why she would kill her puppies when they are 8 weeks old
2007-06-01 23:41:43 · 13 answers · asked by Anonymous in Pets ➔ Dogs
the mother was given time apart from the puppies and was fed daily with extra food due to nursing. If it helps the mother is a pitt bull mix, first litter, and later that day she snapped and attacked a 3 year old girl that had been with her even before the pups were born. She was the only animal or person near the pups when they died. There was teeth marks around their necks. The pups were 2 of the last 5 pups to be given away.
2007-06-02 16:50:21 · update #1
Give more details. Were they healthy? Is the mother starving to death? Maybe she killed them because she doesn't want them to live the same kind of life she is having. How do you know she killed them? Maybe they had a disease and just died. There are many diseases that can kill a pup quickly. Did they have good nutrition supplied by YOU? Or were you still forcing this mother to nurse her pups?
If you weren't feeding them she would kill them to save her own life. It's to hard to say with out any details but it's easy to specualte this was human error.
2007-06-02 01:11:10 · answer #1 · answered by Freedom 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Some females have low levels of maternal instinct but they usually ignore their pups after birth. Sometimes they kill them because they just don't recognise what they are.
Some have a warped maternal instinct and instead of doing what we expect a mother to do they kill their offspring.
That can also be caused by stress, in zoos its common for females that feel under stress to abandon or kill their offspring. Too much intrusion by staff and visitors can cause it.
At 8 weeks, this is unusual behaviour. Its more usual for the mother to start to be stricter with discipline and spend more time away from them and ignoring them, preparing them for when they're older.
Its probable that this female has a warped maternal instinct, I wouldn't breed from her again. Instinctive behaviour is inherited learning, they are born with the knowledge of what to do. Its not learned behaviour and you can't change it.
She might pass it on to her offspring - in the wild she would not breed succesfully and thats how this kind of behaviour is extinguished in a species.
2007-06-02 08:32:06 · answer #2 · answered by sarah c 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
when i was young we used to have rabbits and when they had babies my mum used to say not to open the cages and pay too much attention too soon as it upsets the mum and she will kill and eat them, this happened on several occasions, iknow not the same thing but maybe the same principal. maybe she feels over whelmed they must feel the same sort of feelings as we do when we have babies imagine having 7 at a time,! a friend of mine brreds labradors she makes sure the mum has plenty of time to herself and is never locked in with the pups in case she gets upset and hurts them, maybe thats what went wrong
2007-06-02 07:12:33 · answer #3 · answered by jojo 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I knew someone who had rotties and one of the females would eat their pups the minute they were born. Come to find out she was a sorry Mom. I told the owner he should have her fixed.
2007-06-02 12:25:32 · answer #4 · answered by Sheila B 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sometimes when they are first born the mother will kill them, mainly because theres something wrong with them but at 8 weeks, maybe she feels threatened or jealous of them. If you have any surviving ones left then I would be tempted to seperate them, just incase.
2007-06-02 07:43:59 · answer #5 · answered by jo 3 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Maybe she had enough of them, if they became to much for her to cope with. They should have been re homed at 8weeks anyway. It might have had something to do with her thinking that they were in trouble and thought the best thing to do way kill them??
2007-06-02 15:52:59 · answer #6 · answered by elle_schweedy 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Did she have an escape route from the puppies? - if not they may simply have been too much for her and she snapped because she couldn't escape from them. It's very unusual for a b1tch to kill puppies of that age.
2007-06-02 09:51:58 · answer #7 · answered by anwen55 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Mothers only really kill there young if they feel that there is a threat towards them, its nothing mallicious, unfortunatly its just nature.
hope it all works out for you
2007-06-02 19:06:20 · answer #8 · answered by jodie 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
She might feel stressed, or scared, so she kills them, its sad but true, what you haft to do is leave her alone and dont bother her her or anything like that, leave her in a room, that no one really goes in, and leave her alone, only come in to fill water or food up or check up on her.
2007-06-02 08:55:37 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
maybe she could tell something was wrong with them . You know she could sense something wrong . other than that maybe she thought they were in danger and tried to protect them and accidently killed them.
2007-06-02 07:33:06 · answer #10 · answered by Kate T. 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