When it comes to survival, the weakest animal in a litter will always have the hardest time. Sometimes a mother will have a baby that is not feeding properly because she has too little milk or, sometimes the bigger siblings push the weaker one aside, so it cannot get enough food.

Breeders and animal rescuers are sometimes are faced with a puppy or other animal that is less than healthy because he/she is not able to get enough to eat.

Adele and Claude Bisson raise Yorkshire Terriers and Biewer Terriers and have discovered a novel way to feed a puppy that needs help feeding by replicating the natural method used by nursing mothers as closely as they possibly can. Their method helps ensure a puppy gets well fed.

Adele grew worried about one tiny puppy named Lilly Blossom, who was the runt of the litter. So she began to hand-feed the puppy and came up with a clever way to get the baby to nurse and drink milk with the help of a visage (face) sponge (a latex-free makeup sponge).

Adele writes that this method should only be tried if “you are confident and experienced around newborn puppies”.

“Remember to never leave the puppy unsupervised with a sponge in its mouth,” she says. “Use common sense when handling any newborn puppy.”

She also hopes that this “life saving feeding system” that she calls “Nature’s Udder Mother” can be useful to anyone who are trying to save a puppy or other newborn animal from malnutrition.

Hand-feeding a baby animal takes ’round-the-clock care, but it’s clear Lilly Blossom is in experienced hands and will no doubt be up and running with her siblings soon.

Watch Adele go through her process in the video below.

For those interested, here is a list of the products Adele says they use. She adds, “There are probably hundreds of websites showing similar items. We don’t recommend any particular product. Just trying to help out those looking for the supplies.”

The dog bed she uses is the Bowsers Buttercup Dog Bed. She recommends latex-free makeup sponges that are made in the USA or Canada. Although the heating gel pads she uses no longer seem to be available, Heatwave heat pack products are similar and there are other heating pad products on the market.