Shepherds Rest Farm

Breeding New Anatolian Shepherd Import Lines - Direct From Turkey

Name:  Shepherds Rest Farm

Location:  Newberg, Oregon, United States

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Ilik's Female Puppies 1 Week Old

Little pinto girl is thriving, despite her small birth size and the fact that we had to tie her umbilical cord which was flowing like a hose. She has been on a steady gain in weight and after being helped to latch onto the teats for the first day, she has had no problem since in making sure she gets food. Her energy is excellent and she seems just as strong as the rest of the puppies Birthweight: 11.4 oz. One week old weight tonight: 21.5 oz. She has double rear dew claws.
This girl has very similar facial markings to her mother so we call her "Ilik face." Birthweight: 17.8 oz. Weight now: 35.9 oz. She is the only one in the litter without rear dew claws.
White nose female here weighed 14.2 oz at birth. Today she is at 30.0 oz. She has double rear dew claws.
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Ilik's Male Puppies 1 Week Old

Pinto boy's birthweight was 18.6 ounces. At one week he weighs 36.9 oz. He has double rear dew claws.
Darkest boy's birthweight: 19.0 oz. Now 37.1 oz. He has double rear dew claws too.
Boy with white spot on forehead had a birthweight of 17.6 oz. Today he is at 37.8 oz. He is the only one in the litter with single rear dew claws.
White nose boy's birthweight: 17.9 oz. One week old weight: 38.6 oz. He has double rear dew claws.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Sirin Puppies 3 Weeks Old

The big wide world is now an interesting place! And the whelping box door is a challenge to climb back and forth over. All can make it now.
The only male puppy in this litter (seen above) is 4 lbs 13 oz at 3 weeks old (Monday). He is a calm pup and very sweet.
The darkest female has lightened up a bit in color and may just end up being a fawn dog with black mask or even dark head. Only time will tell. She is 3 lbs 9 oz.
The go-getter, heavy-weight, boss of the litter gal, at 5 lbs 3 oz, is still the heaviest pup. She likes attention and will be the first one to come to say hi when I enter the barn stall. She seems to be the first to do everything. She is not afraid to explore.
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The gal above with the 3 white spots on her shoulder is now 4 lbs 3 oz. A couple days ago when I had the barn door open so they could see into the chicken yard, I found them all asleep in a dog-pile. Except one! One puppy only, had her eyes open watching out the barn door. It was this gal! So far, she is laid-back and not riled by much.
This girl is 4 lbs 0 oz. She is the one that is medium brown with a white tipped tail. She is also very laid-back. If you pick her up and hold her tummy up in your arms, she just relaxes and lets you rub her tummy, while all the other puppies struggle to turn right-side up!
This little tyke is 2 lbs 15 oz and growing strong. She keeps up with the other pups just fine. This is the medium brown coat pup with the all dark tail.
The lightest color girl is 3 lbs 12 oz and is getting really fast. You can put her down in one spot and before you blink, she is somewhere else!
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Yal for the Anatolian Puppies

Two days ago this litter received their first yal, their first taste of food other than mother's milk. It was made from freshly ground wheat berries stirred into enough cold water to mix it, then turkey broth and water the fresh green beans from the garden were cooked in. It was the consistency of runny oatmeal. They loved it! These pics were taken their first yal-eating day!
Puppies are seen above and below still with sticky mouths and wherever else they mouthed each other while eating!
Sirin cleaned up what was left of their food, after they were finished. She always waits for them to eat, without ever being told.
The puppies are fed yal both morning and night. Last night I fed Sirin at the same time. She got kibbles with hamburger cooking juice poured over it. All the puppies eagerly started lapping up the yal, but the heavy-weight girl smelled something better and found her way instead to mom's big metal food bowl. She managed to almost get herself stuck, hanging over the edge of the bowl. She loved what she found, and even ate the partially soaked kibbles! Soon the darkest girl joined her, but I had to tip the food bowl for her to reach. The others had not caught on yet. Sirin had left some of her food for her kids, and they finished it!
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ASD Puppy Colors & Nursing Behavior

Anatolian Shepherd Dog colors . . . just look at the color variations in the "fawn" coats of these 3 week old Sirin puppies!
They still all fit to nurse at the same time, barely!
Look at how the pups are nursing with Sirin standing up. She is trying to figure out HOW to lie down without lying on puppies!
In the clamor for the teats and the incredible reach for such young pups, one of them topples over backwards. You should hear them learning to communicate! Their play is full of barking, growling, and tussling on still unsteady legs!
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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Ilik's corrected litter size!!!

Well, ANOTHER surprise. This morning at 5:30 am when I went to check on noisy puppies, I found 3 MORE puppies. All male. One did not make it but looked fully developed, healthy, and quite a big guy, fully cleaned off. Maybe Ilik accidentally laid on him. So the corrected litter size for the Ilik X Duman litter, of healthy noisy puppies, is 7! Four (4) males and three (3) females.
The small pinto female is doing great this morning, latching on fine, with help, to drink. Ilik is a great first-time mother. If you take one of her puppies, she leaves the others and comes to make sure the pup you took is ok. That's fine except that it makes weighing puppies a bit difficult, if not impossible, with her big nose always in the way! Lol.

