15 Days - Black

Present for the puppies for the weekend!

The pups are in for a surprise this weekend! We have a little puppy pee pad for them to start getting used to surfaces. I will make their area a little bigger, and add this green jobbie.. perhaps they will even pee on it :)

2 Weeks!

The pups are 2 weeks! Today is the first deworming day... not looking forward to that mess later!

Their weights are looking good:

Pretty eyes appearing :)

13 Days old

Black

Spider

Jane

 

Puzzle

Patch

Bandit

Bonus

Lunch on day 13

 

Some eyes are open!

....very hard to hold a wriggly puppy and take photos!!

Next official photo shoot: FRIDAY evening

I will upload on Friday night :)

Day 11

The pups all have little slits for eyes now... Two of the pups are actually peeping - Jane and Puzzle! Their eyes should be all the way open tomorrow and the rest should start then too. They are all reacting to the light when I put it on in the room!

Here are 2 little videos of supper time this evening. We will take proper photos on Friday, and I will upload them on Friday night.

All the pups are walking around much easier now. And black girl was the first to sit up! I will be adding some little toys this weekend for them to bump into and for them to start getting the feel of different items.

Video

Here you can see the pups being more mobile. Mom had just left the box, so they were performing a little.. this is a little display of puppy tantrums hehe

Blankies

The blankies have arrived! Pink for girls and blue for boys!

The babies are 1 week old!

Dewormer

This has just arrived...

The pups are due to be dewormed next Friday (22 April), and I decided to try a new dewormer. The liquid dewormer that I used previously made such a mess, and it is so easy to waste. I decided to ask a few breeder friends what they use, and most prefer Panacur. I note that it comes in a paste, so we will try it for this litter!

STARS - 5 Days old

Update

Finn and babies are 100%... Mr Big (Patch) I think may be a Bernese mountain dog... he is just humungus!


Thinking about the litter, I still recall how quickly the pups came, I didn't have much time to do anything between the birth of each pup... but today I looked at the times, and some of them were quite far apart!


18 min
52 min
41 min
20 min
13 min
72 min! (this last one was so that I could go an have a brandy at 8 in the morning!)


It has been a busy day! I popped into the local material shop and got some more whelping box blankets. I also ordered some nice embroidered blankies - 1 for each pup in pink and blue, with the Mackland logo on! I also went and got the folders for all their documentation....


If all goes well (and my lights work) then PHOTOS tonight!

Update

Finn and the babies are doing very well. She is a good mom, as always! The pups are very strong and independent - they crawl around the box at a rate of knots. This litter doesn't seem to want the warmth of the heating pad, nor the heater in the room (they move away from it). I also note that, for the first time ever, I have a litter that doesn't snuggle up! They spread around and do their own thing!

One of the boys (Patch) seems very big to me, so I put him on the scale yesterday morning to see what he weighs... at 3 days = 600g!!!!!!!!!! YOH

The 7 microchips have been ordered (from Lusahn) and should arrive well in time for their 6-week insertion. I have also ordered their liquid deworming and puppy packs :)
Finn is eating me out of house and home... already polished off a full bag of Hills puppy, and begs for more after each meal! She is eating 4 bowls of Hills puppy a day, plus an egg, and also a portion of fish or chicken.

Latest litter theme....

..and the theme is: STARS


There are a number of reasons for this theme, but firstly it was planned already - as the third in Finn's trilogy: Sun, Moon, Stars


Then, due to Maverick bringing the litter forward by a year, it was almost called the OOPS litter....


But, I decided to go with STARS again after training with Maverick last week - he truly is a star, and his kids will be too! So STARS it is!


So, all registered names will be star-related. Those getting puppies can let me have their call names as they know them, so that I can start thinking what goes with each name! Make them special, people!!

What a hectic weekend!

