Homemade Puppy Milk

Raising puppies and watching them grow can be a rewarding experience. However, a situation may arise where you are faced with an orphaned puppy. Whether he wandered away from the litter or the mother cannot produce milk, he must still acquire proper nutrition to survive and grow into a healthy dog. You can easily take care of the puppy's nutritional needs by concocting some homemade puppy milk.

  1. Choosing a Recipe

    • You can choose from various recipes for homemade puppy milk. Most of them are relatively similar and use whole milk from cows or goats as the main ingredient. However, you must be careful and avoid any recipe that suggests using honey as a sweetener or caloric additive as it may contain bacteria which may kill puppies. Egg whites should not be used either since the enzymes present in egg whites may cause a biotin deficiency in puppies.

    Puppy Milk Formula Examples

    • One simple and effective recipe uses 1 cup whole cow or goat milk, a pinch of salt, 3 egg yolks, and 1 tbsp. of corn oil. Mix all these ingredients together and, if possible, add a few drops of liquid vitamins--which may be purchased from your local pet stored--into the mixture. This super-easy recipe should be enough for your puppy's basic nutritional needs. Another effective yet fancier recipe uses 10 oz. of evaporated or whole milk from cows or goats, 3 oz. of sterilized water, 1 egg yolk, 1 cup of whole plain yogurt, and 1/2 tsp. of corn syrup. As with the first recipe, you simply mix all these ingredient together thoroughly until well blended. Whichever recipe you choose to use, try to prepare only one day's worth in order to ensure that each serving is fresh and uncontaminated.

    Feeding

    • Warm your homemade puppy milk until it's around 98 to 100 degrees F (36.6 to 37.8 degrees C). Pour the mixture into a sterilized baby's bottle or puppy's bottle. If the milk seems too thick, you may need to enlarge the hole in the nipple so that the milk drips easily from the bottle. Make sure the hole isn't too big so that the milk streams from the bottle since this may cause the puppy to inhale some of the milk and choke. After the bottle is properly prepared, feed your puppy while he's on his stomach. Once he is finished, burp him gently as you would with a human baby. Feed your puppy with the milk mixture every three hours for the first week and every four hours the second week. Continue to feed the puppy the homemade milk up until six weeks of age with occasional meals of soft, mushy puppy food beginning when the puppy is three weeks old.