Foreword

Of all the questions that have come across our counter over the years, the ones that matter most to me arrive quietly, usually from a breeder who has already done a great deal of reading and wants to know how the pieces fit together. What should she eat in the weeks before her season? When does her appetite deserve more food, and when does it deserve patience? Which of the old herbal practices still serve us, and which have been outgrown? This little book is my attempt to answer those questions in the way I would answer them in person, slowly and with the reasons attached.

It follows a single naturally reared girl through roughly five months of her life: the month before she is bred, the nine weeks she carries her litter, and the eight weeks or more in which she feeds and teaches them. Along the way I lean on the wisdom of Juliette de Bairacli Levy, who gave Natural Rearing its name and its conscience, and on the many thoughtful feeders and practitioners who have carried her work forward. Where they agree, I say so. Where they differ, I try to explain why, and where I have arrived after many years of feeding, formulating and watching dogs.

The calculator that accompanies this book handles the arithmetic: how much to feed at each stage, how to divide the bowl, and how to meet her need for long-chain omega-3s from whole foods. The book handles everything that arithmetic cannot.

OneThe Inheritance of Juliette de Bairacli Levy

Natural Rearing did not begin as a feeding method. It began as a way of living with dogs. Levy's foundations were few and plain: a correct natural diet of raw foods; abundant sunlight and fresh air; at least two hours of exercise every day, including real running outside any enclosure; kenneling on earth, grass or gravel rather than concrete; and herbs, fasting and other natural methods in place of vaccines and symptom-suppressing drugs (Whole Dog Journal). Everything she wrote about the brood bitch grows from that soil.

She thought of breeding in three nines: nine weeks from mating through the first week after birth, nine weeks of nursing and weaning, and nine months of rearing the young. She called the in-whelp weeks "weeks of unceasing natural care," and she would not allow her readers the comfort of believing that an herb could do the work of a well-kept body. Raspberry leaf, she warned, "will not produce normal and easy whelping if exercise is neglected" (Levy, The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat). I have never found a better summary of the whole subject.

In her writing on the care of the brood bitch, Levy kept the bitch on raw foods for the whole of her pregnancy, with only a little semi-cooked cereal allowed. She gave a daily mineral blend of dried, powdered nettles, comfrey and seaweed. She kept up the weekly half-day fast and the monthly full-day fast that her dogs observed throughout their lives, and she insisted on two hours of free exercise on clean land each day. When a bitch refused her food of her own accord around the fourth week, Levy saw it as a natural fast and would not have her coaxed to eat. In the final week she reduced the meat and offered a gentle laxative diet of raw milk, flaked oats or barley and slippery elm flour, and after the birth she gave a simple fluid diet of milk and honey (Levy, Care of the Brood Bitch).

It is a coherent and beautiful picture, and much of it stands untouched by the decades since it was written. A few of its details have been revisited in light of what we now know, and I will come to those honestly in their place. But the spirit of it, that a mother is best served by clean food, clean ground, free movement and a keeper who watches more than she meddles, is the spirit of this book.

Levy's work is carried on today by breeders who hold themselves to her standard in a world she could hardly have imagined. The Natural Rearing Breeder Connection, a nonprofit of dog and cat breeders, describes the principles as "both simple and elegant": proper raw, species-specific nutrition as "the foundation of true health," a toxin-free environment and the avoidance of chemicals, natural medicines for treatment and prevention whenever possible, a positive and low-stress life, and "trust in nature's ways." Its members pledge to have fed a completely raw diet for at least three years, with no cooked, kibbled or canned food even as a supplement; not to vaccinate except where the law requires it; to keep their homes and land free of chemical flea and tick products, household cleaners, air fresheners and lawn and garden poisons; to health test for the problems known in their breeds; and to raise their litters in the home, with as much human contact and enrichment as possible (NRBC Code of Ethics). I can think of no better modern summary of the life this book hopes to describe.

TwoMany Voices at One Table

One of the quiet pleasures of the raw-feeding world is how much its elders agree once you look past their vocabulary. Ian Billinghurst built his BARF approach around raw meaty bones, organ meats and vegetables, and he supported the pregnant and nursing bitch with essential fatty acids and probiotics, adding calcium and vitamin D for bone and milk once she was nursing. Lew Olson emphasized a balanced raw diet of muscle meat, organ and bone, with folic acid and omega-3s for the developing litter and probiotics and enzymes for absorption. She recognized calcium's role at whelping, then increased food generously during lactation with plenty of protein and fat. Kymythy Schultze asked for a species-appropriate diet without grains or processed foods, with kelp, alfalfa and vitamin E, extra liver around whelping, and vitamins C and E to help recovery afterward.

Marina Zacharias, who carried Levy's work into a new generation of breeders, kept the natural diet of raw meat and bone, turned away from commercial food altogether, and used raspberry leaf, herbs and homeopathy to support the reproductive cycle, the birth and the recovery. Among veterinarians, Dr. Nick Thompson, who founded the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society, brings more than thirty years of raw feeding and homeopathy to the same table, and his practical guidance for the pregnant and nursing bitch runs through the chapters that follow. Beyond these voices, Monica Segal's careful, individually balanced homemade diets, Steve Brown's attention to nutrient balance and variety, Kat Lane's appropriately supplemented raw feeding, Wendy Volhard's natural diet of raw meats and vegetables, Dr. Jeannie Thomason's animal naturopathy, and Dr. Jean Dodds's insistence on balance and the avoidance of foods that provoke the immune system all point in the same direction.

Set side by side, these voices form a fairly clear consensus. Feed raw, whole, varied foods built on muscle, bone and organ. Pay close attention to the long-chain fats. Support digestion. Feed more, and more often, as the litter grows and the milk comes in. Treat calcium as a question of timing rather than of quantity. Where the elders differ, it is mostly in their supplements, and on that point I tend to take the Natural Rearing view: let food do as much of the work as food can, and reach for anything else only with a clear reason.

Dogs Naturally Magazine puts the modern version of this simply. Before she is bred she should be fit, at a good weight and eating a raw, fresh diet, and once she is pregnant her bowl should be built on good-quality protein, which Dogs Naturally places at sixty to seventy percent of the diet (Dogs Naturally, From Heat to Birth).

