A Boomi dog could be entering the record books after giving birth to what is believed to be equal to Australia’s largest litter.
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Girl, a Great Dane X Bloodhound X Bull Arab, naturally delivered 20 puppies over a 15-hour period on Friday night and Saturday morning.
According to Guiness World Records, the world record for the largest litter of puppies belongs to a Neapolitan mastiff, which gave birth to 24 pups in the UK in November 2004.
One of those was stillborn and three died in the first week.
The record for the largest Australian litter also belongs to a Neapolitan mastiff, which according to news.com, delivered 20 pups in Ipswich in October 2009. Two of those puppies didn’t survive.
Unfortunately, the smallest of Girl’s puppies (which weighed only 199 grams) passed away on Monday night, however if the remaining 19 survive she could be on track to hold the record for the most surviving puppies in a litter.
This is the first litter for the two-year-old pig dog which is owned by 15-year-old Lilly Lindberg, the daughter of Boomi’s Pioneer Hotel publicans Di and Rick Lindberg.
Di said the family were shocked to find Girl had given birth to 20 puppies on Saturday morning.
“She’s a big dog and by the size of her I expected 14 puppies,” she said.
“Honest to god, she looked like a cow about to deliver three calves on Friday afternoon.”
The first puppy was born at about 6pm on Friday, November 3 and by 11.30pm she’d had 14 and the Lindbergs thought that was it.
“She had them in the backyard underneath an old trailer,” Di said.
“I went down at about 1.30am to check on her and I kept counting 15.
“At 3am I went down and was handing them to my husband to put in a basket to bring inside and I nearly died when there was 17. Then [the mother] got up and there was one underneath her, which made 18.
“I thought we’d lost that one but when I was moving it I felt it kick and put it up to my ear and heard a heartbeat, so I’m rubbing it and blowing into it, and it’s now one of the strongest out there.”
At 7am on Saturday morning there were still 18 puppies, however by 9am the litter had increased to 20.
“It’s unbelievable,” Di said.
For the next few weeks the puppies will require around-the-clock care, with feeding the biggest challenge.
Girl is getting fed every two hours to ensure she is producing enough milk to feed the puppies, however since only eight can feed from her at a time, the Lindbergs have been bottle feeding the remainder.
“We went and bought some lamb feeders, so that will do 12 puppies and she’s got eight tits herself, so we can hopefully get all fed at once,” Di said.
“We’re just rotating them around to make sure they all get a bit of [their mother] and the puppy milk.”
When the puppies are old enough, the Lindbergs plan to keep four and sell the remainder, which are worth between $200 to $300.
There were 11 boys and nine girls, although one of the girls didn’t make it.
All of the puppies are black and white, taking after their mother, and are expected to grow to be big dogs.
The father, Stinky – “because he absolutely stunk when we picked him up” – is a Deerhound X Bloodhound X Bully Dane with a brindle coat.