We have and rear our puppies in the house, well in fact in the living room.  Our bitches so far have been superb mothers and have stayed with the puppies from birth to roughly five weeks when the puppies are weaned.  We stay with the (sleeping on the sofa) bitches from about 5 days prior to birth up to the date they are weaned. Our bitches are wormed during pregnancy and we walk them regularly as giving birth is hard work and the fitter they are we feel the slower they will tire during whelping.

We do feed a natural diet but we do supplement the diet with calcium if we feel that the bitch needs it and we make sure that they have lots of fish in oils, they like natural yoghurt and a bit of cheese sprinkled on their tea!!

We get the bitch settled into the whelping box at least a week before she is due, so that she is nice and settled and then its just a matter of waiting.

About 2 days prior to her due date we take her temperature twice daily, as a significant drop in temperature is a good sign that the birth is less than 24 hours away.

The puppies,

The puppies are kept with the mother all of the time now until they are weaned which normally takes place around 5 weeks of age.  The puppies can feed whenever they wish, but we keep a close eye to make sure that they are all getting a fair share.  We start to worm the puppies from about 2 weeks old as well as continuing to worm the bitch regularly.  From about 2 weeks old the puppies are allowed to suck on a bit of lean fresh raw beef mince, they do make quite a mess and they don’t actually eat a lot, but we find that it gets the taste buds going, so by the time they are three weeks old they are looking forward to their mince and can actually eat a bit by then.  From then we add tripe and chicken mince as well and the meals become larger and more frequent. The more mince and tripe they eat the less and less they have from their mother, we also give them small meals of a specially formulated milk either Whelpi or Lactol as well as sprinkling a bit of cheese on their mince.  We do supplement the puppies on calcium from about 3 to four weeks old.

Once the puppies are weaned the mother can leave them and have a well earned break, she will need a lot of TLC as well as a very good diet to try and regain a lot of the condition she has lost due to having the litter. The puppies should now be eating and drinking well, at this stage they are also due to have their hearing tested, so we go to Winchester where they check all of the puppies an ear at a time.

At eight weeks old we have all of the puppies first vaccination done as well as having a microchip, the vet gives them a thorough going over and has a listen to the heart and if all is well they are ready to be collected by their news owners, a very sad time but also it is very nice to see the pups start the next stage of their Journey.

We have been very lucky, all of our puppies have gone to lovely homes and we manage to see them all about every 6-12 months.

we are an accredited breeder with the UK Kennel Club

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