No matter what amount of food is given, the mother should not have lost more than ten percent of her "ideal weight" after one month of lactation, and any weight loss (which is often unavoidable) should be regained within a month after the puppies are weaned. Of course, balanced growth of the litter provides an indirect source of information about the characteristics of the milk, and about the mother's health.
It should be remembered that the essential goal is a nutritionally-balanced food, since the addition of any supplement to correct a deficiency runs the risk of disrupting absorption of the other constituents.
The most frequent examples of this are zinc deficiency and lactation tetany resulting from excessive calcium supplementation.
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