Here is the 2nd installment of The Breeders Series interview with current Irish Derby winning breeder Brian King.
OK Brian, you've got a top class bitch that you want to breed from. How do you go about deciding on a sire for her?
I try to only use proven stud dogs. I have come unstuck a few times using young, unproven, 'freshman' sires, so now I am firmly of the opinion that I am not going to prove a dog for the studkeeper - after all, I am the customer, I will be doing all the hard work.
I would generally use a dog that was no more than a distance up or down from the bitch. By this I mean if a bitch was getting 525 yards well enough, but not seeing out the extended trip, I would try and use an early paced sire noted for staying the 550 well. I wouldn't push the boundaries too far. Note my earlier point about breeding like for like. If you breed from two extremes you will probably end up with slow sprinters or stayers that don't stay!
I would also take into consideration the type of bitch I am breeding from. If she has already had litters it will help determine my decision. A lot will depend on the traits of the bitch and if I did breed from a bitch with any negative points, I would use my choice of sire to balance them out.
I'm not sure how much science is behind this question, so bear with me. Would the fact that a sire was from a line noted for producing good dams, but not necessarily prolific at producing stud dogs, influence your decision when choosing a suitor for your brood bitch?
No, that's a fair question. There definitely are damlines that produce good producing bitches yet never produce decent or successful stud dogs. Actually, asking me is like pushing an open door as my goal when breeding a litter, as I said earlier, is to get a good bitch to breed from. So it goes without saying that I like to use good stud dogs that come from great damlines.
It is a natural progression that a dog coming from a brilliant damline will throw good bitches. And I have had my share of success with good bitches - Shelbourne Star, Shelbourne Kay and Shelbourne Becky were all by sires from great damlines.
So to answer your question, I actively look for sires producing good bitches and therefore brood bitches.
Every time I am at the Stud, I am always impressed at the condition of your resting brood bitches. Tell me a bit about what you feed them and how you look after them.
Well to be honest we don't change the diet too much between pups, broods in whelp, broods resting or saplings. The diet only really changes significantly when a dog goes into training.
All our brood bitches are fed on Gain Puppy and Sapling as the base of the meal. This is mixed with a very good meat and vegetable stew. We often change from beef to chicken or fish, depending on what good quality fresh products we are able to get hold of at that time.
Yes I have noticed you always have the soup boiler on in the kennels.
That's right. We always have a stew simmering in the kennel kitchen, in which we would use a mixture of vegetables and a high quality meat. We also have a very good supply of fish. I cannot stress how important it is to get good quality food. If you are feeding food that is past its best, the nutritional value is negligible.
Our broods would get a higher meat content when they are in whelp and nursing pups, but apart from this, the diet is the same across the board.
Something else I feed that I haven't mentioned is tripe. A significant part of a greyhound's diet in the wild would be offal. It is great for them and gives their coats a great shine. Yes it pongs a bit but I find with dogs, the smellier the food the more they like it!
How about worming - have you any secrets you can divulge?
Not really. With our broods we would worm them every 3 months. We would however make sure that we change the wormer product regularly. What we actually do is we will give Drontal Plus, but then the next time we would alternate with Pebrazine. Alternating the wormer will ensure that worms do not become immune to any single product. Worming is one area that corners can never be cut.
With broods in whelp we do change the routine slightly. The usual worming regime applies, but with 3 weeks to go to whelping time, I would put the brood on a course of Panacur, 10ml per day over the tongue, right up to the point where the pups are 3 weeks old. Every two weeks I would dose the pups with Pebrazine. I would then start worming the pups with Drontal Plus from 3 months, but once again we would alternate the treatment, this time with Praziquantel Ivermectin (mixed especially for dogs).
At what age would you generally wean pups?
It really all depends on the size of the litter, and of course the dam. She may want them moved quickly! In general, common sense dictates that a smaller than average litter will be weaned at a later stage. We would introduce milk to the whelping area at around 3 weeks of age, just to get the pups lapping. I would usually take the dam away for rest periods at this stage of the puppies' development so this is a good time to introduce them to food.
After a while I start to add crushed and soaked Gain Puppy and Sapling to the milk, and then substitute the milk for a nice chicken soup with the nuts, whilst also giving milk separately.
At approximately 6 weeks of age I would hope to have the pups fully off the mother (though not always) and living independently on a sloppy version of the normal puppy diet.
I would also make sure that by the age of 3 months the puppies no longer get milk as part of their daily diet. It is not natural for greyhounds to have milk as part of their diet. It is a good source of calcium and encourages them to drink and eat at a young age, but I find you will have problems with scouring if you continue to feed it to them. If nature had intended pups to continue to drink milk, the mother would have milk a lot longer than she actually does.
