foot. The whelping box needs to have many layers of newspaper (the larger the newspaper the less mess) this enables you to remove the layers once they have been soiled and exposed the fresh layers under. Keeping the whelping box clean is important to the health and well-being of the bitch and her puppies. During whelping have a good supply of clean terry towelling cloths or old towels available. (Once soiled it is best to replace the towels and keep everything clean)

Below you can see a video for a home made whelping box (for small dogs) the railings are referred to as 'Pig Rails'

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Post whelping

Once the puppies have been born you can either continue to use the newspapers or there are synthetic absorbent materials available which provide secure footing to the puppies but allow urine to pass through leaving the box dry. Wou could use pine shavings which would need to be about 6 inches deep to be effective but no matter which style of box you decide on, you will still need to clean out faeces once the bitch stops doing this for her litter.