Neal
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Everything posted by Neal
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Thanks.
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My Scout was originally set up with natural latex and I got on with it much better than previous theraband gold. I saw a videoclip somewhere claiming it's a tad faster too. Couldn't find any to replace it when it perished recently so may return to the gold.
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I think that's the one I read too. I swapped him over to minced beef for a while, as it had a higher fat content, and, as a result, his intake has gone down to around 800g...then again it could just be his age.
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I read a few weeks ago that they're also larger than average this year due to the warm, wet summer which has increased the numbers of species they prey on.
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Mine haven't got any sighthound blood in them but I still work them on rabbits etc in pretty much the same way I did with my previous lurchers...am I still allowed to join?
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At around the time the ban was introduced I remember reding an article (I think it was in CW) quoting facts and figures for wildlife deaths in the UK. I'm sure it said that cats (all cats; not just feral ones) kill more wildlife in the British Isles than hunts, lurchers, terriers, ferreting, snares, guns etc all put together. I don't suppose anyone has some kind of link do they? I think it said that keeping cats indoors for a few weeks per year during the songbird breeding season would dramatically increase the number of songbirds.
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I'm a member of the C.A. simply because I feel that any step in the right direction is...well...a step in the right direction. I've not owned a lurcher for ten years (since I moved to the dark side of using only base blood) but I'll always be extremely pro-lurcher work partly I suppose because I sometimes forget mine aren't lurchers and I tend to work them as though they're first cross kelpie x kelpies! When I started out with lurchers, about twenty four years ago, I was always secretive about what I did; assuming people were naturally anti but have found over the intervening years that the
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...but what about that nice charity that does all that hard work looking after poorly cuddly animals; they even have Royal in their name so they must be alright...I just can't quite remember the name at the moment...
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Bird; sorry, I didn't mean to sound so cocky in that last post. I always reread a post before posting it but I was writing on my wife's tablet and couldn't scroll back to the top again. You know me...I can't help going on and on whenever anybody wants to talk about kelpies or collies.
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When my son (who's now seven) was about eighteen months old I'd taken him to the forest in his off-road four wheel drive buggy and we were sitting beside a pond having a picnic when he suddenly called out, "Buzz!" I listened, expecting to hear a bee but couldn't hear one so corrected him. He insisted and said "buzz" again but pointed straight up in the air. It was then that I realised he'd recognised the mew call of a buzzard that I'd taught him several weeks earlier on a previous visit to the forest.
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LurcherLad94; your dog really is a stunner. As for lacking a gear, just think how I feel...having said that, virtually all the rabbits they've caught have been because I'm able to work them in places where some other dogs either wouldn't be able to work or their owners choose not to work them and one of the reasons for this is, ironically, because they do lack that other gear. I think they've only ever caught one in the middle of a field...and that one had run under a cattle trough so can't really be classed as out in the open. Good luck with your search Nigel. If my pup was older I'd o
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Bird, although you could argue that kelpies are a strain of collie they're not a strain of border collie and were in fact registered as a breed before border collies became a registered breed. I guess it's more precise to say that kelpies and border collies are both descended from the same roots but went different ways. I've found all my kelpies have many collie traits but are definitely different. I'd say the main difference is their tendency to need less instruction and to prefer to work off their own initiative. They're also more likely to question your instructions if they disagree with yo
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I agree that they'd give you the versatility you're after. I have three pure kelpies (an ancient almost 16 year old dog, 8 year old bitch and 18 month old dog) and while I bought them for general mooching about, I've used them for ferreting, bushing etc on rat, rabbit, squirrel and pigeon. They're also very interested in flushing pheasant and pointing deer (for photographic purposes only of course) and the bitch has been known to work sheep; though only as a one off. The pup is a lot more interested in fox than the older two...I think the old boy in my avatar probably thought they were related
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I checked my photo and it was a different injury. Mine was opened up from the belly button down (do stoats have belly buttons?) with the entrails laying next to it. Enjoy your breakfast.
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I'd definitely agree that herding dogs have great noses. There aren't that many places where a dog can see all four corners of the field it's moving stock from to say nothing of bringing sheep in off the fells or moving them out of dense scrub in the outback. A dog without a nose in these situations wouldn't be much use. Going back to the earlier points: I'd definitely agree with Comanche and Phil's assertion that earlier is better. I started by kelpie bitch ferreting when she was around four months old (only a couple of hours at a time I hasten to add) simply by entering a ferret every t
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They were once but I don't think any still are. Interesting read, especially with regards to the attention to detail in breeding to type in the early days.
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While out with my eighteen month old kelpie pup recently I noticed that his tongue was out and he was looking tired much earlier that my eight year old bitch. Now, while this didn't overly concern me, as he's only a pup so not his "true-self" yet, it did get me thinking about feeding for stamina so I did a little research this morning. I found one PDF of some research by a Canadian vet which said that while adding carbs to a human diet increases stamina (as is the case with marathon runners for example) this won't work in the same way with dogs because of the different ways in which our bo
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Yeuch! That reminds me of the time my last lurcher did a Wile E. Coyote and thought that he could walk on slurry...and I think it was also him who stepped onto duckweed in a pond. It's times like these that I'm glad I can't drive as they're usually dry enough to simply brush it out by the time I get home.
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That's a funny coincidence...I was just showing my son the photos on this thread and he was saying they looked like my tiny black and tan kelpie (she looks like a Manchester terrier cross) then I read your comment...sounds like they have a similar character too! Shape-wise they bring to mind the smooth fox terrier I remember from my youth in the 70s.
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I have a photo somewhere of a stoat which I found directly outside a slightly dug out rabbit bury. I think, if memory serves me well that it was a single hole so I always presumed it was killed by a doe protecting her young. I can't remember the injuries so I'll have to take another look at it and compare them. That's what I love about natural history and hunting; you're never too old to learn something new.
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I agree with Gaz; there was a programme on about it within the last couple of years. I put on a stone and a half after my daughter was born and lost it by using that: I think it's called the 5/2 diet. Another series the year before was about the rubbish that the food industry puts into their food to make it more palatable (I think it's fructose I'm thinking of but could be wrong) and also how we're encouraged to think we need lots of snacks to keep us going. Having said that, CraignTod's idea of little and often works well too...it's just that, in my case, the ;little and often was chocol
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I thought hampshire was heaving with rabbit Not in my little corner unfortunately. The last time I saw one on my shrinking permission (thanks to a new housing estate) I nearly had to check it up in a field guide as it was so long since I'd seen one. Good luck to all of you who do have decent numbers and enjoy it...and think of me.
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I was in a similar situation. When my son arrived I found I had less time for the ferrets (though ironically I had more for the kelpies as I took him out for marathon walks in the off road buggy to get him to sleep). In addition to that, the number of rabbits on my permission started dwindling and then it started getting covered with a new housing estate. When the last two ferrets died, a little over two years ago, I kept the nets and locator. My son is now nearly seven and uses the nests to make Heath Robinson style rat and pigeon traps in the garden and is always asking if we can get so
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In some places in the south you can hardly walk in a straight line without tripping over one...shame I can't say the same about the rabbits.
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I used to use a cat litter tray hemmed in with bricks but I've still found that it depends on the ferrets. Some will always go in the same corner, some will go in every corner and others will go anywhere. Actually, I seem to remember one of mine liked to push his way under the litter tray so I got in the habit of also pinning it down with a brick. Then, when I cleaned out the litter tray, I simply transferred the brick into the clean tray as it invariably had some of their poo on it. I tried a multi-layer hutch once but they went in every corner of every level.
