It's six !

Primrose with her six pups this morning

It's now just after 10 am, managed to get to bed at 7 am, soon in a coma, and then woke like a startled rabbit thinking I had been asleep for eternity, to find it was around 20 minutes later, went and checked Primrose and then returned to bed, but could not get back to sleep, so got up and have been like a mother hen each time a pup squeaks putting them on a teat. The first few days great care should be taken to note that all pups are warm, sucking and vigorous when handled, you can easily lose them at this time if you take your eye off the ball.
 Primrose seems very content with her pups, but as usual showing a bit of discomfort because of how warm we need to keep the whelping box for the pups, if mum is not panting a bit in the early days when in with her pups, there's a big chance you have not got them warm enough.
 Now we might wonder were she was hiding six pups and I must admit over the last few days she had grown considerably and the amount of movement we could see in her abdominal area, we had our suspicions there were more than four pups, but did not want to get peoples hopes up to high on the waiting list. The scan was done by a young vet, who from experience I could tell had not done a lot of scanning and this resulted in a poor scan, one thing she lacked confidence in was palpation of the abdomen with the scanner and I think that is why we did not get good images of the pups or see any more than three, she confirmed she was pregnant which was good enough for me and we all have to learn somewhere, and scanning is one of those things that the more you do the better you get at it.
I have to get supplies now, as our children need feeding and the cupboards are bare and we are getting to a code red on toilet roll. I will get started on emailing  people on the waiting list about Primrose's pups this evening, as I am milking this evening and tomorrow morning, but will be in touch with every one by the end of tomorrow.

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