Rocket Fuel

 An army marches on its stomach.
This quote from Napoleon Bonaparte also applies to puppies!

The rocket pups would still prefer to get all their fuel from Mama Ecko, but they need to branch out and start eating other things.  Ecko is getting quite svelte despite feeding her every 3 hours or so around the clock.  She still wants to clean the pups pen and feed them, but makes her visits at much longer intervals than before.  Those teeth have to hurt when they nurse.

Our first effort in feeding them some semi-solid food was to soften and blend some grain free dog kibble with puppy formula.  They ate some, but obviously weren't excited about it.  I can't say I blame them - it doesn't even smell terribly appetizing and it looks downright yucky.

Titan (left) was especially interested in the chicken wing.

We feed our dogs a raw diet (raw meat and veggies), so we next gave them some raw chicken wings to investigate.  While they are too little to actually eat the wings that our adult dogs crunch up with ease, they were quite excited about the smell and taste of the chicken and actually managed to eat a bit of it.  Yum!  Chewing on meaty bones is great for helping to cut puppy teeth and also develop solid jaw and neck muscles.

The pups favorite gourmet meal so far is chicken (whole chicken cooked in pressure cooker) blended in the blender with chicken broth and mixed with some canned pumpkin.  This still looks pretty yucky to me, but smells quite good.  The pups are very enthusiastic about it and have good stools eating it.

They'll gradually transition to solid food in the next few weeks.

One of the pups sleeping in their little fabric house.