From puppies to pigs: versatile Michigan-made incubator aids in animal neonatal care

BATTLE CREEK, Mich.— 20 percent of puppies born in the United States die in the first month of life, according to the American Kennel Club. A Michigan-based company is trying to lower those numbers.

“We want to drive that rate down and make the save rate higher,” Ken Sunden, the owner of Puppywarmer, said.

With the goal of advancing small animal neonatal care, the Puppywarmer is an incubator that has saved over 60,000 puppies.

“The Puppywarmer is an incubator, which is essentially a microenvironment that is dependent on the larger environment that it is in,” Sunden said. “What we are trying to do is help breeders and to help veterinarians and rescue groups create the right environmental conditions so puppies can be resilient if they are at risk.”

The creation of the Puppywarmer started after the Sunden family lost two of their dogs 45 days apart.

“My wife said, ‘that’s it, we should probably not have more dogs, this hurts too much’. We tried that for six months,” he said. “Our daughter purchased a puppy from a breeder in Ohio and we fell in love with that dog, so we also purchased a puppy.”

Two other puppies in their dog’s litter were small for their gestational age and died within the first three days of their life. The breeder was distraught over losing the two puppies, and Sunden wanted to help.

He used his background in industrial heaters to design and build an incubator optimized for puppies.

“I made her an incubator and gave it to her,” he said. “Usually, she could save 1 out of 10 puppies. With the incubator, she ended up saving 17 of the next 18, so she went from a 10 percent save rate to a 94 percent save rate.”

The breeder pushed him to start the company, and it took off from there.

“I really and truly thought that this would just be a little hobby business and that we would make about 25 a year,” he said. “Currently, there are about 4,000 units out in the field.”

The Puppywarmer is used by 10 veterinary teaching universities, by service dog groups, and by breeders all over the country.

Michigan State University is one of those universities.

Sunden and his wife, Debbie, donated one of their units to the MSU Veterinary Medical Center’s Companion Animal Theriogenology Service in honor of Debbie’s father, Ed Foster, who is a 1963 alum of the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine.

“I wanted to donate a unit to celebrate his career, not only in veterinary science but also what he’s done for the community,” he said.

The Puppywarmer are used to grow immunocompromised pigs for human transplant.

“They researched our product, they found it online, and we learned about it when we were helping them set up the first one,” he said. “[The company] is up to eight or nine units now. They’re happy with the survival rates of the pigs and have had some successful transplants.”

The versatility extends far beyond puppies and pigs.

“The versatility of it is being used for wildlife, for cats, it’s being used for recovery of exotic animals after surgery, reptiles the versatility of the unit has surprised me,” Sunden said.

At the end of the day, Sunden and his team are simply saving baby animals, one incubator at a time.

“If you create the environment right for a puppy, and that includes heat, humidity, oxygen and hygienics, its amazing to see how resilient puppies can be,” he said. “Dogs have given us plenty, and there’s plenty we can give back to dogs.”

You can follow Puppywarmer on Facebook and their website.