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PUPPIES FOR SALE Click here to go straight to the list of available pups.

 

Please scroll down to find the links to current puppies for sale.or find the links to each litter on the left hand menu by clicking on Puppies for Sale NOW

 

Each litter of puppies is identified by their parents names and the page will show full details, photo's, video's including Pedigree and Health testing information.

 

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PLEASE NOTE:

Please read before you contact us for Additional Information

 Since the Lockdown orders were put in place in March 2020, we have been inundated with requests for puppies and even for foster dogs and older dogs.  (Yes, occasionally we do have older border collie bitches looking for homes).


In 30 years of professional breeding I have NEVER known such demand for puppies. 
Also if you are not prepared to sign a contract and pay the average going rate (as per classified advertisements) please do not apply.


1st August 2020= NOTICE - SORRY, SORRY -

We still CAN't KEEP UP.  

please see instructions on our application form

 

Please do not phone, Text or whatsapp.

We are still working through applications for the Goldie and Dream litters born in June 2020,

preference is given to those who want to work sheep or to amazing above average active homes (Agility performance dog sports etc.).

We are planing two more litters this year one from Astra Cloud (will go to a red and white dog still to be confirmed) and one from Astra Maid x (still to be confirmed) these will be the girls LAST litters.

so we are also taking applications for puppies which may be ready in

December/January or later. 


We will contact the applicants we think will give our pups the most suitable homes and will start with application recieved in April/May

We will be doing this from the 15th August 2020

Please be patient, we will read every application and then will send emails to all our prefered applicants - to which you should immediately reply to that email answering all our questions.
Depending on those answers we will then invite you to a video appointment, if you have not recieved an email (which is not an autoreply),

please check and keep checking your spam folder.
However, if you are just wanting a pet (and are not already an ASTRA owner, it is highly unlikely that we will contact you as due to the number of enquiries, we are sorry but
we may not be able to reply to every single application.  

 

Please do not apply unless you are prepared to WAIT until at least December or later AND, can offer a WORKING HOME or amazing above average ACTIVE home.

 

DO NOT PHONE US - send TEXT or Whatsapp, only to 07724520181 DO NOT phone as our reception is not great and I hate talking on a bad crackly line. We cannot guarantee you will get a reply.

 

 

Read about why we breed border collies.

 



ASTRA GOLDIE, Lilac tricolour, medium coated border collie stud dog.

 

ASTRA GOLDIE

I.S.D.S. No: 00/

Rambo  -  Red and white Border collie

 

RAMBO

I.S.D.S. no:

 

Why do we breed Border Collies?

The main reason we breed border collie puppies, is for us to retain, at least one or two, for us to train them as sheepdogs, which are then sold around the world to farmers and sheepdog trials enthusiasts.

 

We have been training sheepdogs for our main income for almost 30 years, many years ago, we used to purchase most of our puppies for training, but found that they were often badly reared and not well socialized or handled - this made our job of training extremely difficult and we often had very poor results. Guide Dogs for the Blind found this to be the case and they are now breeding almost all of their puppies with much better training results.


We discovered that the pups we bred and reared ourselves, were far superior to almost all the ones we purchased in for training and this was due to selecting dogs we liked, breeding them together and then putting in a great deal of care and attention into the puppies socialization in the early months. - "What is not in a pup at 8 weeks will probably never be easily improved upon" - over the years our experience has grown as we tried new rearing techniques and can honestly say that our pups have never been so easy to train - perhaps we just know the tiny secrets ?

All our bitches and stud dogs are in training themselves, they help us to teach working students and students on our Training and Handling courses but they may also be sold, as sheepdogs, when the time is right for them especially when the perfect owner for them appears to give them an individual working life - this may be at any time so if you are looking for an adult dog to help with your stock just let us know and one of our girls or boys may suit you.

 

Where are our pups born?

All our puppies are born in the house and stay there until they are at least five weeks old - at which time they go out into purpose built runs where they can see and hear the world go by they are handled by children and we socialize the puppies to handling and noises and different environments, flooring and situations.

We spend a lot of time with our puppies, taking them into new environments, new toys, travel in the car a couple of times, visting the vets at 8 weeks of age for a health check before they go to new homes.

We are guided by modern advancement in Animal Behaviour research and strive to give our puppies the absolute best using these guidelines.

 

What do we feed our pups?

Our puppies are started on the very best - Tesco's Turkey mince (human grade) mixed with Greek Full Fat Yogurt.

 

After a couple of weeks they are changed onto Natural Instinct Raw puppy food and are offered a variety of flavours, all human grade

At around 6 weeks we introduce them to Chicken carcasses RAW and Beta puppy food as we realise that not all our owners want to feed a raw diet though Raw meaty bones is the bestfood for your dog.