ThreeThe Season Before

The healthiest litters I have known began long before the breeding, in a bitch who was already living well. Natural Rearing reads health over seasons and generations rather than from a single examination, so the month before her heat is less a time for change than a time for confirmation. I want to see a dense, glossy coat without odor, clear eyes and clean ears, sweet breath and white teeth from years of raw meaty bones, small firm stools, a steady appetite, firm muscle, a regular cycle and a steady temperament. I want to know how her parents and grandparents lived and how long, how her littermates have fared, and the same of the stud's line. A girl who struggles with chronic itching, recurring ears or a temperamental gut is telling us something, and the kindest response is to listen before we ask her to carry a litter.

This is the month to settle her on the exact ration she will eat through pregnancy and nursing. Make any changes now, slowly, so that nothing new arrives on her plate in the final weeks. Rotate her proteins widely across pastured beef, lamb, goat, venison and poultry, with heart, green tripe, liver and the other secreting organs, raw meaty bones, pastured eggs, small oily fish and a little raw goat milk. Bring her to a lean, well-muscled condition; extra fat is not a reserve for the litter but a burden at whelping. There is no need to flush her with additional food as her season approaches.

From the planning stage onward, keep her clear of chemical flea, tick and worming products and off any ground that has been sprayed. Natural Rearing breeders are united in the view that a bitch should never be vaccinated while in season, in whelp or nursing, so whatever choices you make about vaccination belong well before this point. A fecal check confirms that she is free of worms. If you use herbal worming, finish it before her season. The traditional worming herbs, rue and wormwood among them, stimulate the uterus and have no place once she is bred. I would also ask that you leave pennyroyal out of every part of her life; it appears in some older Natural Rearing flea recipes, but its oil is toxic to small animals (Merck Veterinary Manual). The Natural Rearing Breeder Connection asks its members to health test for the diseases and problems prevalent in their breeds and to share those clearances with every buyer (NRBC Code of Ethics), and I agree. Beyond the breed's own screening, the one conventional test I hold as essential is brucellosis for both dogs, because it spreads to other dogs and to people, causes infertility and lost litters, and cannot be met with herbs.

Red raspberry leaf traditionally begins at the first sign of heat. I give it by her weight, steadily, from that day until weaning, and I describe the amounts and the reasoning in the chapter on herbs. Nettle, as part of Levy's mineral blend, begins in this same month. Steadiness serves her better than intensity.

FourThe Quiet Weeks

For the first four or five weeks after breeding, very little seems to happen, and that is exactly as it should be. The embryos are tiny and her needs have barely changed, so she stays at her maintenance ration. Overfeeding now does nothing for the puppies and simply puts fat on the mother. Nearly every voice I trust agrees on this, from the old Natural Rearing texts to Dogs Naturally's trimester approach.

Somewhere around the fourth week many bitches lose interest in food for a day or two. Levy treated this as a voluntary fast and would not have the bitch coaxed, and I have come to see it the same way: a brief, self-chosen rest, not a problem to be solved. If she seems queasy rather than simply uninterested, Dogs Naturally offers a gentle remedy, which is to "break the fast" each morning with a very small, light meal at room temperature and wait at least forty-five minutes before her main meal (Dogs Naturally). The shifting hormones of early pregnancy can also make her a little constipated, and a little extra green tripe, a spoonful of raw goat kefir or a small amount of pureed leafy greens usually sets things right.

On fasting itself, I follow Levy. Her weekly half-day fast and her monthly full day of rest continue through pregnancy, just as they did through the rest of her dogs' lives. In my own thirty years of animal health care, much of it alongside homeopathic veterinarians, short water-only fasts of one to three days were a regular and very safe part of caring for healthy adult dogs. They are not a deprivation but a brief rest that lets the body heal and recover. Dogs are made for this rhythm; their wild relatives feast and fast as a matter of course, and they carry their young that way.

A fast day for an in-whelp bitch is simple: fresh, clean water always within reach, her free running as usual, and quiet. The days on either side are what make it work. She eats generously and well, so a day of rest is taken from abundance, never from want. When she chooses a fast for herself, as she so often does around the fourth week and again in the last day before whelping, I take it as her body's wisdom and let it be.

Dogs Naturally and other experienced raw feeders take two approaches to bone in these early weeks. Some raise bone content slightly early on, then bring it back toward ten percent in the final weeks while adding boneless meat and fattier cuts for energy. Others hold bone steady. I have come to follow Dr. Nick Thompson, the holistic and homeopathic veterinarian who founded the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society and has fed raw for more than thirty years. Until about the sixth week he keeps her on "regular food, regular bone, regular everything." From then on he meets her rising appetite with organ meats such as liver and kidney, which are low in calcium, and goes "very easy on bones" in the final three weeks without taking them away (Thompson, Raw Food for Breeders). My templates do the same: about twenty percent raw meaty bone, or roughly ten percent edible bone, until the sixth week, then about fifteen percent, with the extra share going to liver and the other secreting organs. Nothing is ever added as calcium. The reasons belong to a later chapter.

FiveThe Quickening

From about the fifth week the litter begins to grow in earnest, and most of the puppies' growth happens in the weeks that remain. This is the moment to make her food richer before she runs out of room for it. I move toward fattier pastured cuts such as duck, lamb and well-marbled beef, add more pastured eggs and small oily fish, and let raw goat milk or kefir take a small regular place in the bowl. Then I begin to increase the amount gently, roughly a tenth more each week from the sixth week, arriving at about one and a quarter to one and a half times her usual ration by the time she whelps. A large litter may ask for a little more.

As the puppies crowd her stomach, the meals must shrink even as the day's total grows. Three meals in the sixth week become four smaller ones by the eighth, which Dogs Naturally also recommends to keep the mother-to-be "topped up with fuel" (Dogs Naturally). This is the time when the energy density of her food matters most. A bitch who cannot comfortably eat enough volume needs richer food, not simply more of it.

Levy's final-week diet deserves a moment of its own. She reduced meat and offered raw milk, flaked oats or barley and slippery elm flour as a gentle laxative to ease the birth. Our own approach to carbohydrates is more cautious than hers, and I do not feel the need to bring grain into a bowl that has never needed it. But the intention behind her diet, food that is light, soothing and easy to pass in the last days, is sound. My version keeps her meals small and soft: ground meat, plenty of green tripe, raw eggs, raw goat milk or kefir, and a little slippery elm stirred through. If you are drawn to Levy's oats, a small amount of soaked flaked oats will do no harm.