Once the pups are in the big paddocks they will be fed a full diet of Gain Puppy and Sapling, meat stew, vegetables and fish.
So what age would you generally leave the bitch in with the pups until?
Without sounding repetitive, once again this will depend on the dam herself. If she has a big litter we find the mother wants out as soon as possible. The longest I have left it in the last few years was Expert View with her Larkhill Jo pups. There were only a few of them and she was happy up until they were about 4 and a half months old.
I should say at this point that all of the things I am saying to you I have mostly learned from other people. This is just my way of doing things and it is not the only way and they are not hard and fast rules.
On the subject of leaving the brood bitch in with her pups, it is at this stage - from 3 weeks to 9 weeks of age mainly - that the pups' nervous systems are developing rapidly. Ensure that the pups are handled regularly, play with them. If you do not do it in this timeframe, there is a big possibility that the pups will turn into shy greyhounds. Handling is crucial at this stage or you will basically end up with wild animals. Trying to acclimatise these kind of greyhounds into kennels and schooling and ultimately racing will be hard work.
I remember years ago visiting a breeder and going to stroke one of his dogs he stopped me and said "Don't do that, they are not pets. You need to be tough with them". I knew he was wrong and said nothing. If you ever come to Shelbourne Stud, you are very likely to see all of us cuddling and playing with the pups (of all ages). I definitely do not believe you can be too soft with greyhounds. They are affectionate creatures by nature and really do appreciate the time we spend with them.
The first pup we bred here was Shelbourne Star. She was a one pup litter and to be honest she found it hard settling with other litters. We had her leading when she was just a few months old. We often had her in the house and she had a bit of a liking for those crisps - Quavers. Many a night after winning a race in Dublin or Limerick, we would find Shelly poking her head over my shoulder while I drove home, and Kathy would feed her Quavers. Probably wouldn't meet with the approval of the 'old school'.
Tell me about innoculating pups. Everyone seems to do it differently and use different products. What do you do?
Firstly I would always make sure the brood bitch is up to date with her shots - that's a given. When the pups are 4 weeks old I always give them a dose of the live parvovirus vaccine. If anything is going to get them at 4 weeks old it is generally parvo.
I remember in my time in the States that parvo was a big problem. And although you won't hear too much about it here, parvo is rife in Ireland. Vets tell me they see plenty of parvo in their daily duties. A lot of it is in the general dog world, where breeders would not be that good at innoculating pups, but there are some greyhound breeders who cut corners as well. It's a false economy.
At 8 weeks I then give the pups the 7-way combination innoculation, and then at 12 weeks I would give it to them again. When the greyhounds come out of the field and into the kennels, I would give them the 7-way combination jab again.
I can happily say that at Shelbourne Stud we have never lost pups to parvovirus, leptospirosis, distemper or any of the nasties that are covered by the innoculations.
Any other magic ingredients we should be using? Supplements, that kind of thing.
I am a firm believer that the food you are giving them contains all the vitamins and minerals that a greyhound requires. Our pups are fed a balanced diet and no supplements whatsoever. I do add some Dog Active to our racers' diets as the general wear and tear of schooling, training, travelling and racing can take a lot out of dogs, so I add a spoon of Dog Active (for amino acids) to the feed.
So for anyone who hasn't seen your great set up down here Brian, can you explain how you rear pups.
Some people rear in pens, some rear them in the wild. Some people swear that unless you rear them on the side of a mountain throwing them a carcass every week they won't develop properly. Look, there are hundreds of ways to rear greyhounds. We have a nice set up here, I agree. But I know of champions that were reared under a sheet of tin. You need to get the basics right first.
Our 'toddlers' spend their first few weeks out of the whelping shed (that's from 6 weeks to 12 weeks) in the couple of narrow runs we have at the front of the stud, right by the house(pictured above). They are near a busy road, with all visitors to the stud seeing them on arrival. It helps develop the confidence of the pups. These runs are 50 yards long by 5 yards wide. The pups stay here until they have their final innoculations, and then they are taken off to the back of the stud to the big runs.
The way we have it arranged down here - and we are fortunate as we have 13 acres of good land - is we have 12 smaller pens which are 10yards wide by 25yards long. Every four small pens (four pups in each) share a big turnout paddock which is 100yards long by 40 yards wide. I have found this to be plenty big enough. Each of the smaller pens gets half a day in the big paddock every other day.
This alternating of the pups into the big paddocks was something I learned in the States. Dutch Koerner, the great breeder, called this system Controlled Exercise. It works well for us. I find we do not get as many injuries in this system as you would with pups kept in long narrow runs who spend the day racing each other in straight lines. Pups here get ample opportunity to run and turn and the wide paddocks are brilliant for strengthening all the joints and muscles that a greyhound will need when he gets to a track.
