# Two fathers for different pups in the same litter?



## Sloth (Jul 29, 2008)

This sounds like a ridiculous question, and I can't believe I'm asking it, but the other person was adamant.

We have this chihuahua - or, should I say, "chihuahua." At the house where my dad picked him up, there were two males and one female. One male and the female were chihuahuas, the other male was a toy poodle.

The female chihuahua has the puppies. Half of the pups are clearly poodle/chihuahua mixes, the other half look like chihuahuas. The pup my dad picked out looks EXACTLY like the brindle-colored male chihuahua, and nothing like the female chihuahua.

I said our chihuahua has to be a poodle/chihuahua mix, because it's impossible for two different males to father the same litter. My dad says no, and that the litter can be "split" between two different sires.

...Anyone?


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## Binkalette (Dec 16, 2008)

True. The litter can be split between two fathers. It happens because the female releases several eggs..


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## stripe (Jul 7, 2009)

I have seen a split litter before when two dogs have caught the same bitch
The planned mating was border terrier x border terrier the unwanted mating was a jack russel.
Half the pups turned out like the border terrier the other half like the jack russel.
So I belive that split litters do occur.
(It was not me that was doing the breeding)
All the best
Stripe


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## GSDGAL (May 27, 2009)

that happened with my friends cocker spaniel. she bred cockers and a cattle dog god in and sired half the litter, so she had 3 pure cockers and 4 ACDXcockers, they looked like mini blue tick **** hounds, awesome looking


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## Darkmoon (Mar 12, 2007)

Actually it can happen in planned reputable litters even. Some breeders when it's their bitches last breeding, or they have 2 studs that they can't make up their minds on, they will breed the bitch to both studs and then DNA test the letter to see which pup comes from which stud.

Remember, Dogs have multiple puppies in a litter, which means the bitch releases that many eggs. The eggs don't care which sperm it takes, so if you have different stud's sperm in the bitch, you get litters from 2 fathers (or 3 or more...).

It has been even recorded in Humans. Normally it isn't caught because the babies look alike at first, but one woman ended up with twins, one black one white.


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## LoupGarouTFTs (Oct 27, 2007)

Forgive me, because this post will be long (since I can only put four images in each post, it iwll need more than one). However, it is indeed possible to have a litter with more than one sire. Last year I bred a litter (intentionally) that had two sires. I'm glad I did, because we were left with only two puppies from the litter. This girl is the dam for both litters:

















These are her puppies from that litter:

Puppy #1 (Grace)










Puppy #2 (Patty)










You can see that they all have some physical resemblance to each other, not the least of which is their color. However, if you look at them in total, you can see that the puppies are very different. (more)


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## LoupGarouTFTs (Oct 27, 2007)

This dog is the sire of Puppy #1










Here is his DNA printout










Here is the puppy's DNA printout










Here (again) is Holly's printout










If you look carefully, you can see different elements of each parent's DNA in Grace's profile. You can also see how her head resembles her sire's.


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## LoupGarouTFTs (Oct 27, 2007)

This dog is the sire of puppy #2, Patty:










Here is his DNA printout










And Patty's DNA printout:










And once again, Holly's:










As you can see, Grace and Patty each share results with their sires that they do not share with each other, yet they were born on the same day to the same dam. I'm sorry that I don't have better pictures, but most of the stack pictures have me in them and Patty does not belong to me any longer.


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## Sloth (Jul 29, 2008)

Thanks for the proof, LoupGarou! Guess I was wrong....heheh. I should go apologize to our purebred chihuahua now.


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## Dakota Spirit (Jul 31, 2007)

We've had a few litters like this at the shelter and it gets especially interesting because the majority of them are mix bred. So you'll get something like three pups that look Shepherd-ish and two others that are smooth coats with Rottie resemblance.

Here's another litter we had awhile back that I suspect had more then one father involved. These pups are all siblings, yet there were some definite differences between a few of them


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