Levy's fast days continue through these weeks as well; only the eating days change, with smaller and more frequent meals. In the final day or so she may refuse food altogether. That is her last and most natural fast, and often the clearest sign that labor is near. A refusal that comes with fever or weakness is another matter and deserves a call to your veterinarian.

SixOf Calcium, Iodine and an Old Debate

No subject in the care of the brood bitch has produced more confusion than calcium, and few carry higher stakes. Her need for it is real and grows quickly, first as her puppies' skeletons harden in the last weeks of pregnancy and then, far more dramatically, as she begins pouring calcium into her milk. The natural conclusion seems to be that she should simply be given more of it all along. That conclusion is the source of a great deal of trouble, and understanding why is the surest way to keep her safe.

What is happening in her body

The level of calcium in a dog's blood is held within a narrow range by a small group of hormones. When it begins to fall, the parathyroid glands release parathyroid hormone, which draws calcium out of her bones and improves how well her gut absorbs it from food; calcitonin works in the opposite direction when levels run high (Fontaine, Reproduction in Domestic Animals). Her skeleton is less a fixed structure than a living reserve, a bank she has been filling all her life from the raw meaty bones in her bowl and from which she is designed to withdraw when her litter needs it.

Researchers who followed bitches through late pregnancy and the first week of nursing found exactly this at work. Their blood calcium and parathyroid hormone stayed steady and normal throughout, while a marker of bone being drawn upon roughly doubled once the milk came in. At the same time her body became more efficient with what she ate: the share of dietary calcium she absorbed rose from about twelve percent to twenty-four, and phosphorus absorption climbed from thirty-five percent to forty-eight. The authors concluded that ordinary feeding recommendations were sufficient to meet her needs through this period (Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition). In a well-fed bitch, the system simply works.

It stops working when we interfere with it. When a pregnant bitch is given extra calcium, her blood levels stay high, her parathyroid activity is turned down, and she loses the ability to answer the sudden demand that arrives with her milk (Fontaine). The Merck Veterinary Manual states it without hedging: "Oral calcium supplementation during gestation is not indicated and may cause rather than prevent postpartum hypocalcemia" (Merck Veterinary Manual). This is the heart of the matter. The bitch who is supplemented through pregnancy has been taught to rely on a supply that will not keep pace with her milk.

The final weeks

From about the sixth week, as the skeletons of her puppies begin to mineralize, her body increases its bone turnover to supply them (a study of ionized calcium in guide-dog breeding bitches). The NRC's allowance for late gestation and peak lactation is 1.9 grams of calcium and 1.2 grams of phosphorus for every thousand calories, a ratio of about 1.6 to 1. These figures describe the calcium in her whole diet, not an amount to add on top of it, and a necessary calcium source should never be withheld in the name of avoiding supplements (Better Dog Care). That distinction is the one Natural Rearing has always drawn instinctively. Her bone-in ancestral diet supplies calcium as food, in balance with phosphorus, magnesium and the other minerals of bone, and as her ration grows through the final weeks her calcium grows with it. That is why my templates keep raw meaty bone at around twenty percent until the sixth week, ease it to about fifteen as organ meats take up her growing appetite, and add no calcium powders, eggshell or bone meal on top. Dairy deserves the same thought: a little raw goat milk is a lovely food, but heaping cottage cheese or yogurt into her bowl to "build calcium" before whelping is supplementation by another name.

Nettle and seaweed sit comfortably within this approach. Dried nettle leaf is genuinely rich in minerals, with roughly 2,100 milligrams of calcium, 690 of magnesium and 17 of iron in every hundred grams (a study of nettle leaf composition). But a daily spoonful supplies only a small fraction of what her bones provide, and it arrives in the gentle, whole-plant company of other minerals. It nourishes her without overriding the hormones that must stay awake for her milk.

Dr. Thompson's own experience speaks to how well this works. In his years of conventional practice, he says, "we saw a lot of bitches with eclampsia, they couldn't mobilise calcium. I haven't seen a raw fed bitch with eclampsia. So I suspect that because they're eating a natural source of calcium, that they're in better shape" (Raw Dog Food interview with Nick Thompson). In a later talk to breeders he recalled a single exception: a little working Cocker who raised eight enormous puppies whose combined weight, by eight weeks, was twice her own (Thompson, Raw Food for Breeders).

The final days and hours

In the last day or two her appetite usually falls away, and with it her intake of calcium from food. In one study of breeding bitches, a poor appetite in late gestation was associated with lower blood calcium (the same guide-dog study). Then labor begins, and calcium takes on a new role. Calcium is what allows the muscle of the uterus to contract, and low ionized calcium during labor can weaken those contractions and lead to a difficult birth (Barstow and colleagues, Breeding Soundness Examination of the Bitch). Merck notes that mild hypocalcemia can quietly slow labor without any other outward sign. Among small-breed bitches whose labor had stalled from uterine inertia, twelve of twenty-seven were found to be low in calcium, and five of fourteen resumed labor and delivered puppies after calcium alone (the same guide-dog study).

The conventional answer is to give calcium to every bitch at the first sign of labor. The Natural Rearing answer is different. Dr. Thompson's advice for the raw-fed bitch is plain: if you find yourself thinking "I'm feeding raw food and I need to give a calcium supplement," then "I wouldn't" (Thompson, Raw Food for Breeders). A mother who has eaten raw bone all her life, and whose own calcium regulation has never been lulled by supplements, comes to her whelping with that system awake. So I do not give calcium routinely through labor. Between puppies I offer Levy's honey and water, or, as Emma Rutherford suggests in Dogs Naturally, a little Manuka honey rubbed on her gums for energy (Rutherford, Dogs Naturally). Low blood sugar can arrive alongside low calcium (Merck), so this is more than a comfort. A few laps of raw goat milk add a gentle measure of calcium as well, about 330 milligrams in a cup (Dogs Naturally, Goat Milk for Dogs).

