How Bosley’s Place Cares for Orphaned Newborn Puppies

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Call Jennifer Siegel, founder of Georgia-based rescue organization Bosley’s Place, and you will probably catch her in the middle of tending to some function of an orphaned puppy’s digestive system—either getting food into the puppy… or encouraging whatever is in the puppy to come out.

Siegel is always busy because Bosley’s Place is a foster-based rescue that specializes in what most organizations in the Southeast aren’t set up to handle: orphan newborn pups. An enormous amount of this needy population passes through her door. She feeds, burps, and “poops” the puppies (encourages them to go to the bathroom).

Siegel is not a veterinarian, but has been bottle-feeding puppies for well over a decade. She’s tube-fed puppies too weak to suckle, nursed litters back from severe dehydration, and pioneered what she calls “Bottle Feeding 101,” a curriculum she now teaches at shelters and emergency veterinary hospitals in her region. Her organization is also one of The Farmer’s Dog’s rescue partners.

“It’s not just about providing good nutrition to owned dogs,” she said about the fresh food. “It’s literally saving lives.”

Here’s what she wants everyone who loves dogs to know about bottle-feeding days-old puppies—and transitioning them to food that sets them up for a healthy life. 

Newborn white puppy lays on blankets and bottle feeds.

When do puppies need to be bottle-fed?

Bottle-feeding is the practice of hand-feeding newborn puppies with a milk-replacer formula when they cannot nurse from their mother. It’s a round-the-clock commitment that mimics, as closely as possible, what a mother dog would naturally provide.

One of the most common reasons puppies need bottle-feeding and come to Bosley’s Place is that their mother has died. Sadly, this was the case with the litter of pug-Pekingese puppies Siegel was caring for during our conversation. Other reasons include that the mother has rejected her young—a phenomenon that recently came to public attention via Punch the monkey. This does happen, particularly with stressed or ill mothers. Sometimes the puppies will be returned to the mother; she just needs to rest from a C-section or other emergency situation.

newborn puppy with eyes shut and tongue out is held up to the camera by a hand

What other special care do newborn puppies need? 

A newborn puppy is helpless. Their eyes and ears are sealed shut. They cannot regulate their own body temperature. They may not urinate or defecate without stimulation. And they need to eat every two to three hours to maintain their energy and blood sugar.

When orphaned puppies arrive at Bosley’s Place from around the south, they’re frequently in rough shape.

“By the time they arrive to me, they’re severely dehydrated. They’re limp and lethargic,” Siegel said. “Sometimes I have to give subcutaneous fluids [fluids delivered under the skin]. Sometimes I have to tube-feed if they’re just limp. I have to get the nutrition in somehow.”

If the puppies are ready for bottle feeding, Siegel puts a commercially available milk replacer—a formula that approximates the nutritional composition of a mother dog’s milk—in a bottle, and feeds them one-by-one for those initial four weeks of life.

Besides needing help getting nutrition, puppies need to be warmed and pooped (see above). Until around two to three weeks of age, newborns can’t generate their own body heat. Siegel keeps them in small bassinets on heating pads tucked beneath blankets, graduating them to children’s pack-and-plays as they grow.

Siegel provided these details about how she uses heading pads: “At one week of age and younger, the entire surface is heated to maintain a body temperature range of approximately 100.5 to 101.5 [degrees Fahrenheit], which is normal for neonatal puppies. From one to two weeks of age, as their space is expanded, only part of the habitat is heated—allowing them to move on and off the heat source as needed. They will typically begin to use the unheated area as a natural potty space. By three weeks of age, they no longer require a supplemental heat source.”

Likewise, mothers will lick their puppies to prompt elimination—so for the orphans, Siegel has to manually stimulate newborns to urinate and defecate after each feeding by using a warm baby wipe. Without this, puppies may not go regularly. This can make them sick.

How Bosley’s Place bottle-feeds puppies

You shouldn’t try to bottle-feed a puppy without instruction from an expert—but here’s how Siegel does it. She says the trick is finding the puppy’s “start button.” 

  • Apply a small amount of a nutritional gel to the tip of the bottle’s nipple. 
  • Tickle their cheeks to trigger the rooting reflex.
  • Rub behind the ears or gently stroke the back of the neck or forehead.
  • Let them stand to feed.

One last note here: puppies can bottle-feed standing or on their belly, but should never do so on their back. It might look cute, but it’s dangerous.

How Bosley’s Place weans puppies onto solid food 

Weaning is the process of transitioning puppies from liquid nutrition to solid food. Siegel weans from the puppy formula directly to The Farmer’s Dog food that’s formulated by board-certified nutritionists to be complete and balanced for growing puppies. 

“[The puppies] tell you when they’re ready” to wean, Siegel said. 

Puppies’ teeth begin breaking through the gums around three weeks of age. By 4 or 5 weeks old, most puppies begin signaling readiness — gnawing at the bottle, pushing it away, losing interest. Mother dogs, when present, typically start discouraging nursing around this time because it hurts to be nursed on by puppies with incoming teeth.

She notes again that it won’t happen for each dog at the same time. “If it’s a litter of five, three of them will [push the bottle away] and two are like, ‘Nope, keep the bottle coming,’” she said.

Siegel handles transitioning from formula to fresh food with a “gruel” made from The Farmer’s Dog food and warm water. Note that this is a different process than transitioning most puppies to our food or any other, as they’re much younger. Most puppies living with people are at least 9 weeks old, and the general advice is not to separate them from their mothers until at least 8 weeks. But these orphans are transitioning from the bottle at 4 or 5 weeks.

Siegel gradually reduces the added water until puppies are eating The Farmer’s Dog straight from the package. This usually takes a week. To learn how to feed weaning puppies yourself, consult a local teaching veterinarian hospital. Many have classes or professionals on staff who are willing to share their skill. If you’re in Georgia, Siegel also offers education. 

How The Farmer’s Dog made a difference for orphaned puppies

Before Siegel began using The Farmer’s Dog for weaning, transitioning puppies to solid food was messy, difficult, and hard on their digestive systems. The other soft foods that she tried required finger-feeding to get puppies interested. Both created serious gastrointestinal distress during the transition.

“There would be, I mean, sprays of poop everywhere,” she said. “We would go through equipment—play yards, pack-and-plays with mesh sides. If they spray diarrhea through the screen, it’s kind of done. It’s over.”

Then she introduced The Farmer’s Dog.

“It’s like heaven opened,” she said. “I was getting sausage poop after their first meal. I’m not kidding.”

More importantly, the puppies didn’t need to be coaxed or finger-fed. They dove in immediately. And the results were visible fast—not just in stool consistency, but in energy and weight gain.

She points to a puppy named Mateo—emaciated on arrival, every vertebra of his tail palpable—who was visibly filling out within four days of being on fresh food. The tail plumped up quickly, she said. 

“Five days on The Farmer’s Dog was all he needed,” she said. “Literally all he needed.”

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