There seems to be a good number of litters thats hitting the ground or have hit in the past months, so I wanted to ask some questions of some older guys.
My question to guys that raise a number of dogs and keep whole litters, how do you find or manage the time to work ALL the pups? I expect dogs to get it done on their own so hunting em by theirselves with older dogs help, but I would have to hunt 6 days a week to really give em the time they need. I know hardly anyone does this, so how do y'all make up for the lack of woods time when determining each pups ability.
I stress out over raising three pups and getting them started, so I couldn't imagine raising a whole litter, but its coming down to me doing this because I'm after the best dog possible and picking pups is a crap shoot. You keep two pups and get one killed, well you're back to square one, keep to many and your overloaded. So where's the happy medium, and the logical answer would be keep a few more then two but a few less then all of them, but that's not the answer I'm after. Hunting pups together is aggravating because of the play factor ( playing vs. working or paying attention). So what do y'all do? Do your dogs suffer with the lack of hunting, do y'all throw em all on the ground, work the pups that catch your attention.
Not so much a thread of how you teach your dogs to hunt (there's a bunch of them already) but more about the time put into individual dogs and then as a group of pups, and the work in raising litters of pups.
Amen brother! I've got three now that are using ALL my free time. Fall and winter are easier on me but I'm busy as heck right now!