Among Natural Rearing breeders, the most detailed calcium protocol I know comes from Paula Vandervoort, who has bred dogs for more than fifty years and teaches Natural Rearing through the Natural Rearing Breeder Connection. Her rule is simple: "Nothing during pregnancy. Everything during nursing." She begins calcium at the onset of active labor, not before, and continues it through the entire nursing period until the last puppy is weaned. Restlessness, pacing and panting before active labor, she notes, are usually nesting, "not a reason to give calcium yet." During the birth she watches the contractions, the mother's energy and her progress rather than following a rigid schedule. She gives a dose of calcium paste if contractions slow, if the mother seems tired, or if the interval between puppies stretches past an hour, and then watches closely for the next thirty minutes (Vandervoort, calcium for the nursing dam). Read every label before you need it: some calcium gels and pastes contain xylitol, which is deadly to dogs (Vandervoort, calcium for the nursing dam).

Between Dr. Thompson's restraint and Paula Vandervoort's readiness, my own practice settles here. I keep a fast-absorbing calcium within arm's reach from the moment active labor begins, as the elders in my notes, Lew Olson and Ian Billinghurst among them, would have. I do not give it routinely to a girl who is progressing well, but I give it without hesitation if her contractions weaken or stall, if more than an hour passes between puppies, or if she begins to move stiffly, tremble or seem not herself. When I reach for it, I also call my holistic veterinarian. The form matters: Dr. Thompson points out that calcium carbonate is about forty percent calcium and calcium gluconate only about nine (Thompson, Raw Food for Breeders), so check how much elemental calcium your product actually provides.

The first weeks of milk

The demand that follows is extraordinary. Canine colostrum carries about 1.3 grams of calcium per kilogram, and mature milk about 2 grams, considerably richer than cow's milk (Animal Frontiers, Lactation in domestic carnivores). Within the first week alone, the calcium in her milk rises from roughly 1,360 to 1,770 milligrams per liter, while its ratio to phosphorus holds steady at about one and a half to one (Animals, bitch milk composition). Because the amount of milk she makes rises with the number of puppies she feeds, a nursing bitch needs somewhere between 250 and 500 milligrams of calcium per kilogram of her body weight each day, depending on her litter (Small Animal Clinical Nutrition). For a sixty-pound girl, that is roughly seven to fourteen grams of calcium a day. Demand climbs steeply through the first weeks, and the danger peaks at full lactation, two to three weeks after the birth (Merck).

Here the bowl must change, and generously. Emma Rutherford, writing in Dogs Naturally, feeds the new mother at least three times a day for the first two weeks, increases her ration, and adds extra calcium. She prefers raw bones for it over crushed eggshell, which dogs absorb poorly, adds steamed greens so the extra bone does not constipate her, and offers sardines for their vitamin D (Rutherford, Dogs Naturally). This is also when my nursing template raises raw meaty bone to around twenty-four percent of a ration that may now be three or four times what she ate before pregnancy. Merck's preventive advice reads like a description of good Natural Rearing practice: a high-quality, balanced diet, food and water freely available through lactation, and solid food for the puppies from three to four weeks of age (Merck). When the puppies begin pulling at their first raw meaty bones and lapping goat milk slurry, every mouthful they take is calcium she no longer has to make. Dr. Thompson describes the eight to sixteen weeks after whelping as the time she spends "putting calcium back into her bones" (Thompson, Raw Food for Breeders), which is why she stays on generous, bone-rich food until she has fully recovered, well past weaning.

Vandervoort's nursing practice is worth knowing even for a girl on generous bone. In a mother with no signs of trouble, she uses a lower maintenance amount, about a quarter to a half of what she gives after an episode of eclampsia. She has noticed that the most worrying signs tend to appear in the morning, after a night without food, so for the first week or two she gets up in the night to give her girl food and calcium (Vandervoort, When Your Dog's Brain Isn't Working Right). A raw-fed mother can be given the same kindness with food alone: a small meal of raw meaty bone, a few laps of raw goat milk or a bone-in sardine in the small hours keeps her calcium coming in while her puppies feed.

When calcium falls

Eclampsia most often strikes small-breed bitches nursing large litters at peak lactation, two to three weeks after whelping, but it can happen in any breed, with any litter size, at any point in nursing, and occasionally before or during the birth itself (Merck). Without enough calcium to steady them, her nerves fire on their own, and she passes through a recognizable sequence. First comes panting and restlessness. Then mild tremors, twitching, a stiff or unsteady gait, whining, drooling, pacing or uncharacteristic irritability. In the severe stage she has rigid muscles and seizures, and without treatment, coma and death can follow. Her temperature may climb dangerously high.

Vandervoort has learned to read earlier, subtler signs across many litters, and they are worth committing to memory: a stiff or "wooden" walk, "not limping, just oddly rigid"; startling at ordinary sounds; facial twitching; snapping; drooling; refusing food she had been eating well; staying out of the whelping box or refusing to settle to nurse; and staring at her puppies with strange intensity, nosing them obsessively or moving them without purpose (Vandervoort, When Your Dog's Brain Isn't Working Right). At the first of these, her quick reference card gives oral calcium into the cheek pouch with a little food, one or two pellets of the homeopathic remedy Calcarea carbonica, a quiet, dim room, puppies moved temporarily onto a warm pad, and a call to the veterinarian, checking on the mother every fifteen minutes. Tremors, wobbling, a high temperature or seizures mean straight to the veterinarian with no oral calcium at all, because she may not be able to swallow safely (Vandervoort, Eclampsia Quick Reference Card).

Once tremors or stiffness set in, this is not a time for herbs or for waiting. A bitch showing these signs needs a veterinarian immediately, where slow intravenous calcium usually brings relief within about fifteen minutes. Afterward she is given oral calcium for the rest of her nursing (Merck), and her puppies are often moved to hand-feeding or early weaning to protect her from relapse (Fontaine). Vandervoort keeps the recovering mother away from her puppies for at least twelve to twenty-four hours, watches her closely for seventy-two hours because eclampsia so often returns within a day or two, begins permanent weaning if the puppies are four weeks or older, and considers her high-risk for life, with a calcium plan for every future litter (Vandervoort, Eclampsia Quick Reference Card).

Levy and iodine

Levy held a different view. She believed eclampsia was more often caused by a lack of iodine than of calcium, and she trusted seaweed rather than chemical supplements to provide it. I treasure her insistence on natural mineral sources, and tested kelp has a permanent place in our bowls; iodine is essential to the thyroid that governs so much of a mother's metabolism. But eclampsia as we now understand it is a crisis of calcium in the blood. Seaweed is a fine and faithful food. It is not a treatment for eclampsia, and a trembling, panting mother needs help today.

