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Neal

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Everything posted by Neal

  1. Neal
    I have to admit, there's been more than one occasion when my wife's called my son in for his tea and I've carried on watching "Grandpa in my pocket" or "Chuggington" on my tod.
  2. Neal
    As bird said, I'm pretty sure they should be 50 /50 either way. However, I've heard of several people who've found the height of the resulting litter being governed by the bitch ie non-greyhound dam producing smaller pups. The other thing to consider, and more important in my opinion, is that the pups will be raised, though only for a few weeks, by the dam so her temperament will have an impact on them too. By this I mean a nurture impact in addition to the nature impact of both sire and dam. Does that make sense?
  3. Neal
    I'd love to convert part of the shed for mine but unfortunately I had the bright idea of buying a south facing potting shed so they'd bake in the summer...even with the stable door open.
  4. Neal
    Definately! I had no idea where to put up my catapult accuracy thread, as no sub-forums seemed quite right, so ended up putting it in craft and d.i.y.
  5. Neal
    Thanks again. Currently has single bands, that was how it came to me. Not had a chance to take it out this weekend as we've been too busy getting a "big boys' bed" for my son. Currently not working on Friday so, unless I get a call to go in, I can try it then. As for the photos...I have enough trouble typing in a straight line!
  6. Neal
    If you're buying one ready made rather than building your own they I can highly recommend Timberbuild.
  7. Neal
    I used to have a collie x whippet which never caught a single rabbit for me and I lost count of the number of times I walked her on the local rabbit-infested area and met old ladies with pampered lap dogs and was told, "My naughty little doggy caught another rabbit yesterday." I came close to asking one of them to swap her laso apso (sp).
  8. Neal
    Thanks dfee and bullmastiff; sounds like good advice. Will give it a try at the weekend.
  9. Neal
    Thanks Mick and Rob! Will give it a go and let you know how I get on.
  10. Neal
    I've always got my ferrets from a local rescue centre and would normally recommend it... However, when my last two ferrets died last year I replaced them with two more and after nearly a year of owning the latter one I still can't put my hand in the cub without her going straight for me. I'm now wondering whether to take her back and get another or, like yourself, wait and get a kit.
  11. Neal
    Thanks again for all the advice! Next question: how to replace the binding! Today has definitately been one of those cases of over-theorizing when I should have been going by instinct. The first time I tried the catapult, which was last Sunday, I was gradually getting better but had about half a dozen or so cases of fork strike (roughly one in ten shots at a rough guess) hence starting the thread. However, today I found myself over-analyzing every shot...before, during and after...and ended up with far more fork strike: four in a row at one point. As a result, the peppering of shots a
  12. Neal
    Mydogsbetter: I hold it with just the thumb up as the milbro I have has a curved area for the thumb. Thanks again Gaffer.
  13. Neal
    Thanks Steve, Gaffer and Mick: those comments are already making a lot of sense. Will have another try later today and see if it's improved. Also, forgot to mention in the first post that I'm using marbles...simply because I have a poundland shop in my local town so can get them in packs of 121 for a quid! My three year old is also really pleased with the extra marbles for his marble run!
  14. Neal
    After trawling through the amazing catapult thread I decided to get a catapult for the first time in about twenty years. As a result I recently bought an old-fashioned milbro with theraband gold bands. After a bit of target practice I'm coming up with one main issue so thought I'd ask some advice in the hope of rectifying any errors sooner rather than later. My main issue is occasional fork strike ( I think that's the right phrase: basically a few dents on the left hand fork around the binding and just below). I'm finding that my general accuracy is far greater, as is the power, when I hol
  15. Neal
    I'm currently bantamless after a visit from Mr Tod last spring but will be restocking this year after re-fox-proofing the garden. I found that my Welsumers ate virtually none of the layers' pellets and survived almost exclusively on what they scratched together from the garden.
  16. Neal
    Hi John! I've heard of lots of owners of kelpies and kelpie crosses with hyperactive dogs and in most cases, as mentioned above, it's down to too much protein via a complete dry dog food. Many working breeds can survive on minimal diets and I believe the heeler is a good example of this (they can almost put on weight just by being in the same room as a bag of dog food!). My pure kelpies are fed on raw meat and bones etc and two of them are very easy going and will sleep all the time they're not out. The other is slightly more "excitable" but, at only four years old, she's still "the pup."
  17. Neal
    Not exactly a fully trained deer dog but one of my kelpies has a great nose for deer and I often use her for a spot of "weekend deer watching." Last year she found a kid in my local wood which, not only had I walked past several times, but my other two kelpies had also not noticed. Oddly, she doesn't show any signs of wanting to give chase which I would have assumed could have explained her keener interest in them than her sister and uncle. (Sorry: not very good English in last sentence...end of the week teaching 6 and 7 year olds all week)
  18. Neal
    do you mean pyracantha?? i like the look of them but not sure of the berrys with the kids and dogs :hmm: plus would like to get some more chickens and i dont know if they'll be ok with them :hmm: i'll have a look first before i rule them out Yes, sorry: spelling was wrong. My chicken run is at the back of the garden with the same hedge and I've had no problems.
  19. Neal
    The chap who had my house before me planted a pyrocanthus hedge at the back as some people were using his garden as a quick route through to a social club which used to be in the grounds of the convent at the back. It's so vicious that, as long as I trim it a couple of times per year and thread the cuttings into the base, it even keeps out the foxes! Laurel's good too but not if you want a veg patch close by as it takes all the nutrients for itself.
  20. Neal
    I've heard that reducing the head height can work too. I had a dog who was so lazy I actually once saw him stick his *rs* out of the kennel to cr*p rather than go to the bottom end of the run.
  21. Neal
    My kelpies take the occasional rabbit, rat, squirrel and pigeon but as soon as a rabbit makes it out into the open I know it's lost. All but one of the rabbits they've ever taken have been in either woodland, hedge or ditch bottoms or thick reed beds. The only one I ever caught in the open was a young one and my oldest kelpie caught it behind a trough so not exactly "in the open." That said, although they may catch a fraction of the rabbits a half decent lurcher will, my smile is much wider than that of the average lurcher owner when they do get one...and they're virtually injury-proof
  22. Neal
    I have toyed with the idea of customising the off-road baby buggy I use to take my son out in (on it's first outing I used the under-seat storage tray to bring back my youngest bitch's first rabbit by sheer coincidence). However, the amount of obstacles on the piece of permission where I work the dogs as opposed to the places where I walk them has put me off.
  23. Neal
    I bought a kennel and run from Timberbuild last year and, due to its placement within the garden, I opted for one of their raised run floors with a resin coating. Really glad I did as it's so easy to keep clean. I find that concrete runs smell too much as they're a tad porous...and my last one was adjacent to the washing line so putting the washing out wasn't pleasant.
  24. Neal
    I'm with reddawn on this one. I thought my dogs were the most important things in my life(...after the wife of course...sorry dear...didn't see you reading over my shoulder) until my son was born. I now have a three year old son and a daughter on the way in three months. I have three dogs aged 12, 8 and 4. The eldest and youngest are great with my son but the middle one only likes me and her two kennel mates. For reasons that I won't go into in detail, we've decided to try to rehome her (that's rehome: not sell). We decided about 2 years ago and she's still with us...understandably, nobody
  25. Neal
    I bought Grubbs Stalker wellies too after similar problems to those stated above with Muck Boots. I find them just as comfy but much better grip and a lot more hard wearing thanks to the vibram sole. I think this is my third winter in mine. They're not perfect but then most footwear isn't...hence our endless search...and all these threads that we all love reading so much!
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