As I write this, I'm getting ready to take Ilik in for an x-ray to make sure there is no mummified whelp still left inside. The vet highly recommends checking to make sure, given this was not a straightforward whelping. Then I think I'll take a nap, if all is quiet on the puppy front!!!
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ASD Pinto Surprise

The Ilik X Duman litter was born today! We are sooooo excited. This is the first litter from a puppy (Ilik) that was bred by us here at Shepherds Rest Anatolians. Not only is this litter sired by an import, but Ilik's sire was also an import. We were hoping for dark rough-coat puppies, but little did we know that we would have two surprise pintos! With imports, that can happen! There are 3 females and 2 males. The pinto on the far left is a male, largest pup born. The pinto in the middle is a female, the smallest puppy born. Weights ranged from 18.6 ounces to 11.4 ounces.
This litter was a natural birth. But we had a bit of a time with it! Ilik didn't seem to progress to hard labor, so off to the vet we went. When we got there, finally a water sac appeared. So we waited at the vets for an hour to see if Ilik would progress further in her whelping. An hour later, no progress, so she was given a shot of oxytocin and we went home. An hour later still no progress, so I gave her a second shot of oxytocin, as prescribed by our vet. We were told to return for a C-section if no puppies were born an hour after the last oxytocin shot. So exactly 59 minutes later, the first pup was born (whew!), but unfortunately it was not alive and although we worked on it for 30 minutes, it could not be resuscitated. It was a gorgeous dark female, the darkest one of the litter. Perhaps that is what slowed the show. Or perhaps the whelping took too long and if we had done a C-section earlier, she might have lived. Hard to tell. Anyway, two and a half hours later, 5 healthy puppies had been born. It was a bit of an adventure, though, because the last female was spouting blood from her umbilical cord, so I had to squeeze it shut quickly, tie it, and put 7% iodine on it. So we started off with a challenge, had 2 surprise pintos, and ended with a challenge. Life is always interesting on the farm! And it may be difficult to sleep tonight since the mother of a 2 week old litter in the next barn stall can hear the puppies and is howling off and on, probably thinking they should be hers but she can't get to them! I may have to turn off the barn monitor I have beside my bed to get any rest at all!
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Monday, September 21, 2009

ASD Puppies 2 Weeks Old!

The missing 7th pup is on the far left. You can just make out a bit of the back end and tail!
The only male in the litter, with white collar weighs 3 lbs 9 oz today. He continues to vie for heaviest in the litter with the heavy-weight girl! Three days of this last week he weighed a bit more, but at the week 2 mark, the big gal beat him again. Both are good-sized puppies! This sweet boy is very laid back.
The darkest colored female weighs 2 lbs 7 oz. She is now a slow and steady gainer. Not in a rush and not a fighter over the food.
The heavy-weight female with the most white on her face IS all about the food. She is heaviest in the litter AGAIN over the only male at 3 lbs 10 oz. She is the strongest in the litter too, pushy and successful about it.
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ASD Puppy Weights (continued)

Female (above) with 3 white shoulder spots weighs 2 lbs 15 oz today. She is good at finding a spot in the nursing line-up, even if she has to push others out of the way! She's even mastered the trick of eating upside-down!
Medium dark female (above) with white tip tail weighs 3 lbs 0 oz. She takes everything in stride and doesn't get worked up about much. She is third heaviest in the litter at the 2 week mark.
Medium dark female (above) with white nose and line down forehead, with all dark tail weighs 2 lbs 2 oz. She has been a steady gainer, albeit slow, except for one day when she dropped 2 oz and gained it back the next day. We watch her closely. She is sweet and mellow and just not that concerned about fighting over the food. She is the light-weight of the litter still.
Lightest colored female (above) is very strong despite her size. She lifts her head high like the heavy-weight pups. She weighs 2 lbs 9 oz.
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Monday, September 14, 2009

One Week Old Anatolian Shepherd Puppies!

This litter of 7 pups is all very healthy!
This is the only male in the litter (above). He has a white collar and single rear dew claws. At birth he weighed in at 20.9 oz, the heaviest in the litter. Now he takes second place in weight after a female, at 3.4 oz.
This is the darkest-colored female in the litter (above). This pic is over-exposed, but you can see how dark she is compared to the rest in the top picture of the whole litter. She does not have rear dew claws. She weighed 19.0 oz at birth and now is at 24.5 oz. She and one other female lost weight before beginning to gain it back. This gal dropped to 17.2 oz on day 3 before beginning a steady gain back up.

Below is the heaviest female in the litter and now at a week old is the heaviest in the whole litter! She has a few tiny white shoulder spots. She also has no rear dew claws. Her weight at birth: 20.1 oz, coming second after the male in weight. Now she has taken over at 37.4 whopping ounces! A chubby bundle for sure!
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