Committed to the improvement of the breed by breeding for health, temperament and better structure in dogs that have the ability to herd.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Dog Weights and tick/flea control

Since the only scale i have on the farm is a gigantic cattle scale (that does pounds in 25 pound increments) I loaded up the motley crew for weights and headed to my second home, the vet clinic! I wanted to know weights mostly for tick/flea control Frontline products...

Here are the weights:

Mitcham, 22 months - 59.1 pounds. Gosh he is ALL hair!

Oliver, nearly 5 years - 35.5 pounds. He is extremely lean and fit. Not overweight and heavy like another blogger is saying is why his back went out (and that its my fault nonetheless!)

Sadie, 5.5 years - 30.5. She is about a pound and a half too big yet, so we'll stick with her diet

Zoe, 3 years old - 34.4 pounds. Barb P and i were always nervous she'd never be big enough...lol. I think she still has some 'baby weight on' and I'd like to see her back at 32, so she'll join Sadie on that diet'

Ell, 2.5 years old - 25.7 pounds. She needs to gain back about another 1-1.5 pounds to be back at pre breeding weight. She put a lot of herself into nursing those pups!

Ava, just over 5 months - 20.3 pounds!!!! She looked like 14 pounds, but she's already 20 pounds. She'll be bigger than her mother then, as Zoe was 18-22 pounds not until she was 12-18 months old! Ava is a tube right now...long and lean. Could be her high metabolizm and her raw diet.

I forgot Daisy at home (no seriously) so she'll go back in this afternoon and I'll have a current weight on her. She was about 30 pounds last time she went in.

Aside from having Guinea Hens for tick control, what does everyone recommend for tick/flea control? I was going to use Frontline but gosh that gets so expensive.

10 comments:

Kelly N said...

Frontline is the safest thing out there. Doesn't go in to their system, just stays in the oil glands of their skin. Works the best of the products that I have tried (Advantix and Frontline).

Sarah said...

Costco! (even online) :-) I only but the Frontline Plus in the 89-132lb size. it's $36.99 and why pay for the individual doses? I have the conversions from weight to ml of Frontline, so I use a big tube, draw up in a syringe and dose it out for the dogs.

Anonymous said...

I need to pick up some Frontline...
'tis the season!

Emily said...

Agree with Sarah. We have the dosage so we just buy the big size and divide it between all of the dogs. Costco is usually the cheapest.

Holly said...

Last year Frontline did not work for me :-( so I used Advantage and Bug Off Garlic combined. This year so far I have only used Big Off Garlic and I only found 2 ticks!! I am pretty impressed.

Holly said...

BTW I do what Sarah does - I always buy the largest dose of whatever product I am using and divide it up to the proper dose for the size of each critter.

Kady Cannon said...

And I'm glad that Ava is 20 lbs instead of 14 . . .

I do think that they tend to grow a little slower on raw, but that's not a bad thing.

Spyrock Cardigans said...

I'm so glad to find out our dear Minnie isn't twice the size of Ava!!! =)

I'm a Frontline fan, it's what I found to work best for my JRT who is allegeric to fleas and ticks. Also Frontline has a spray now that you do one squirt per pound of body weight for (here in OR) $30 a bottle.... that might be worth looking into. It's a once month/waterproof application like the spot. Hope that helps some. =)

Janine's Mom said...

No fleas here, can't comment on that, but Candy was about 23 lbs and fit as a fiddle when his back went out. I don't think carrying weight has anything to do with the back. (Although it has a lot to do with bad hips and knees.)

Dawn said...

How could you forget Daisy, LOL. Arent weights fun. Magis was underweight about a pound at 24. However, the crate rest has pumped him back up to 25.