Hello all.. I'm rather curious if anyone knows an answer to this...

About 6 months ago, we got in a pregnant female. She welped 10 beautiful babies.. She killed all but 3... Pushed them away.. laid on them..

When they were 2 months old, she died. We had a necropy done and they said she died due to systemic infection... 3 weeks later our entire kennel broke with Canine Influenza.

When the 3 pups were spayed, all three came up with an infection in the uterus. They're healthy now.

It still boggles me as to why she would kill her pups. We don't think she was a first time mama. She was healthy throughout the pregnancy and ate like a wolf. She lost weight pretty bad when she finally had them.

Just curious if anyone has any idea why she may have done this?

Was a necropsy done on the pups that she killed? Maybe they were sick and she sensed that. I know in the wild if the mama is sick or the pups are sick, she will kill off her pack. As it is less strain on her body to provide for 3 opposed to 10. She may have known that she was sick while caring for her pups and eliminating some of the pack was her only way for survival of her and her most fit pups. Kind of like Spencer and Darwin's theroy of survival of the fittest. A more acceptable term used now is natural selection.

Animals will kill there sick young, so like bella said that could be why. She also could have accidentally laid on them? (I don't know just guessing) Maybe she wasn't producing enough milk so she just killed a few so the rest could survive?

If she laid on them then it sounds like just bad luck.
I know you have a lot of dogs to keep an eye on but a litter of pups is an almost 24 hour job... every single time the b*tch gets in and out of the whelping box you have to be there to make sure no pups have been laid on, even with a pig rail.

Pushing them away could have been due to illness as Bella suggested, or bad mothering, there's really no way to know.

Emily makes a good point about the nipples... we have never had more pups than teats so I can't answer that onefor sure but dogs are pretty smart, she might have noticed a weaker pup not getting onto a teat and took action.

No, we didn't get the pups looked at.. She basically killed them as they were being born. The pup that lived the longest was about 2 days.. She laid on him. The puppies weren't still born.. They had nice little bellies on them... She welped them on the coldest day of the year.. She showed no signs of ready to have babies.. The crazy and completely disturbing thing is.. We've gotten in mamas and babies that were welped under a house during winter.. And they all survived.. We just contributed her killing her pups to being a bad mama.. But her being sick makes us wonder.. And its completely strange that her three surviving pups had an infection...

I'm going to stick with my theory. Poor little pups. :(

Could they have gotten the infection after? Or maybe the mom couldn't tell, but the rest had something more wrong?

I don't think she killed them because they were sick. She may have killed them because she was sick.

We think, didn't get to talk to the vets, that she passed her systemic infection onto her babies. We informed the new owners the day it happened and they relayed the info to their vets. I just think its strange that all three had the infection in the same area..