Our brood bitches are excellent mothers. They give plenty of milk (because of their genes and the good food we give them!) and even regurgitate their food for their pups. That's why our pups tend to be big for their age. We feed as much natural food as possible. Our dogs get well cooked mielie pap ("corn porridge" or "grits") orbrown rice, and cooked lentils, split peas etc. , raw meat, ox liver and tripe, bone shavings (the stuff that falls through the butcher's saw when he cuts meat), fat, eggs, raw vegetables - (carrots and sweet potato are good de-wormers and green leaves are important for vit.K which helps absorb minerals, absolutely any veggies and fruit can be given except potato and onion) -  garlic, brewer's yeast, vit C, kelp, and yoghurt.  They also get bones at least twice a week for the calcium and to keep their teeth clean. Even our bitches with big litters look rounded and beautiful and don't lose any weight or condition at any stage. (People saying that it's normal for bitches to lose condition - even to get thin - are just not feeding good enough food. )

All our pups are born in our house and stay there for the first four weeks. It gets very crowded sometimes! But at least that prevents puppies from getting squashed by their mothers. It's also a good start for the pups to have close contact with us. They are very aware of their surroundings from birth. For example, we often put each of the pups on a teat so that no-one misses out on a meal, and already in their first few days they learn to recognize our smell and come to our hands for food. Between 2 and 3 weeks they start leaving their 'nest' to go to the toilet on newspaper. When they move out of our house they go into thatched-roofed houses with grass and sand runs outside and blankets and newspaper inside. From about 4 weeks we give them toys to play with and have play sessions with them.

When we train them they can do fetching and sit and down and stand on command at 6 weeks, find hidden toys at 7 weeks, and do tracking by 8 weeks. Teaching them is really easy and takes less than 5 minutes a day. (See puppy training.) We deworm our pups from 2 weeks of age and continue every second week until they're 12 weeks. They are vaccinated at 8 and 12 weeks.