Expansion of the weaning pen is the name of the game for the next couple weeks. Now that the puppies have are moving from the whelping box to the weaning pen, we will be starting small and expanding the pen every week, or when warranted.

How big your weaning pen becomes depends greatly on the space available to you and the number/size of your puppies.
Obviously, smaller puppies need proportionally less space than larger puppies.
And fewer puppies need less space than more puppies.
And of course, you can’t expand the pen beyond the space available to you!
But overall use the space available to your advantage, puppies who are crowded have more intra litter bickering and aggression and we don’t want to allow our puppies to learn coping skills that will put them at a disadvantage later in life. So as a general rule, more space is better.

When to expand?

1. Expand when puppies seem crowded. If puppies are bickering, destructive, and/or vocalizing they may be experiencing crowding stress. This always warrants expanding their available space, regardless of other factors.

2. Expand when puppies are making a good effort to reach the toilet. If you are finding most feces and urine in the toilet, and what accidents you do find are migrating closer to the toilet zone. Those migrating accidents tell us the puppies are learning to move away from their resting and play area to void and that is the learning we want.

Expanding The Weaning Pen