My suspicions rose on Wednesday when Finn started panting lightly and it was not warm in PE. I thought she may be a bit uncomfortable, so just watched her. By Thursday lunchtime she was still the same, but Thursday night I knew the pups were coming early! She was definitely panting more than necessary, so I popped her in bed with me and decided to go to sleep early as a Friday "too-early" morning wake-up was very possible... During the night she got up a few times and went outside. (She dug a tunnel halfway to Australia and my bed was full of sand) By 3am she was panting heavily. So at 3:30 I got up and made some coffee, put all my whelping tools in the room, and put Finn in the box, and sat with her. My house guest joined me at 3:45, and Sam was notified at (THE USUAL) 4am. Finn started contractions at 5am and Sam then rocked up, half asleep.
DAY 58: The first baby was born just after 5:30am! They came quite quickly except for the last one :)

 

Mom and all pups had a good weekend. Pups are strong and VERY squirmy. It was interesting to note that these are a little different to my previous BC litters - some of the tails are longer and narrower at the base, and some also have way more white on than just the tips. The bodies are not as round as well, it's the first time I could feel spines at birth. Regarding the obvious... LOTS of large body splashes!! Finn is white factored and so is Maverick, but Maverick obviously carries a LOT. I have only bred with white factored dogs, and have got a few splashes in the past, but this litter takes first prize for that! In this litter, there is Mackland's first white face (half white) and also Mackland's first "mismark" (body more than 50% white). Also this litter sees Mackland's biggest pup at birth (bigger than Rush - 410g!) at a whopping 425g!

I am very happy with these pups, though, and I think I will enjoy seeing them work! No pups will go to show homes this time, as I cannot accurately gauge how they will turn out for the breed ring, given that it is a 100% outcross and 50% sheep herding lines. They will all be in active homes and working homes!

I decided to ask the vet nurse to come in on Sunday night to take their dew claws off, seeing that these are very strong puppies. This was at 2.5 days old (I usually have her do it at 3 days). The vet insists we do it at 4 days, but that was done once, for the Agility litter, and NEVER AGAIN. The screaming was too awful!  This last litter barely squealed and it was over in a matter of seconds and totally forgotten! Mom checked all the pups as we did them and they were drinking again happily within 5 minutes of us finishing :)



If all goes well, photos will be taken this evening!

Day 58 - we have puppies!

Introducing the STARS Litter....

7 puppies (4 females, 3 males)

Females:
Black 360g
Spider 380g
Jane 345g
Puzzle 365g

Males:
Patch 425g
Bandit 340g
Bonus 300g

Black 360g

Spider 380g

Jane 345g

Puzzle 365g

Patch 425g

Bandit 340g

Bonus 300g

Day 57

This morning's breakfast was FISH on last night's pasta... followed by a dish of Hills Puppy pellets. Finn is SO enjoying mealtimes!

It is day 57, so we are preparing the whelping room.... Documents are all printed out for taking the temperatures and for the puppy descriptions and details!

Database stats

I quickly asked the database to spit out the stats of Mackland's pending BC litter. (Sorry, they have an old pic of Maverick, and I also haven't sent them his hip and elbow certificate).

As you can see there are some interesting coats possible.... but my personal opinion is that they will all be black & white. You can also see from there that it is a total outcross (inbreeding 0%)... so basically a lucky packet of genetics. It's not something that I have done before - I really believe in type to type. But yes, this was planned (albeit for 2017) to inject a pure working element into my breed line. I do not want to lose any workability by only selecting show dogs (not that I have lost it yet, but it can happen).

Also, under diseases at the bottom, you will note that this will be a spectacularly healthy litter!

Finn is 8 weeks!

Well, Finn is 8 weeks along already and looking like a pudding.... I think acting like one too. She gets up to leave the room and plops down with a thump for a rest before she even gets to the door!

We had an x-ray today - I think we could see five babies! Sorry about the bad image - it's a phone pic of the screen...

Her "egg a day" is still going down well, and either chicken or fish on her food is still gobbled at high speed. We sommer eat pasta now occasionally too!

ONE week to go!!