We also introduce them to cheese, and other treats by hand feeding so that they are all ready primed ready to train

using modern positive dog training techniques

 

Health Testing and working towards reduced disease incedence !

We health test all our bitches and our own stud dogs - but finding quality health tested sires is not an easy task.

ABOUT Health testing - DNA tests, Xrays, Eye testing, veterinary health checks. (see the information under each parent)

 

About DNA tests - most DNA tests are for a specific recessive mutation.
Because a dog inherits two copies of each gene, one from mom and one from dad, it can have one copy of a mutation, two copies, or none at all.
If one normal copy of the gene can get the job done, one copy of the mutation does no harm (this dog would be a carrier).
But if a dog inherits the mutation from both parents, it doesn't have a normal copy of the gene and
whatever that gene was supposed to do just doesn't happen - so the dog would have "affected" status.
DNA tests can determine if a dog carries one copy, two copies, or no copies of a particular gene.
A dog that tests clear has two copies of the normal gene and will not be affected by the disorder the mutation causes.
If two carriers are mated, some puppies will two normal genes, some will get one copy of the mutation and be carriers, and some dogs will get two copies of the mutation and be affected.

There will be a 25% chance of inheriting two copies of that mutation.
So by testing a puppy, you are able to rule out the 1 chance in 4 that a puppy might be affected by that particular genetic disorder - you can verify that in this puppy, a potential risk factor of 25% is in fact 0%.
If both parents are tested normal then the puppies cannot be affected,
If one parent is a carrier and one is normal then the puppies have a 50% chance of being normals/carriers but they WILL NOT BE affected.
These puppies must be DNA tested if they are intended for breeding.

 

In all matings we ensure that we keep a low COI Coefficient of Inbreeding which has proven to help reduce the incedence of disease in dogs and other animals.

 

About coefficient of inbreeding - also known as the COI.
This mathematical formular produces a percentage probability that a dog will inherit two copies of the same allele from an ancestor, and it is also gives the fraction of the dog's variable genes that are homozygous (i.e., two identical alleles).
It is important to use all available generations when computing the COI or you will not get correct indication of probability.
You would most probably get a dog with a COI of 0% by breeding two animals that are completely unrelated, e.g., two different breeds with no recent common history, but you can also get a COI of 0% in a pure bred registered dog, if you do not use enough generations to calculate the percentage, or if you used a dog whose parentage was unknown.
A dog with a 0% would be highly unlikely to inherit two copies of a gene from the same ancestor because there are no common ancestors in the pedigrees of the sire and dam.
However, with the ISDS bred Border Collie (since the ISDS established the breed and stud book)
it is highly probably that even unregistered dogs will have common ancestors somewhere in the pedigree.
This is why it is important to register and record all generations of dogs when breeding.
An ISDS registered dog will give the owner an indication of the potential general health, logevity and working ability etc.

A dog with a COI of 100% would be completely homozygous - at every locus, it would carry two identical copies of the same gene (luckily this is not likely to ever happen unless you produce clones).
Most dogs fall on the lower end of this scale, with COIs that range from a few percentage points to 20-30%.
A puppy produced by two full siblings would have a COI of 25%;
half-sibs would produce 12.5%.
This means that you can expect that 25% (or 12.5%) of all of the variable genes in the puppy will be homozygous - i.e. two identical copies of the same allele.
If that homozygous gene gets two copies of a mutation, then that dog would be "affected" by whatever disorder it causes.

So you can see how both DNA tests and COI tell you something about the potential risk of a genetic disorders.
DNA tests inform you about specific disease risks, whereas COI tells you nothing about a specific mutation but rather provides a prediction that ANY gene (mutation or not) will be homozygous.

 

In the ISDS (International Sheepdog Society) the main and very first registration body for Border Collies.

 

The current CoI, using all ISDS generations since the formation of the International Sheepdog society over 100 years ago, is just over 7%.
The Current CoI using only the current 6-generation pedigree it is just over 1%. It is essential to use as many generations as are available or you will not get a full picture.

How many generations of pedigree data should you use to estimate inbreeding?

 

Breeding a CoI6 (6-generations) over 5% is very uncommon in ISDS border collies.

 

Breeding a CoI (all generations) smaller than 5% is virtually impossible, because such pairs of dogs do not exist in the ISDS unless made up of ROM (Registraion on Merit) or dogs imported from other countries registries (especially those who have not imported UK ISDS registered dogs for 50+ years and not outcrossed to another breed, but that scenario is very doubtful, and these dogs most probably came from the same gene pool anyway (even the Australian Kelpie which I believe originated from a black and tan, UK imported, border collie called Kelpie)


Even most ROM (Registraion on Merit) dogs probably come from the same base gene pool.

