Our latest litter of pups between Ginger and Kai was born on September 15th, 2024. Ginger had nine puppies, four males and five females. Since they arrived a few days early, their birth weight was a little on the low side but I’m happy to report that every pup has gained significant weight over the last week. Their weights at birth were between 280-300 grams. You can see below they are more than double that now and are very healthy eaters!
Each litter is unique and these guys and gals are a noisy bunch. Not in bad way, they just make a lot of cute puppy noises, more than any of our past litters at this age. For now, they are still 100% dependent on Ginger and she is doing a wonderful job taking care of them. She feeds them, cleans them and makes sure they stay warm. It’s the cutest thing to look in on them and see a pile of puppies all rolled up in a ball and sleeping. They are only active and awake 2-3 hours a day but that will change quickly as they get bigger. Right now, it’s all about eating and sleeping.
When they are born, their eyes are closed, noses are pink and so are their paws. That’s just starting to change and their pads are turning darker by the day (that’s good). Eyes will not be open until sometime between weeks 3-4. When they can see and they are mobile, that’s when our work really begins :-)
We do receive many questions about the puppies, such as the order of their birth, who is the runt of the litter, and which one is the darkest. At just one week old, they change and grow rapidly. Size will change from week to week and all the pups will get darker as their coats come in. But for those of you wondering, here’s their current weights listed in descending order:
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- Brown (M) – 910 grams
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- Purple (M) – 885 grams
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- Pink (F) – 860 grams
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- Green (M) – 820 grams
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- Red (M) – 772 grams
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- Aqua (F) – 751 grams
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- Lime (F) – 727 grams
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- Orange (F) – 720 grams
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- Yellow (F) – 705 grams
If you are interested in their birth order, we have listed that below. For registration purposes, the AKC requires you to list the birth date when the majority of puppies were born. Since only one pup arrived after midnight, we will list September 15th as the birth date for the entire litter. Technically, Orange arrived on September 16th.
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- Purple (M) – 10:11pm
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- Aqua (F) – 10:20pm
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- Yellow (F) – 10:37pm
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- Pink (F) – 10:55pm
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- Brown (M) – 11:07pm
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- Lime (F) – 11:47pm
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- Red (M) – Green (M) – 11:50pm *Twins born simultaneously in the same placenta
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- Orange (F) – 12:18am
As far as color goes, this is a very consistent litter of Red Labrador puppies. They are all very close in color at the moment and will turn darker as they get older. Here’s how I would classify them from darkest to lightest but again, there is not a lot of variation.
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- Green (M) – Dark Red
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- Brown (M)
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- Orange (F)
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- Lime (F)
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- Pink (F)
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- Yellow (F)
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- Purple (M)
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- Red (M)
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- Aqua (F) – Carmel Red
Week one photos are shown below. It is a bit difficult to photograph them at this age since they can’t hold their heads up and wiggle all over the place like Jello. If you hover over the photo it will show you the collar color and gender. Clicking on the photo will reveal a larger image.