That's great to hear. Some of the 'old school' or 'traditionalists' will say that rearing pups in pens turns them stale. Do your pups get much hunting?
In a word - no. Our pups would not see too much wildlife apart from those dosy rabbits, birds, cats and foxes that come down from the hills around us for a nose around. Something I did a few years back was to install a whirlygig. When the pups are 6 or 7 months old I get them on the whirlygig behind a rabbitskin and encourage them to chase it. It certainly freshens them up, execising their chase instinct, with the added advantage that the whirlygig has a white running rail that mimics that which they will come up against at the track. When the greyhounds start schooling I start them off on the whirlygig and as they have seen it before, it is not too big a deal for them.
Something that has been on my mind for a while - how come you have had such success with stayers? Even your Derby winner comes from last to first!
As I said earlier, I always preferred stayers, and the initial broods I brought into the stud were from staying lines, or American lines.
I realise that, and you have done well with the ones you have produced. But is there something else to it? I mean, I look at some of the litters you have produced and they should not really have stayed as well as they did. Is there something you are not telling us?
Ha ha, I know what you are saying. I'll hold my hands up and say that when I bred Queen Survivor to Shanless Park I didn't really expect there to be as much stamina in the litter as there was, and there are other litters. Maybe it's the way we rear them. I couldn't honestly say one way or the other though. There is a lot we do not know about breeding. I'm sure a lot of the stayers running in Ireland were not 'designed' to be stayers - they just turned out that way. It is worth noting that American greyhounds run on a different type of sand - the dogs go in deeper for a start - and running 600 yards would be akin to closer to 700 yards in Ireland. The American greyhounds are stronger.
Something I would like to say, and it has been a belief I have held for years, and that is if you have a greyhound bred to stay, do not listen to the old wives' tale about waiting until they are 2 years old before stepping them up in trip. If you are running a stayer at a trip too short, the chances are they will get knocked about on the run to the bend. They are liable to get their confidence knocked or suffer injury.
Shelbourne Holly did 28.90 in a trial when she was unraced. In her first race she got badly hampered on her run to the bend. In subsequent races you could see her deliberately drop herself out on the run to the bend before motoring home.
Look at the records of Shelbourne Star or Shelbourne Kay. Shelly did 28.88 before she had raced. I didn't think twice about stepping her up in trip when she was just 17 months old. Kay was winning over 1015 yards at 19 months. It didn't do them any harm did it? Shelly finished first in the English St Leger and was Irish Marathon Bitch of the Year. Kay broke several track records.
In fact Shelbourne Star is the fastest puppy ever over 750 at Clonmel, Kay is the fastest puppy ever over 1015 at Clonmel, and Shelbourne Holly is the fastest puppy ever over 700 at Limerick, 810 at Galway and 1010 at Harolds Cross.
I think a lot of the old myths in greyhound racing are there for a reason, but a lot are there to be challenged. What sense is there in restricting stayers to shorter than ideal trips? Burn them out? No way. Shelbourne Star would gallop a lot more than 1000 yards every day at home on the gallop.
While on the subject of myths, what about some of the old ones? Like blue dogs are not genuine. Or fawn dogs with black muzzles? What about undershot jaws? While I've got you here I'm going to get as much out of you as I can!!
Most of it is rubbish. Blue dogs were not popular back in the old days as they were pretty rare. They are ten-a-penny these days but back then they were unusual. The same with fawn dogs with black muzzles - they were never that common and they got a bit of a stigma.
The undershot jaw theory came from the coursing fraternity. A dog with an undershot jaw might have had a problem catching hares.
I personally do not have any preference on colours, but I have had people saying that certain sires or broods throw pups of one colour that were better than another. I brought a brood to the States that threw only blacks and brindles. Her brindles were always better. Concidence maybe.
What age do you kennel the pups up at Brian?
The pups come out of the rearing pens at around 11 months old. They go into our kennel block a few hundred yards away, and even though the staff are well known to them, the food is the same etc, we find that nearly all of the pups take a while to settle down. It could be as much as a month for some.
What frustrates me is that sometimes we might sell a dog to the UK and I will see it trialling or racing within days. Is it any wonder that some dogs do not reach their potential after moving kennels, or 
worse still, that some might actually run awkward or turn their head. You try concentrate on your job when you aren't sleeping or eating properly.
'Little Aston' here (Just The Best x Queen Survivor repeat mating) has just come in from the field. He is so laid back, nothing phases him, just like his big brother. But he hasn't eaten for 3 days since coming in to the kennel.
TO BE CONTINUED ...... THE THIRD AND FINAL PART WILL BE UP ON THIS BLOG DURING THE MIDDLE OF NEXT WEEK
