I open them and then the purple lumps on each side of the Y shaped uterus can be counted so that you know how many pups she had . The size of the lump tells you how old they are . When they are first born the lumps will be close to the size of tennis balls in two weeks they will be golf ball sized after around 6 weeks they will be the size of lima beans . I never count on the pups not living there is often a couple of females with one male as well as I have seen more then once where another pair will adopt even just a few days old pups and move them in with their own . I have gone out the next day and found pups that were still chocolate brown with blue eyes out eating grass and bugs after I had taken the adults from the den . I went out on a call one time where the helicopter had killed the adults a couple of weeks earlier and found the pups living on cow manure . I have known of coyote in the fall being smaller stunted and only about the size of red fox because the adults were killed but they still survived . So for me I only count on a coyote being dead when I kill it in person .
