Currently Fostering 7 Puppies and Mother Dog for a few weeks. Need some help!

Hi,

It's a bit of a long story, but my wife and I are currently fostering 7 puppies and a mother dog that were abandoned. We're working with a local org to get them adopted, so we do have some support there, but they are pretty overwhelmed.

The puppies are about 8 weeks old right now. When we found them at 5 weeks old they were malnourished, full of worms and fleas and pretty weak. We've got them back up to health in the last few weeks and they are doing great! My questions are really about best practices for puppy raising and socializing. I realize we wont have them for long, but I know that the 8-12 weeks time period is also crucial socialization time for puppies, so we want to do the best we can to set them up for success.

Here is what we're doing now. Any critique is welcomed:

• The puppies are in our (very nice) air conditioned and heated detached garage.
• Their main pen is about 12x 20ft. About 3x per day we open the garage door and they have an extension to the pen that gives them another large space to play outside.
• we're feeding 4x per day. Currently using 3 large bowls for this, but thinking we should move to individual bowls? They have access to fresh water.
• their main pen is lined with sheets that we swap in the morning and evening. We try and clean their poop throughout the day to keep them clean and keep them from eating it. Any alternative methods to this would be helpful. Its a lot of work.
• we try to give the puppies lots of human attention and affection.
• Mom still wants to feed them, and they still want to feed, but she isnt producing much milk and they're pretty much on dry food.
• we let mom in the pen throughout the day to feed and play with the pups. She is very gentle with them and they love rolling around and playing with her. I wonder if keeping mom more separate is good or bad? Eventually they'll be adopted out, so they'll have to separate at some point.

I'm happy to answer any questions or take any advice anyone has, either for puppy well being or tips/ tricks to help us handle this many puppies without going crazy. This is our first time with puppies and we're doing our best!

Here are some photos of the pups: https://imgur.com/a/UOOdcCp