What Are Puppy Feeders & Should You Use Them?

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As a dog breeder, you strive to find tricks you can use to make your life easier when puppies arrive. Puppy feeders are a crucial component of newborn puppies that will help them receive proper nutrients in their bodies. This is an especially useful tool if you have a big litter. Puppy feeders will ensure that every puppy receives an adequate amount of food.

Our general advice would be to invest in a good puppy feeder because you will quickly realize how good this investment was. To help you decide, we will explore puppy feeders' benefits and potential drawbacks and determine whether this is worth buying.

Why is proper nutrition important for newborn puppies?

Before discussing puppy feeders, you must understand how important nutrition is for newborn puppies. Puppies grow rapidly, and during their first few weeks and months, they have specific nutritional needs that differ from adult dogs.

Puppies will need balanced diets rich in many different nutrients, such as proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and many more, crucial for their growth, proper development, and a proper immune system resistant to many diseases.

Because of this, you must properly feed your puppies, which is where puppy feeders come into play.

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What are puppy feeders?

Puppy feeders are specially designed-feeding systems that allow multiple puppies to eat at once. These feeders come in many forms, including bowls and automated dispensers.

The main goal of puppy feeders is to ensure that every puppy in the litter has aces to food and, with that, minimalize the need for competition between the puppies. By eliminating the competition between puppies, there is less chance you will get weaker puppies that are pushed aside by more dominant puppies.

What are the benefits of puppy feeders?

To help you make your decision, we purchased one puppy feeder to fully test this product and to be able to give you the best opinion there is. This is what we found out.

1. Equal access to food

Puppy feeders are designed so every puppy can get food without fighting with other littermates. This will ensure that even a smaller and weaker puppy will get his food. This system can prevent many things, including stunted growth and some health issues.

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2. No need for competition

Experienced dog breeders know there will be competition in every litter, especially regarding eating food. When the food is on the table (or, better said, on the ground), puppies will fight to get as much as possible before the other littermates.

The puppy feeder will provide multiple feeding stations and allow all puppies to eat in peace without fighting.

3. Portion control

The traditional way of feeding puppies will always leave some puppies shorthanded. Bigger and stronger puppies will eat more food, and the weaker and smaller ones will not. A puppy feeder can control the amount of food your puppies are getting and ensure that every puppy ingests the recommended dosage of food daily.

Ensuring that your puppies can grow and the essential nutrients will support their general health.

4. Time-saving

Every breeder knows that feeding puppies can take a lot of your time. By using puppy feeders, you can quickly provide food for all of your puppies, and when we consider all the things you need to do as a breeder to care for your puppies if you can save some time, this is completely valuable.

5. Proper hygiene

With a puppy feeder, you can maintain cleanliness in the litter. This will ensure that your puppies will not spill food everywhere and step into it later. Maintaining good hygiene in the litter is extremely important because young puppies don't have a fully developed immune system, and if any bacteria enter a litter, you could have many serious problems.

Should breeders use puppy feeders?

Whether or not you should use a puppy feeder is entirely up to you. Of course, some things will come into play when deciding this – size of the litter, breed of the puppies, etc. For larger litters, our general recommendation would be to go for a puppy feeder.

In case you have many puppies, maybe getting two puppy feeders would also be a good idea.

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When and why not use a puppy feeder?

No matter what, puppy feeders are excellent choices for all breeders. However, in some cases, they are not so necessary. In the case of a smaller litter with a lower level of competition, you can simply feed your puppies the same old traditional way and still ensure that every puppy gets the same amount of food.

But even in this case puppy feeder will serve as a great addition and help for you.

Conclusion

Puppy feeders can offer several positive advantages for breeders, such as equal access to food, reduced competition between puppies, portion control, and improved hygiene. Puppy feeders might not be essential for every breeder out there, but this is still a valuable tool for breeders with large litters. We recommend going for one, and this is our recommendation where you can start and try your first puppy feeders.

World Dog Finder team