Gundog Digest. Breeding a litter by Keith Erlandson

Breeding a Litter

CHOICE OF A DAM.
After a shooting season has ended, I daresay a good many shooters, pickers up and beaters are considering breeding a litter of pups, not to mention the field trial people who are always up to something to breed that world beater. The first consideration should be whether your bitch is of sufficient standard. A retriever should be an adequate gamefinder, tender mouthed and quiet at a drive. A spaniel should possess these attributes and be bold when hunting cover. It also goes without saying that a water-shy animal should not be bred from. If you really have the interests of your chosen breed at heart, and this applies more to retrievers than spaniels, your bitch should have her hips X-rayed and eyes tested. The late Jim Edgar, (a Vet), started in working cockers in 1948 and never knew a case of hip dysplasia. The odd case has occurred in working springers but the breed is not predisposed to HD. Progressive retinal atrophy, although listed in English springers thankfully gives the working strains a miss. Testing for retinal dysplasia can only effect minimal control as several springers that are clear on test are carriers but fortunately RD is generally not too serious a condition and many with retinal folds are competent markers.

WHICH SIRE TO USE.
Regarding breeding, William Arkwright wrote in 1915, 'First to the pup's actual pedigree, he should have a first rate dam... his sire's excellences there is not quite so much necessity to investigate... the owner of a good bitch will almost certainly have exercised care in her mating'. It is abundantly clear that Arkwright accepted as essential the use of only top class dams in a breeding programme. If you take a look at some of your friends' shooting dogs, you may decide that one has all the attributes you would seek in a sire. However, it must be borne in mind that fewer shooting people seem to have their dogs' hips and eyes screened than do field trial persons and whereas you are more likely to get away with it in spaniels, the matter concerning retrievers is more significant. If you should decide to use one of the many Field Trial Champion sires advertised, at least you will be secure in the knowledge that it has passed muster under judges insofar as positive qualities and freedom from hereditary working faults are concerned but remember, even putting the best to the best does not always guarantee success.

HAVING YOUR BITCH MATED.
Having decided which sire you are going to use, it is now incumbent upon you to make sure that you have her mated on the correct day of her reproductive cycle. A close watch should be kept on her when you would expect her to come in season and at the first sign of bright red blood, the date should be recorded. Most bitches are ready for mating from the 10th - 14th day of the oestrus but occasionally some are ready earlier. If possible, introduce her to a dog at home to see if she is willing to 'stand' with her tail to one side. A fairly sure sign is when the bitch twists her neck and body to sniff the dog. Some bitches stand on their own territory but refuse to do so on strange ground and it may be necessary to hold her. Forget old wives' tales that a forced mating will not produce quality pups. Some of the best trial dogs of all time have been the result of 'forced matings'. If you have no access to a dog as a ' teaser', a bitch often will stand if you rub your hand along her rump.

THE MATING PROCEDURE.
If you use a friend's dog on your bitch, it might be possible for you to give a pup in exchange for the mating but if you are going to use a proven stud dog, you most likely will have to pay a stud fee at the time of mating. Should your bitch fail to produce pups, most stud dog owners will give a free service at a later date. However, there is no legal obligation for them to do so. You pay for the actual service, not a guaranteed result, unlike the 'live foal guarantee' in the horse world. Several years ago there was a case in Lancashire which only involved a £50 stud fee but for some reason no free service was forthcoming, whether the stud dog had died in the meantime I don't know. The bitch's owner tried to sue but lost his case. I once had a failed mating to a golden retriever stud but before my bitch came in season again, the dog died. I lost my 5 guinea stud fee which was quite a blow as I was at that time an impecunious underkeeper. Some stud dog owners will not allow you to substitute a different bitch for the free service.

THE PREGNANCY ADVANCES.
For the first six weeks of the bitch's pregnancy, there is no need to adopt any special routine, apart from not allowing the bitch to jump fences or other obstacles but from six weeks onwards, the diet should be adjusted. If feeding on ready prepared, balanced 'bag food', as most breeders do nowadays, as opposed to the more usual raw meat or tripe of bygone years, a good quality food should be fed of from 24-30 per cent protein. I would consider 26 per cent to be ideal. As for the brand, to paraphrase Archibald, Earl of Douglas at the Battle of Shrewsbury in The Bard's Henry lV, 'They grow like hydra's heads', as hardly a month seems to go by but when some manufacturer brings out a new brand. Some names I can recommend are Skinners, Omega, Beta, Wellbeloved's, Purina, Febo, Chudley's, Gilpa, Pedigree and Burgess Supa Dog. There are imported high protein foods that some swear by but the ones quoted can be one third to one half the price of imported feeds and seem to to just as good a job. The food intake should be increased by about 50 per cent but should be divided into two meals, night and morning until she whelps at around nine weeks after mating.