SevenGifts of the Sea and the Pasture

If calcium is the most misunderstood nutrient of pregnancy, the long-chain omega-3 fats may be the most underappreciated. DHA and EPA are woven into the brains, eyes and nervous systems of the developing puppies, and they sustain the mother through the tremendous demands of pregnancy and milk. Olson and Billinghurst both gave them a central place. Plant sources such as flax offer only ALA, which dogs convert poorly, so I want these fats in their finished form, and I want them to arrive the way nature delivers them: inside whole food.

I do not use fish oil, and Dogs Naturally is even firmer: "I don't recommend fish oil … ever." It oxidizes and turns rancid, and it lacks the minerals that whole fish carries (Dogs Naturally, Fats for Dogs). For the whole-food foundation they recommend small fish that feed on phytoplankton, such as Atlantic mackerel, sardines and anchovies, and these already have a regular place in her bowl.

Salmon roe is my favorite food for the brood bitch, and I think of it as a reproductive food in the truest sense: everything needed to begin a new life, gathered into a single bright bead. Alaska pink salmon roe provides about 680 milligrams of EPA and DHA per ounce (Alaska Seafood Roe Guide), roughly 120 milligrams in a single teaspoon. Choose fresh, unsalted roe in the skein whenever you can. Prepared ikura and caviar are salted, and that same Alaska sample carried 390 milligrams of sodium per ounce. Freeze it for at least three weeks before feeding, as you would any raw fish, and introduce it in small amounts, because it is rich.

Raw cod liver is the most concentrated of all, with about 4.7 grams of EPA and 6.2 grams of DHA in every hundred grams, along with 4,794 micrograms of vitamin A and 89.7 micrograms of vitamin D (Norwegian food composition data via Ernær). That power asks for respect. Its vitamin A is close to raw beef liver's, which the USDA places near 4,968 micrograms per hundred grams (USDA data via Bioma), so I feed cod liver in place of part of her liver allowance, never on top of it. Vitamin D is the true limit. Dogs make very little of their own, and the NRC safe upper limit sits at 800 IU per thousand calories (JAVMA). The calculator keeps cod liver's share to half of that, leaving room for the vitamin D that comes naturally from fish and eggs.

Raw pastured butter belongs in this chapter for a different reason. Its omega-3 is largely ALA and modest in amount, so it is not a meaningful source of DHA or EPA, and I will not pretend otherwise. What it offers is vitamin K2, vitamin A, CLA and butyrate, in greater measure from grass-fed animals than from conventional ones (Healthline), together with a natural fat that carries the fat-soluble nutrients of the rest of the bowl. I think of it as the companion to the marine foods rather than a substitute for them, and it is a lovely addition to the warm goat milk slurry we make for nursing and weaning puppies (SFRAW, Raw Goat Milk Slurry).

As for quantity, the AAFCO minimum for growth and reproduction works out to about 125 milligrams of EPA and DHA per thousand calories. I aim more generously for a brood bitch, around 400, which remains comfortably modest. Wherever you land, remember that the pasture matters as much as the sea. Dogs Naturally notes that most ruminants, even grass-fed ones, spend their last days on grain, soy and corn, which shifts their fats toward omega-6 (Dogs Naturally). Ask your farmer how the animals are finished.

EightThe Herbal Cupboard

Herbs are among the oldest companions of Natural Rearing, and they are at their best when they are few, well chosen and given steadily. Red raspberry leaf sits at the center, Levy's chief herb for the female and the one nearly every natural breeder reaches for, from the first sign of heat until weaning. Around it gather Levy's gentler female herbs, chamomile, elder flower and rose hips, which I rotate lightly through pregnancy rather than giving all at once (Levy). Nettle and tested seaweed are better thought of as mineral foods than as medicines, and I count them in her ration rather than stacking them on top. Slippery elm and marshmallow soothe the digestive tract in the final weeks, through whelping and into the puppies' first gruels.

Red raspberry leaf

Raspberry leaf is the herb most closely tied to the brood bitch, and much of that is Levy's doing. In Care of the Brood Bitch she writes that she was the first to bring the wild raspberry leaf to dog breeders, in the 1930s, and that its use spread "solely out of results obtained," as difficult whelpers, especially in the toy breeds, began to whelp normal litters easily and quickly. She describes its action on the organs of reproduction as "mainly tonic," which is why she also gave it to sluggish stud dogs. Her files held hundreds of breeders' reports. One pug breeder wrote that the herb caused her small, well-boned bitches "to whelp quickly and easily." Another told of a Pekinese who had miscarried twice, then carried her litter to full term on raspberry leaf. Levy noticed that the placentas of bitches given raspberry were often very dark green, and that the herb's scent stayed with the birth discharge throughout the whelping. And she kept it in its place: "even raspberry leaf will not produce normal and easy whelping if exercise is neglected" (Levy, Care of the Brood Bitch; see also her Complete Herbal Handbook).

Modern research is thin but reassuring. Herbalists describe raspberry leaf as a uterine tonic, an herb that strengthens and tones the muscle of the womb rather than forcing it into action. Laboratory results are mixed in a way that fits that description: in studies of uterine tissue, raspberry leaf has sometimes stimulated contractions and sometimes relaxed them, depending on the preparation, the dose and whether the tissue came from a pregnant animal (BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies review). The one careful clinical trial, in 192 first-time human mothers, found no harm to mother or baby, a second stage of labor shortened by about ten minutes, and fewer forceps deliveries (Simpson and colleagues, Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health). No comparable study has been done in dogs. A British herbal veterinary product made from raspberry leaf is licensed for use in pregnant and nursing dogs and lists no contraindications (UK Veterinary Medicines Directorate).

Levy began the female herbs, raspberry chief among them, while the bitch was in season, alongside a lighter diet with less meat, and continued them if she was mated and became in-whelp. She gives no fixed daily measure for that routine use in this chapter. She quotes an older herbal tradition of "free drinking of raspberry-leaves infusion for several months before confinement" (Levy, Care of the Brood Bitch). The traditions that do give measured amounts differ mainly in when they begin and end. The Modern Natural Rearing breeder gives a flat teaspoon of the powdered leaf daily from heat through weaning (Modern Natural Rearing). The Dog Breeder Store, which supports the Natural Rearing Breeder Connection, scales the amount to her weight and says it can be started as early as her heat or as late as several weeks before she is due, and is frequently continued through weaning (The Dog Breeder Store). The licensed British product begins in the third week of pregnancy and ends a week after whelping (UK Veterinary Medicines Directorate). Another herbal product begins at mating, gives its amount once daily for the first five weeks, then twice daily until two days after the birth (Denes). Beginning at heat, then, is the Natural Rearing way, not a universal rule.

