What type of kitten birthing techniques to save kittens do you know and how much have you spent to save a kitten?
When our queens go into labor, we have someone stay with them at all times, often sleeping in shifts for days, especially if queens are delivery close together. We must watch for kitten deliveries and step in if it takes longer than 10 mins for a kitten to exit the birth canal by applying traction. If at any time there is a kitten death, the queen goes straight into the emergency vet for the rest of the litter and x-rays.
Kittens must be watched and weighed every few hours for the first 2 weeks to save fading kittens, which is death due to not nursing. We keep a list of each kitten and what times we saw each one nursing, helping struggling kittens find a nipple. If it’s more than half a day or kitten loses weight, we step in with bottle or tube feeding KMR. This is required every two hours, even overnight.
We will spend thousands of dollars to save kitten’s lives. If we have a fading kitten even with tube feeding, we bring it in to be incubated with round the clock care. We once had a kitten born with an umbilical hernia and were quoted $4000 to perform the surgery to fix it if it made it to 8 weeks old. The kitten did survive long enough and we authorized the surgery and luckily it came in under the quote.