Source on ISDS COI. http://www.bcdb.info/article1/WSN1c4.htm

 

for more information about reducing the incedence of disease in border collies and all dog breeds, by using tools like COI, please visit this website.The Institute of Canine Biology

 

What is our main income?

Sheepdog Training has always been our main income stream, it pays for all those bills but more importantly it pays for the very expensive "DNA health testing" and Hip Scoring.

It also keeps of our bitches fit and happy with a purpose in life and the really fantastic opportunity to one day work sheep for another shepherd or retire onto a small holding to be a School master to some buddying new sheepdog enthusiast who wants to learn the art of shepherding.
Because we also need our border collie puppies to be reared to our own exacting high standards, we need help and so we almost always have at least one working student employed with us.

 

We also "keep" sheep, instead of farming them, for the sole purpose of training the dogs, since farming sheep does not pay unless you keep many, many 100's or 1000's of sheep and with that number, you would not have the time to train a sheepdog

- catch 22 ?

 

 

Yes, we breed quite a few litters and there is a reason for this.

Yes, we may well have been breeding rather more than I would like. but this is due to the fact that I broke my leg in 2008, the fallout was having to sell our money hungry sheep flock of 400 ewes and due to my current disability I have been unable to do much training and therefore selling of adult sheepdogs and since I am an eternal optimist refused to give up my dogs and the only way I knew how to keep them was to make them pay for themselves - it has been a big struggle but my dogs have always provided and soon I will be able to give them what they need most - SHEEPWORK, SHEEPWORK and more SHEEPWORK.


Because, I will soon undergo a major operation to fix my still mangled leg and will hopefully become pain free again therefore, I am now breeding dogs destined to be great sheepdogs and will retain several which will be ready for sheepdog training in the new year when I am recovered.


I am now patiently waiting for the return to health so that I can continue with my real passion training sheepdogs and the renewal of my main business of Sheepdog Training, Teaching at Clinics and Contract Shepherding in order to give my dogs the work experience they need, before placing them in shepherding homes.

 

Provided this all goes to plan and I recover well, I do not intend to breed, for any other reason, than to give me a regular supply of quality, well socialized and healthy border collie pups to TRAIN as sheepdogs.

 

If it does not then we will have to cross that bridge when it comes into view.

 



Ask yourself these questions.


How many breeders do you know of who place so much information including pedigrees, health testing information and results, photographs, video's, started and runs several Face-book groups about breeding , training and general health, into the public domain?

Would they participate in Canine Research?


Well, I do all the above, I live, work, play and dream border colllies, I am very passionate about my Border Collies and do much more than the majority of the Border Collie Puppy Breeders.

I am a professional striving for perfection against nature's law of natural selection.


Please come and visit us, in person, Do not judge us, by what you may hear from folks who have never been to visit us or do not even know me, make up your mind using ALL THE FACTS in front of you, by visiting with us and playing with out puppies.

Don't miss out on the opportunity of joining the "Astra Clan" of 100's of happy Owners who are now making friends with each otgher through an Astra Border Collie all over the world.

 

Please visit the following pages if you are interested in purchasing one of our puppies.

  1. Our puppy Guarantee
  2. FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions = Answered

Join our MAILING LIST to get first hand information.

 

 

 

Join our MAILING LIST to get first hand information.

Please DO NOT use the mailing list to enquire about purchasing a pup, you will not get a reply!

 

But usually we place information onto Facebook and Youtube before we do a news letter.

 

joining us on Facebook

You must "LIKE" our faccbook page and set your preferences so you will recieve news of our puppies and dogs


Breeding dogs is very often a frustrating business; there are never any guarantee's that you will even get puppies let alone great one's.

  • The girls never come into season when you want them to.
  • They never produce the right number of Males v Females
  • They never produce the Colours everybody wants.
  • The bitches tend to come into season in groups, therefore a tendancy of so many litters at one time.

 

However; for day to day management, it actually is easier, as we can justify the employment of a full time puppy carer and "kidnap" more children to play with the pups as they are growing up.

 

Our puppies are born and raised in the house until five weeks of age.

They are then moved into special puppy runs where they are able to see what is happening in and around the centre.

We also spend a great deal of time playing with the puppies and introducing them to our older dogs.

 

Before you go any further PLEASE ensure you have read the following pages

 

BREEDING LICENCE page The LAW
Breeding Female's page All about our border collie girls
Stud Dog's page All about our border collie boys
Current litter's page Border Collie PUPPIES FOR SALE
Planed Litter's page Planed breedings for future litters
Our Breeding Policies' page Our aims, goals and guarantees
Astra Sheepdog Training Centre's page Training sheepdogs to work sheep and SHEEPDOGS FOR SALE

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