My own practice follows Levy's timing and the Dog Breeder Store's amounts. I begin at the first sign of her season with a quarter teaspoon of powdered leaf daily for dogs up to five pounds, half a teaspoon up to ten, three-quarters up to twenty, and about a teaspoon per twenty pounds of body weight for larger dogs, divided among her meals, since that source finds it works best given at every meal (The Dog Breeder Store). I keep that same amount through mating and the whole of her pregnancy, without doubling it in the final weeks, and through the whelping itself. Through the nursing weeks I keep it going for the support it gives her uterus as it returns to normal, and once her puppies are eating well on their own I taper it over a week or so and stop when weaning is complete. If you prefer the shorter traditional course, ending a week or so after the birth is equally sound. The powdered leaf mixes easily into ground food. A strong cooled infusion, a tablespoon of dried leaf steeped in a cup of just-boiled water, can be poured over her meal instead for a girl who notices powder in her bowl. Use only the leaf of the red raspberry, Rubus idaeus.

Levy also used raspberry leaf as a medicine, in much larger amounts, after the birth. For a bitch who had retained a puppy or an afterbirth, she gave two tablespoons of powdered or finely minced raspberry leaf with a dessertspoonful of molasses, mixed with enough warm water to give as a drench, every four hours for several days, with the bitch fasted, or kept on milk and honey, until everything had been expelled. She warned that the herb is bitter in large doses and may have to be given by drench, and that surgery may still be needed if the bitch is in distress and cannot pass what remains (Levy, Care of the Brood Bitch). A retained puppy is an emergency, so I call my holistic veterinarian at once and use Levy's remedy alongside that care, never in place of it. Outside that situation, I never give these large amounts during pregnancy.

There are only a few situations where I would hold off. If she shows bleeding, an unusual discharge or contractions well before her due date, stop all herbs and call your veterinarian before going on. For the girl prone to false pregnancy, the Dog Breeder Store suggests her usual amount from the first sign of her season for twelve weeks; it does not stop the hormonal shift, but it supports her tissues and often makes the episode gentler (The Dog Breeder Store). The licensed British product doubles its usual amount for three months from the start of the season for the same purpose (UK Veterinary Medicines Directorate). The calculator shows her daily amount at each stage.

Nettle

If raspberry leaf is the brood bitch's tonic, nettle is her daily bread. Herbalists Gregory Tilford and Mary Wulff describe it as an excellent addition to food for animals who need extra trace minerals and vitamins, "but not necessarily in huge, multivitamin doses," and suggest simply sprinkling the dried herb over meals (Tilford and Wulff, Herbs for Pets, as quoted by Unruly Gardening). Dogs Naturally describes it as a blood purifier that supports the kidneys, liver and digestion. It is high in calcium, magnesium, chromium, phosphorus, potassium, silicon and vitamin A, and it acts as a catalyst for the absorption of other vitamins and minerals (Belcher, Dogs Naturally). Its iron and its whole-plant minerals are exactly what a mother building blood and bone for a litter can use, and its gentle cleansing action supports the kidneys that work so hard through pregnancy and milk.

I give dried, powdered nettle leaf every day from the month before breeding until her puppies are weaned, as part of Levy's mineral blend, beginning with a quarter teaspoon per twenty pounds of body weight and building over a week or two toward half to one teaspoon per twenty pounds, divided between meals. That fuller amount is roughly in line with Tilford and Wulff's range of about half a teaspoon twice daily for an eleven-to-thirty-pound dog (The House of Two Bows, summarizing Tilford and Wulff). For a deeper, more nourishing form, a nettle infusion is hard to better: an ounce of dried leaf in a quart jar, filled with boiling water, capped and steeped for four to eight hours, then strained and refrigerated for use within a day, ladled over her food at each meal (The Possible Canine). For a tincture, herbalist Rita Hogan suggests two drops per ten pounds of body weight daily (Dogs Naturally). If you gather your own, take the young spring tops before the plant flowers, wear gloves, and dry them well; drying removes the sting completely. Use the leaf, not the root or seed, which herbalists reserve for other purposes.

Levy's mineral blend and the milk herbs

Levy's daily mineral blend of dried, powdered nettles, comfrey and seaweed remains one of the finest things a brood bitch can eat, and I give it as she did, every day from breeding through weaning. Nettle brings iron, calcium and the green minerals of spring. Seaweed brings iodine and the whole spectrum of the sea. Comfrey, the old knitbone, is a plant I know well; it is a mainstay of our own Green Salve, and in Levy's blend it lends its mucilage, its allantoin and its long tradition of building tissue. I use the dried leaf, as the herbalists of her tradition did, never the root, and in the modest, steady amounts her blend calls for. Schultze's kelp and alfalfa sit naturally beside it.

Garlic, Levy's great herb of protection and cleansing, stays in the bowl through every stage, fresh and raw, in the amounts she always eats. For milk, Levy turned to dill seed, borage leaves and calamus root, along with linseed tea. Dill and borage are my first choices, with fennel beside them. Of the three, calamus root is the one I leave aside; it has been barred from human food in the United States since 1968 because of its beta-asarone (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), and dill and borage do the work beautifully without it.

What to save for later

Fenugreek is the classic galactagogue, and it has its place, but only after the birth. The Modern Natural Rearing breeder avoids it in pregnancy because of its effect on the uterus (Modern Natural Rearing), and I reach for it only when puppies are not gaining as they should, after I have looked first at the mother's food, water and comfort. Rue and wormwood, which Levy valued so highly for worming and cleansing, I save for the months before breeding and after weaning, because both have long been known to stir the uterus. Pennyroyal I leave out of her life entirely. Herbs do their finest work when they are few, chosen with intention and given steadily, and a brood bitch's cupboard needs nothing more than Levy filled it with.