When feeding dry food, it is most essential that the pregnant bitch have access to water at all times. You should imagine that this simply would be a commonsense issue but years ago I confirmed a pregnancy for a client but his bitch had no pups, having absorbed them. Later I learned that he fed his dogs in the evening and then shut them up in sleeping quarters to keep them quiet and they had no water until the following morning. The mind boggles. Obviously dehydration set in. Some authorities advise giving the bitch a booster injection for parvo virus a fortnight before whelping to strengthen the pups' maternal immunity after birth but I dislike the idea of using a live vaccine on a pregnant bitch and prefer to vaccinate the pups at six weeks but more anon. Pregnant bitches should be wormed, which I do using 'Panacur' a fortnight before birth but the manufacturers advise dosing a bitch with a 4 gram sachet every day for the final three weeks of pregnancy. It is claimed that this regimen will ensure that the pups will be born virtually free of roundworms but will cost about £21, against £2 - £3 if two or three sachets are administered as a single dose, according to the breed and weight of the bitch.

WHELPING.
The majority of litters are born 63 days after mating but some can be born three or four days early or late. It is possible on rare occasions for pups to be born a week early. It often seems to happen that when a bitch is really large and heavy, the pups will be born early. The bitch should have been supplied with a whelping box several days before she is due and I favour newspaper as bedding but never straw. She should be well deloused a few days beforehand, otherwise she could infect her newborn pups with lice, which are extremely debilitating and few louse remedies are suitable for use on very young pups. When parturition is imminent, the bitch's temperature will drop from the normal l0l.5F to about 98.5F, despite her panting and looking hot. Most gundog bitches whelp with few problems but occasionally a bitch cannot whelp at all, or it may whelp one but and after three or four hours, no more are forthcoming or alternatively, she might whelp several, then uterine inertia sets in and she requires the vet, who will inject her with pituitrin and 20 to 30 minutes later she should commence to whelp again. Failure to react to the pituitrin leaves only one option, caesarian section which although a simple operation, will set you back more than a few bob.

IS THE BITCH IN WHELP?
It can be helpful if you are able to find out as soon as possible if your bitch has conceived after mating. If you have paunched a good number of rabbits in the early months of the year, this can be valuable experience for helping you to find out if your bitch is in whelp. When you open up a doe rabbit which is in kindle, the position and appearance of the embryonic sacs will vary according to how far advanced is the pregnancy. When the doe is nine or ten days in young, the embryos are carried low down in the abdomen, just above the bladder and are complete spheres. As the pregnancy advances the embryonic sacs become more oval in form and are carried higher in the abdomen. Shortly before birth the formed foetuses are in elongated form. The soonest I was ever able to confirm in whelp was 17 days after mating but three weeks often is the earlist pregnancy can be confirmed by palpating the lower abdomen with finger and thumb in exactly the same spot as a doe rabbit shows at 9 - 10 days. The embryonic sacs are spherical with a 'silky' feel about them. I only try to find one, then leave it at that.

CARE DURING PREGNANCY.
After mating, a bitch can be worked for several weeks, should she have been mated during the shooting season. Some authorities claim hunting actually can enhance the working ability of the pups. Experiments have been conducted with pregnant female rats. A control group lived in an empty cage. The experimental females were given toys to play with. Upon dissection, the young from the group whose dams had toys to play with during pregnancy had developed a thicker cortex surrounding their brains which seemingly would have had a positive effect upon their brain power. A bitch could be worked for several weeks during pregnancy but jumping should be avoided at all times. An American authority has pointed out that a coyote bitch does not cease to hunt during pregnancy. Agreed but she can take it easy and leisurely pick up gophers and other easy prey rather than trying to run down jack rabbits and like foxes here, coyotes do form a pair bond and the males doubtless carry some prey to the heavy in whelp females, so the situation is not quite analogous with a hard hunting gundog bitch. Perhaps it would be advantageous for a staghound bitch in whelp to be taken out with the tufters, then boxed up when the stag had been roused.

I have now discussed the theory, expounded by some American authorities, that it can improve the working ability of a litter if the dam is worked during pregnancy. I have no concrete ideas regarding this theory but many years ago I had a bitch, Macsiccar Auchtertyre Donna, who was in whelp to F.T.Ch Gwibernant Ashley Robb. I ran them both in the Spaniel Championship at Blenheim. Robb picked up third place and Donna, although she ran an excellent trial, received nothing. However, the resulting litter produced three Field Trial Champion bitches but whether or not keeping her in work had any bearing on the quality of the litter, I cannot quantify. The mating to Robb was repeated the following year but was not in whelp during the shooting season, yet the litter contained two Field Trial Champions (one of which won the Spaniel Championship) and three trial winners, so this makes the theory of litter enhancement by shooting over the bitch in whelp even more difficult to pin down. However, a positive advantage of working a bitch in whelp would be that she would be far fitter than a bitch that simply had lain in the kennel and had minimal exercise. The fitter bitch could well experience the easier whelping.