It’s extremely important to make sure the puppies are kept nice and warm and toasty….Remember, they cannot regulate their own temperatures until approximately 3 weeks of age….an external heat source is the best way to make sure they stay warm and toasty, BUT:1. Puppies don’t need to be baked: placing a heat lamp over the whelping box or a heating pad beneath the puppies seems like a nice gesture to keep them warm, but TOO MUCH heat can dehydrate them….If the puppy’s skin is red , it’s probably over heated…supplying a heat source is good, but make sure puppies can crawl away from it if they are too warm.2. Warming chilled pups doesn’t mean to cook them…..it’s natural to want to heat a chilled pup as fast as you can, unfortunately, extremely hot air from a heat source will make the puppy’s surface blood vessels dilate and will actually wick heat away from it’s core…. a cold puppy is not able to nurse and can become dangerously dehydrated and hypoglycemic and have life threatening low blood sugar….your goal is to heat the puppy’s core, not the skin, this can take an hour or more to be successful. Holding the pup against your skin and under a slightly warmed towel is the best way to increase the core temp….CORE TEMP CAN ONLY BE DETERMINED BY TAKING THE PUPS TEMP RECTALLY….it’s an absolute….it has to be done to know your puppy’s status. Don’t assume that if they feel warm to the touch that they are fine….skin warmth and core temp are two totally different things, you need to know that core temp.3. Do not feed chilled pups…. it’s the natural hot chicken soup human reaction, and therefore get some warm formula into a chilled puppy….but puppies and humans are not the same…feeding a chilled pup can be a death sentence…..A chilled pup has slowed or stopped peristaltic gut action…which means the food sits in the pup’s stomach without moving into it’s small intestine. The formula can sour, it can cause the stomach to bloat, the pup can vomit and increase the risk of aspiration pneumonia…..It’s imperative that you make sure the pup is properly warmed before trying to feed.