To view our Puppy Pricing and our conditions of sale, please view the CONTACT page
and click the link to view and read our PURCHASE AGREEMENT.
THANK YOU FOR ALL THE WONDERFUL COMMENTS ON OUR PUPPIES AND FACILITIES.
and click the link to view and read our PURCHASE AGREEMENT.
THANK YOU FOR ALL THE WONDERFUL COMMENTS ON OUR PUPPIES AND FACILITIES.
food & housing
On this page you will find pictures of the houses we build our girls to whelp their puppies in as well as pictures of the labels of the food we feed our dogs and puppies. To see our newest puppies, please use the drop down menu under Newest Puppies to view the different litters. They are listed by the mother's name and the litter's birth date. Since I normally post 200+ pictures of each litter, I decided to separate the litters onto their own page so as not to have too many pictures on one page and slow everybody down.
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These are the houses we built for our moms and the weaning pens for the puppies.
These are pictures of the dog houses we built our girls where the puppies start their life. And the little "incubator" we made for whenever we need to separate puppies from mom for any length of time, large litters, house cleaning, etc. It has a puppy heating pad in the bottom to keep them warm. There are also pictures of the puppy weaning pens where they stay for the last week and a half or so with us. You can see the little toys I hung for them to play with and the little "fake crates" I put in with them to get them ready for a carrier.
CLICK PICTURES TO ENLARGE
CLICK PICTURES TO ENLARGE
This is the food we feed our dogs and puppies.
We have used Iams dog & puppy food for 20 years. Iams sold the company a few years ago and we started noticing differences in the food. We had a couple of our females get very sick on it and ended up having to switch them off of it. We continued to use it because we didn't have issues with all of the dogs, and the puppies were doing well on it. When we started breeding several years ago, we started using a distributor because of the volume we use. As of 2 years ago, Mars Inc chose to cancel the contract with the distributor we'd been using for several years. They wanted their "own" distributors (so they could make more money) and there were only 3 in our region.
Of these 3, only 1 was feasible as the other 2 wanted an $800 order every two weeks! We are breeders, not retailers. The distributor we went with, General Pet Supply, ended up being extremely unreliable. We had numerous missed deliveries (they'd change and put it on a common carrier rather than their delivery truck so it would be three days late then the truck wouldn't pull into our driveway to deliver it, they expected me to drive my Jeep out to their truck and then unload the 15-20 bags of food into it and me haul it into the kennel. They delivered the wrong product (a full pallet of dog food but no puppy food), partial deliveries (less than half of our order) considered "full" shipments forcing us to reorder their minimum to get the balance of our order.... you name it, there were problems. Meanwhile, we were unable to to purchase anything other than a couple of 18# bags in our town. When we would drive 50 miles into the city, we were only able to find one or two 30# bags at PetSmart. That lasts us a few days to a week, we use about 4000# a year. Menards quit carrying it, I presume due to the same type of problems we were having with the distributors. Walmart only carries the smaller bags, not the 30# bags unless you buy Large Breed. I called Mars Inc and tried to talk to a supervisor, but of course was never patched through, just told they would look in to it. So this convinced us Iams/Mars does not care about it's customers and with the problems we had with some of the dogs, we chose to stop using it. They act like it is a privilege for us to be able to feed their food rather than the other way around. So now they've lost our business, and all the referrals they got for our puppy buyers. Their loss, not ours.
So we spent a year researching different foods and testing them on certain dogs. There are so many foods out there, and you can read something bad about any one of them, so we researched on our own. We then started using DIAMOND NATURALS food for all of our dogs. We fed our adults the Diamond Naturals, and we fed our puppies the Diamond Puppy food. We would have liked to gone with Diamond Naturals Puppy food, but they only make a Small Breed (we tried it, but the bites are tiny for a Toy breed, and since we feed all of our pregnant and nursing moms Puppy food for the extra nutrition, it just wasn't right for them) and then they make a Large Breed variety. Wheatens are not a large breed and I don't like the nutrition levels in it. So we chose to feed the Diamond Puppy. I've noticed improvements in their attitudes, like they feel better. Their hair coats are shiny and healthy. The moms really like it and the bites are a great size for the puppies to start eating.
Then, within the last 6 months I decided to switch to Purina Pro Plan. Unfortunately the puppy food is not available locally so I have to order it from Chewy. All was going well until the Coronavirus came around and we had our auto shipments delayed. I ended up having to go buy Diamond again and mixing it with the Purina Pro Plan so I could make it stretch to make my next delivery. Now things have straightened back our and we're back on the Purina. I am including pictures of all the puppy food and adult food labels. They make several different flavors, but we use the Lamb & Rice since a lot of Wheatens tend to get allergic to chicken when they are older and we feed our breeding females puppy food. So I'm including pictures of the various labels.
Of these 3, only 1 was feasible as the other 2 wanted an $800 order every two weeks! We are breeders, not retailers. The distributor we went with, General Pet Supply, ended up being extremely unreliable. We had numerous missed deliveries (they'd change and put it on a common carrier rather than their delivery truck so it would be three days late then the truck wouldn't pull into our driveway to deliver it, they expected me to drive my Jeep out to their truck and then unload the 15-20 bags of food into it and me haul it into the kennel. They delivered the wrong product (a full pallet of dog food but no puppy food), partial deliveries (less than half of our order) considered "full" shipments forcing us to reorder their minimum to get the balance of our order.... you name it, there were problems. Meanwhile, we were unable to to purchase anything other than a couple of 18# bags in our town. When we would drive 50 miles into the city, we were only able to find one or two 30# bags at PetSmart. That lasts us a few days to a week, we use about 4000# a year. Menards quit carrying it, I presume due to the same type of problems we were having with the distributors. Walmart only carries the smaller bags, not the 30# bags unless you buy Large Breed. I called Mars Inc and tried to talk to a supervisor, but of course was never patched through, just told they would look in to it. So this convinced us Iams/Mars does not care about it's customers and with the problems we had with some of the dogs, we chose to stop using it. They act like it is a privilege for us to be able to feed their food rather than the other way around. So now they've lost our business, and all the referrals they got for our puppy buyers. Their loss, not ours.
So we spent a year researching different foods and testing them on certain dogs. There are so many foods out there, and you can read something bad about any one of them, so we researched on our own. We then started using DIAMOND NATURALS food for all of our dogs. We fed our adults the Diamond Naturals, and we fed our puppies the Diamond Puppy food. We would have liked to gone with Diamond Naturals Puppy food, but they only make a Small Breed (we tried it, but the bites are tiny for a Toy breed, and since we feed all of our pregnant and nursing moms Puppy food for the extra nutrition, it just wasn't right for them) and then they make a Large Breed variety. Wheatens are not a large breed and I don't like the nutrition levels in it. So we chose to feed the Diamond Puppy. I've noticed improvements in their attitudes, like they feel better. Their hair coats are shiny and healthy. The moms really like it and the bites are a great size for the puppies to start eating.
Then, within the last 6 months I decided to switch to Purina Pro Plan. Unfortunately the puppy food is not available locally so I have to order it from Chewy. All was going well until the Coronavirus came around and we had our auto shipments delayed. I ended up having to go buy Diamond again and mixing it with the Purina Pro Plan so I could make it stretch to make my next delivery. Now things have straightened back our and we're back on the Purina. I am including pictures of all the puppy food and adult food labels. They make several different flavors, but we use the Lamb & Rice since a lot of Wheatens tend to get allergic to chicken when they are older and we feed our breeding females puppy food. So I'm including pictures of the various labels.
Westwind Wheatens
1726 206th St
Red Oak, IA 51566
(712) 623-3611
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