My friend Chris Colt at Cove Mountain Kennels had a healthy litter of yellow lab puppies this morning. I couldn’t resist running by his house on the way to work to see some cute little pups. This is a fine breeding of upland hunting labrador retrievers. I have personally hunted behind Allie on Chukar, Blue Grouse, Pheasant, and quail. She has her fair share of ducks and waterfowl too. Chris spends more days in the field hunting than I am allowed to think about so I know his dogs are top shelf. You can check out the pedigree of the dam and the pedigree of the sire. The sire is an AKC Master Hunter MH and a dang good hunting lab as well. If you have space in your kennel for a fine hunting lab puppy around the 4th of July give Chris Colt a call (435) 896-3583. They are taking reservations now.
On the morning of the 23rd day in the incubator the first chicks began to hatch out. After another 24 hours there were 460 chicks that hatched out of 800 eggs set. I was a little disappointed in the hatch rate and I am pretty sure it was low because of the shipping problem from Cumberland Gamebirds. The eggs were supposed to arrive on Thursday or Friday and were delayed in arriving until the following Monday. The additional 3 days in the box combined with the cold weather and sitting in a cold truck over the weekend didn’t help matters.
The chicks seem to be adjusting well under the heat lamps and are eating a custom feed that we ground up for them in the wheat grinder. The feed is medicated to help fight off disease and illness. For the first week they are drinking sugar water from my nipple drinkers.
This week we shot a pigeon over Mowgli and he did very well. I was using my single shot 20 gauge and I was about 20 feet out shooting away from the dog. Luckily, I actually hit the bird (I usually miss). Mowgli went right to the downed bird and brought it back in a round about manner. We will likely shoot a couple more birds for him before we go into getting him to hold his points. I think the goal with a young pup is to make sure they are excited about birds and have no sensitivity to gun fire.
Chris Colt of Cove Mountain Kennels is helping me get Annie steady to wing and shot. She caught a few birds and that set us back some. She believes she can catch any bird that she points and we are trying to break her of that. When she sets up on a point, she gets stimulation if she even lifts a leg. It is challenging to learn the body language and suttle cues.