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Chapter V - Keeping A Kennel Viable I very early found out when I became a sort of Universal Aunt, which mantle fell unasked on my shoulder as soon as I became a columnist for Dog World, then one of the commonest cris de coeur was. 'I'm longing to keep two of my latest puppies but I am cluttered up with oldies. What can I do?' When I sold the very large Lilymere estate and the big house that went with the odd 1700 acres and moved up in my present tiny Keeper's cottage where I am writing this, I kept fifty acres adjoining for the dogs. This is the dream of scores of dog people, who would give their souls for fifty acres of open ground to themselves with no neighbors. I had got to the stage of life, though, when I had already learnt to keep my numbers down almost automatically. That is not to say that if I wanted to run on the extra adult or buy one for myself or keep a few extra puppies that I could not do so, but I seized the opportunity of the move to look ahead to my ageing process and limit myself to a reasonable number of Labradors. I deliberately put up only eight kennels with runs and made a huge outside eight foot high corral for them to run virtually free together in daytime. I also erected two big huts, one as a whelping kennel with infra-red etc. and one as a spare to use as I liked but which usually stands empty. It is definitely not a residential kennel but useful for a bitch on full heat or a brace of big puppies up to six or seven months waiting to be sorted out. Thus, with at the very most eight dogs counting O.A.P.'s and puppies, I can remain viable and still get top award at a Championship show, and can breed enough puppies to keep the kennel bills paid, not counting show entries and expenses which I count as my holiday money. Instead of going to Spain or Majorca, I go to Birmingham, Leeds, and Blackpool Championship show and any other I fancy. So my first advice to the middle-ranger grading up is to look at your kennel carefully and dispassionately, keeping exactly what you need or like, but each year selling the one's that you can spare and being just a little bit firm with yourself as you do so. Then you will have much less work and danger from disease in winter and will have empty kennels to fill with your spring and summer crop of puppies, so you have no need to sell those you want to run on, for lack of room. 'What is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare', should be the motto of every good breeder. Look, look and look again and the bottom should soon fall out of your kennel, leaving plenty of room at the top. The sequence that causes overstocking is that the foundation bitch will remain with you for life because you will have got very fond of her. So she will take up a kennel-space for up to ten years or more. By the time you have been in for three years you will be wanting to breed from these, and will also have one or two youngster from her second and third litters. From now on you are building up on compound interest, with at least three litters a year and wanting to keep puppies from these, and the idea of a stud dog is also cropping up. So before you know where you are you have three generations of bitches down from your original bitch, which you are still keeping, a stud dog, and at least one of the original bitch's first litter which again you will never want to get rid off because it was the very first Labrador you ever bred. Sadly, dogs age very rapidly and your foundation bitch is all too soon aged six or seven, your second bitch is five and there is a queue of youngsters on which you know what to build and which you are showing, aged from six months upwards to three or four years, not to mention several small puppies which you are running on. So by the time you have been in five or six years you have ten to fifteen Labradors in all, all ageing rapidly. There are three danger points when building up a kennel. At one year when you have bred your first litter and the neighbours are kicking because they are noisy playing, and your husband or even yourself are sick or having puppies and all the work attached, so you determine to give up the idea of breeding another litter. Then at about six years when you are starting to get too many dogs and you are not doing so well in the showring with your homebred stock and get the idea this is because 'Names' always beat you. You get tired of the work, are finding the whole business is very expensive, and you still have your early attempts that you and the children are too fond of to part with and so you get disillusioned and go out. The third danger time is at about nine or ten years. Now you have a kennel consisting largely of Labradors ranging from five years upwards and have no room to keep on any of the youngsters simply through lack of room. A lot of my friends have got themselves into this position and cannot continue until some of the oldies die. This would not occur if the breeder has a consistent plan. My daughter Anne R-W, with her Border Terriers, and I with my Labradors have operated such a plan for years which is why we continue with a top exhibit or two, always a promising puppy, a stud-dog and room to buy a puppy that catches our fancy. But to operate this plan we both have to have a very strong idea of exactly what we want and like in our respective breeds. The plan is simple and every Autumn we have our Jumble Sale, as we ourselves call it, although there are quite often good Champions for sale so we shouldn't really call it Jumble. The thing is that Winter is the time of trouble, with coughs, flu, snow and all sorts of difficulties both for the dogs and for ourselves, and as we both do our own kennel work without outside help we have to keep it to the minimum in the difficult months. So the autumn is the time definitely to review the kennel from tip to toe. You will have one or two oldies that you would never think of selling and also the odd one that either you like or love so much (and these are not the same thing) that you definitely will not sell at any price. Of course you will keep these and rightly too. Leaving this out, try to consider everything else in the kennel as expendable. Search through those four or five bitch puppies of different ages and putting them in a row like a show class. Sell the three or at least the two bottom ones. If this really was a show class and you were looking at it from the ringside you would not be interested in the VHC, the Reserve or even perhaps the third prize-winners, so they are expendable. Put them up for