NineReading Her Without Instruments

Many Natural Rearing breeders choose not to use ultrasound or X-ray during pregnancy, and they manage beautifully by knowing their dogs. Around the fourth week an experienced hand can often feel the small, firm swellings along the uterus. They soften into one another after about the fifth week and become harder to distinguish. At the same time her nipples turn pinker and fuller, her appetite may dip, and many girls become softer and quieter in temperament. By the sixth week her waist is filling, her weight is rising steadily on the weekly scale, and a clear mucus discharge is common. From about the seventh week you can feel and even see the puppies moving beneath a flat palm as she lies on her side.

None of this gives an exact count, and so the breeder who works without imaging treats every estimate as a minimum and counts placentas with great care at the birth. Her own history and that of her dam are the best guides to what to expect. From about the fifty-seventh day, take her temperature morning and evening. A drop of around two degrees usually means labor will begin within a day, and it is the most faithful signal available to us without instruments.

TenThe Day of Whelping

Prepare her room well ahead and let her settle into it, warm, quiet and a little dim. In the final week the Modern Natural Rearing breeder bathes the bitch in a mild shampoo, clips her belly and the area around the vulva, and washes and rinses her teats thoroughly (Modern Natural Rearing). On the day itself the keeper's role is mostly to be present and calm. Let her eat the placentas and count them as she does; there should be one for each puppy. Let each newborn nurse between deliveries, which helps her uterus contract, and offer honey and water between puppies for gentle energy. Schultze's emphasis on extra liver around this time, and Zacharias's on hydration and nutrient-dense foods, both fit naturally into the small meals that follow.

You will know she has finished when the straining stops and she settles into nursing with a kind of deep contentment, drinks, and often sleeps. Once she is resting, a gentle hand on her abdomen should find it soft and ropey. Restlessness, panting or a repeated glance back at her flank after a long pause means there may be more to come.

Natural Rearing has always made room for help when a life depends on it, and I would ask you to keep your holistic veterinarian's number close. Call if she strains hard for half an hour or more without producing a puppy, if more than two hours pass between puppies when you believe more remain, if green or black discharge appears without a puppy following soon, or if there are fewer placentas than puppies and she becomes feverish or develops a foul discharge in the day or two after. Weakness, fever, a refusal to eat, or indifference to her puppies all deserve the same call.

ElevenThe Nursing Weeks

For the first day or two after the birth I follow Levy, who gave the new mother a fluid diet of milk and honey: raw goat milk, a little raw honey stirred through, and fresh water always beside her. She has eaten her placentas and needs rest more than a heavy meal. When her appetite returns, she moves back to small, frequent meals of ground meat, green tripe, raw eggs and raw goat milk, and then to her full ration. After that her needs rise faster than at any other point in her life. Expect roughly one and a half times her usual ration in the first week, about double in the second, and two and a half to four times at the peak of milk in the third and fourth weeks, depending on the size of the litter. Four meals a day, or more, keep her comfortable. This is the point at which every voice in my notes agrees on the same things: more food, richer food, plenty of protein and fat, and abundant clean water.

Levy's list of milk-increasing foods is worth keeping by the whelping box: unpasteurized goat or cow milk, grated raw carrot, seaweed powder, black treacle or molasses, honey, raw eggs, linseed tea, and gentle herbs such as dill. She limited raw eggs to no more than three a week, a restraint I follow when eggs are given whole and frequently. She also included oat flakes, whole wheat and rye. Raw goat milk and kefir, pastured eggs, molasses and honey all have a natural place in our nursing bowls. The grains I leave aside, because her ancestral diet supplies what she needs without them.

I check her every day. Her temperature for the first few days. Pink gums and a regular bowel; pale gums or no movement can be the first whisper of eclampsia. Mammary glands that are pink and soft, rather than purple, hot or hard; the Modern Natural Rearing breeder's practice of laying a cool, damp towel across her belly after outings is a kindness I still recommend (Modern Natural Rearing). A discharge that is reddish-brown and lessening, never foul and never increasing. And I weigh the puppies, twice a day for the first four or five days and daily after that, because their steady gain is the truest measure of her milk. Content puppies are quiet, nurse regularly and pile together. Frequent crying, a failure to gain, and skin that stays tented when lifted at the back of the neck are the first signs that something needs attention.

TwelveWeaning at Her Pace

Puppies in weaned-to-raw litters can meet raw meaty bones from about three weeks, and by five weeks they begin pulling meat from the bone and eating bone-in cuts like chicken wings, backs and necks (Bay Woof, Starting Puppies on a Raw-Food Diet). Alongside these first real foods I love a warm raw goat milk slurry enriched with pastured egg yolks and a little raw pastured butter (SFRAW). Levy's own weaning food was raw milk with raw honey and her tree bark gruel, served at body temperature, followed by small amounts of minced meat as the puppies grew (Whole Dog Journal, Raw-Fed Puppies).

Throughout all of this the mother remains at full intake until her puppies are truly eating for themselves. It is easy to cut her back too soon, simply because the puppies have discovered the bowl. Natural Rearing breeders let the dam raise and wean her young on her own schedule, including the lessons in manners only she can teach (Bendegeit Mastiffs). Levy weaned at nine to twelve weeks and observed that the bitch usually lost her milk easily at that time (Levy). Taper her food only as nursing genuinely tapers, give her a recovery allowance if she has lost condition, and let raspberry leaf and the milk herbs fall away once the puppies are weaned.

ThirteenThe Mind of the Litter

Natural Rearing has always been concerned with the whole animal, body, mind and spirit together, and the first twelve weeks shape the mind as surely as they shape the bones. For this part of rearing I recommend Puppy Culture, the birth-to-twelve-week curriculum developed by trainer and breeder Jane Killion. It is not a training system for new owners but a set of things the breeder does before the puppies leave, and it works only when the breeder truly does them (Thomas Acres). It sits naturally beside Natural Rearing. Highland Glenn Ranch, for one, follows the complete program alongside raw feeding and dam-led weaning (Highland Glenn Ranch).

