Aliy's Whelping Box

7pm temp: 100.0

Aliy's whelping box is where Aliy's puppies will be born and where they will spend the first few weeks of their life. Some people use kiddie wading pools as whelping boxes, some people build boxes and some people purchase them. I built the box Aliy will be using four years ago when Kachina had her litter.



It is made out of one 4 x 8 sheet of high grade plywood. The wood was cut into two 5 foot x 18 inch pieces, one 4 foot x 18 inch piece, one 4 foot x 10 inch piece and one 4 foot x 8 inch piece. In order to make it easy to wipe down, I covered the wood on all sides and edges with vinyl contact paper. I thought this would be a difficult process, but it was quite easy. In addition to being easy to clean, it looks nice!

The box is put together with metal angles and screws. There are three on each back corner and two on each front corner.



The front side of the box is hinged. This allows Aliy to easily get in and out while the puppies are small. When they get bigger, and start trying to climb out of the low side, it can be raised and latched in the upright position. Here's a picture of the hinges:



and the latch:



The box has no floor to it. Floors get dirty easily and are hard to clean. Instead of an attached floor the box is laid on a piece of vinyl flooring I picked up at Home Depot. Bedding is then placed over. the bedding ususally consists of a blanket, covered by newspapers which are then covered by towels. The towels are easy to wash and give the puppies good traction for crawling around.

Most whelping boxes have "pig rails" running around the inside edge. The purpose of the pig rail is to prevent the mom-dog from squishing a puppy up against the edge of the box. My pig rails are made out of easy to cut 2 inch PVC piping and pipe fittings. Using the PVC piping has 3 advantages to the usual attached-to-the-box pig rail. First it is easy to clean. Second it can be removed when it's no longer needed. Many pups quickly learn to use it as a ladder to climb out of the box. Aliy's great grandmother Glacie climbed out of her whelping box before her eyes were even open! The third advantage is that the pig rail helps keep the bedding in place. here's what the corner looks like:



Now you know more about whelping boxes than you ever though you could!