sale and get the money into the bank away from Parvo, Distemper and death from Kennel Cough. Having gone through your young hopefuls and started your transfer-list, now comes the more difficult part and you must stick to your plan and be a bit ruthless. Review your younger britches from two to four years old. Again stand them in an imaginary class and think carefully whether you really want to run them on for life, especially your three and a half to four years olds. What about that bitch with three Reserve CCs now nearly four years old? She has had plenty of chances getting her CCs but seems destined always to be the bridesmaid but never the bride. Or that three year old that the judges seem to like much more than you do yourself? Do you really want her, or wouldn't her space be better filled with one you like yourself? And that Champion bitch that you have bred from once or thrice, you have got some really decent stuff running about from her and looking like making the top, or conversely she never bred anything as good as herself? Do you want to keep her for ever or wouldn't she be better elsewhere, where she can either win more CCs abroad or breed some decent puppies for her new owner? If you already have what you want from her she could go and is still under four, so can breed at least three more litters for a new owner. I never sell anything older than three and a half to four myself, but up to then they are considered very carefully each Autumn as sellable and if you can part with them then you get a very good price and have room for expansion next year. This all seems so obvious, but very few people do it, or if they do are not selective enough. To be successful with it you must know very clearly exactly what you want and stick to it. To move from the theoretical to the practical I can tell you what I myself do, although it must be realised that other successful breeders may do things differently. I breed usually two, occasionally three litters a year, from each of which I run on the two best bitch puppies. I say bitches, because it is very seldom that I require a new dog for myself. Probably only every five years or so, so that my litters are bred to try and produce a good bitch. Having run on the two best bitches from each litter and having sold the whole of the rest of the puppies I follow my usual practice with all my dogs, that of looking at them, looking and looking again. When I am sitting in my idly in my puppy-run, apparently doing nothing but sunning myself I am actually staring at every move, their every point of balance and conformation, and their characters. As soon as they are old enough to be able to go on well without a companion, i.e. from about three months onwards, they become expendable. I usually wait till I can see the adult teeth are starting to come right, but immediately I find that I like one better than the other, then the cull is made and one is discarded, usually a very good puppy up to overseas Championship standard and even British Standard, but at least good of the two. By this means I have one puppy every six months to show in the Minor Puppy classes. But all the time this one good puppy is being weighed against the good one from the previous litter and also against the new little puppy by now coming up from below, and one of these 'selected' puppies goes. The same thing goes on all their lives up to the age of four, always culling the one that is not quite as nice as the one above or below. I never retain two of the same breeding, for the simple reason that under my method of looking at them as in a show-class, standing the two sisters side by side one beats the other when you judge them, so keep that one and cash the other. For this same reason I do not repeat a mating however good, because if you have already got what you want from the first mating, why duplicate? You are unlikely to get a better, not having already culled this first puppy, therefore you must like it, and you may get worse so why waste your time. And if you didn't get what you wanted in the first litter, why repeat a mating that didn't come off? I prefer to use a fresh dog so as to see a different viewpoint on my bitch and her potential. I find that I only breed one I really like, i.e. up to my high standard in every way (and remember I have much higher standards for myself than I do when judging other people's kennels, simply because I don't know exactly what others are aiming at). I only breed one that suits myself every four years or so, so as I cull and cull every year I find I have three or four years between my adult bitches, which also means that I never get cluttered up with old age pensioners, because as they reach ten, their nearest kennel mate is only six and still 'on the strength'. So put on a puppy every six months, cull every autumn, keep three or four years between each adult bitch, never repeat a mating unless for special reason and then don't keep the lesser of your two results, and you will find your standard remains very high indeed; you don't get overstocked, you still have your specially liked or loved ones, even to their old age, and you will have room for the next brace of puppies whenever you want them. The plan is simple and obvious. it is however amazing how many people just cannot carry it out, thus ending up with ten or twelve oldies and no room for youngsters. and that is what may finally put them out. I have already said that other successful breeders may follow other methods but you will find that all top breeders do look over their kennels all the time reversing the method of the lesser breeders who are looking to see if they can keep their Labradors while the top breeders are looking to see what they can get rid of without lowering the present quality of their stock. So here we come to a reversal of outlook of the good kennel and the mediumly experienced breeder. The good breeder continually sells the top milk from just under the cream, while the lesser breeder either tries to make the top milk into cream or tries to force it up into the cream by various methods such as grooming and presentation, or different feeding, or even trying to hide the faults by letting the Labrador get so fat as to hide, say, a long loin or narrow ribs. The great thing is to know what you want, and don't kid yourself that you have got it. A small kennel of top quality is far far better than a larger kennel full of mediocrity, and that is one of the millstones that hangs round a breeder's neck unless he takes positive steps to prevent it. |
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