The work begins on the third day of life with Early Neurological Stimulation: five brief exercises, given once a day for three to five seconds each, through the sixteenth day. They are a tickle between the toes with a cotton swab, the puppy held head up, then head down, then on its back, and a few seconds feet-down on a cool, damp towel (BreedTracker). More is not better; the brevity is the point. Over the same days, Early Scent Introduction offers one new natural scent each day, held near the nose for a few seconds, and herbs from your own garden are perfect for it. As eyes and ears open in the second and third weeks, the puppies meet new surfaces, sounds and objects. From the fifth week they learn to recover from small startles, solve simple problems, meet the crate and the car kindly, and greet a steady stream of gentle new people before going home (NIAW).

Levy would have recognized the spirit of it at once. She had her puppies out of doors by day from one month old, weather permitting, on clean earth and grass, in sunlight and fresh air (Levy). A calm mother, natural ground underfoot, the scents of a living garden and thoughtful human hands together make a nursery no program can improve upon. Puppy Culture simply gives that nursery a little more structure.

FourteenSigns Worth Heeding

A well-fed brood bitch tells you she is thriving in many small ways, and she will tell you just as clearly when something is missing, if you know how to listen. A coat that turns dry, dull or brittle, or sheds more than it should, often points to too little protein or fat. Lethargy and weakness can mean too few calories, too little protein or too little iron, and pale gums with weakness suggest she may be anemic. Muscle that seems to melt away despite a good appetite is a sign that protein is falling short. These are reasons to look closely at the bowl, at the variety and quality of her proteins, at the fat and organ content, and at whether she is simply being asked to eat more than she comfortably can.

Around the birth, weak or stalling contractions and long, difficult labor are often linked to calcium, and that is exactly why calcium at the onset of labor belongs on the shelf. Poor milk after whelping usually reflects too little food, protein or calcium overall, and weak, small or slow-growing puppies, or the heartbreak of stillbirth, can reflect broad shortfalls in the mother's diet long before the birth. Slow healing after a cesarean speaks of protein. Eclampsia, as we have seen, is a calcium emergency that comes without warning in the nursing weeks.

None of these signs is a reason for alarm in itself. Together they are the reason a Natural Rearing keeper watches her girl so closely, and why the best preparation for every one of them is the same quiet work this book has described from its first page: whole, raw, varied food from honest sources; clean ground and free running; sunlight and rest; steady herbs; and a keeper who notices.

With warmth, and to many healthy litters,
Kasie

Sources and Further Reading

Juliette de Bairacli Levy, "Care of the Brood Bitch," in The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat, sixth edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1991; reprinted with corrections 1992), ISBN 0-571-16115-4, available from the publisher (faber.co.uk). This chapter is the source of Levy's guidance throughout this book on the in-whelp diet, the mineral blend of nettles, comfrey and seaweed, fasting, the final-week laxative diet, milk and honey after the birth, milk-increasing foods, her view of iodine and eclampsia, and raspberry leaf: its history, its timing from the season onward and her remedy for a retained puppy or afterbirth.

Juliette de Bairacli Levy, The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat, digitized edition (scribd.com/document/940144916). Whole Dog Journal, A History of Holistic Dog Care (whole-dog-journal.com) and Raw-Fed Puppies (whole-dog-journal.com). Dogs Naturally Magazine, From Heat to Birth (dogsnaturallymagazine.com) and Fats for Dogs (dogsnaturallymagazine.com). Modern Natural Rearing, The Brood Bitch (astarz.us). Dogs Naturally, Goat Milk for Dogs (dogsnaturallymagazine.com) and 5 Nutritious Herbs Every Dog Needs (dogsnaturallymagazine.com). Barstow and colleagues, Breeding Soundness Examination of the Bitch (pbgv.org).

Dr. Nick Thompson, BSc (Hons), BVM&S, VetMFHom, MRCVS, is a holistic and homeopathic veterinarian, founder of Holisticvet, and founding president of the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (rfvs.info), who has championed species-appropriate raw feeding since the mid-1990s. His guidance on raw feeding through the trimesters, organ meats and bone in late pregnancy, calcium, eclampsia and post-whelping recovery is drawn from his talk Raw Food for Breeders: Pregnancy, Whelping and Pups (youtube.com) and his interview with Raw Dog Food (rawdogfood.co.uk).

Natural Rearing Breeder Connection, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit of Natural Rearing dog and cat breeders: principles (nrbreeder.com), Code of Ethics (nrbreeder.com/code-of-ethics), verified breeder directory (nrbreeder.com/nr-dog-breeders) and resources, including Dr. Jeannie Thomason's book Natural Rearing (nrbreeder.com/resources). Paula Vandervoort, When Your Dog's Brain Isn't Working Right, It Might Be Her Calcium (thedogbreederstore.com), her article on calcium for the nursing dam (thedogbreederstore.com), and the Eclampsia Quick Reference Card (thedogbreederstore.com). Raspberry leaf schedules: UK Veterinary Medicines Directorate product summary (vmd.defra.gov.uk) and Denes (denes.com). Red raspberry leaf usage, The Dog Breeder Store (thedogbreederstore.com).

Kasie Maxwell Grujcic, Starting Puppies on a Raw-Food Diet, Bay Woof (baywoof.org), and SFRAW, Making and Using Raw Goat Milk Slurry for Naturally Reared Puppies (sfraw.blog). Bendegeit Mastiffs, Natural Rearing and Raw Food (bendegeit.com). Highland Glenn Ranch, Puppy Culture (highlandglennranch.com). Puppy Culture overviews from Thomas Acres (thomasacres.com), NIAW (niaw.co.uk) and BreedTracker (breedtracker.com).

Nutrient and safety references: Alaska Seafood Roe Guide (alaskaseafood.org); raw cod liver composition (ernær.no); beef liver vitamin A, USDA (biomanutrient.app); vitamin D and NRC limits, JAVMA (avmajournals.avma.org); grass-fed butter (healthline.com); calamus, U.S. FDA (fda.gov); pennyroyal, Merck Veterinary Manual (merckvetmanual.com); energy for gestation and lactation, FEDIAF Nutritional Guidelines 2025 (europeanpetfood.org).

The expert positions summarized in chapter two, from Ian Billinghurst, Lew Olson, Kymythy Schultze, Marina Zacharias, Monica Segal, Steve Brown, Kat Lane, Wendy Volhard, Dr. Jeannie Thomason and Dr. Jean Dodds, are drawn from my working notes on their published approaches.

This book shares Natural Rearing tradition and my own experience for educational purposes. It is not a substitute for the care of a veterinarian who knows your dog.