Hi, Our medium sized gundog gave birth to 5 lovely puppies (3G, 2B) on Saturday eve and everyone doing just great at the moment. For the first few weeks we're keeping then with Mum in their whelping box, but are then intending to move them to a pen in our utility room. We've narrowed it down to 2 options, the Crufts Freedom or the Doghealth K700/900. We're leaning towards the latter as it has a divider across the width that we figure would make it easier to move puppies to once they've been cleaned to keep separate from the others and of course to clean in 2 sections.

The next consideration of course is what height to get as they both come in either 700mm or 900mm. My gut instinct was that for pups that will be leaving at 7/8 weeks (and the even better news is that we have good prospective new owners for all pups), 70cm should be absolutely fine, but please tell me otherwise if it's likely that they'll try and possibly succeed to climb out.

If it was my main breed, Malinois, which are similar in size I'd say, they would easily get out of a 70 cm tall pen when almost ready to go.

OK, looks like it's going to have to be the higher 90cm one in that case !

My pups of the same breed could easily climb out of the lower height pen and made a fair attempt at leaving the higher one too!

Thanks Alycse - have you also bred a litter of my breed? Would be interested to know what sort of birth weights yours were as I think ours are on the largish size given she only had a relatively small litter. My wife works at the local vet and the vet popped over in her lunch break today to check both puppies and mum and was happy with everything. All have put weight on but one not very much at all (however they're not even 48 hrs old as yet) and as it was such a palaver weighing them during the whelping I'm thinking that there a possibility that there's a margin of error in what I recorded their birth weights as.

Have pm'd you.

I have the Doghealth K900 for our medium sized gundog breed, but was a bit disappointed to find that the extra side panels are not available in the 900, nor will they be any time soon according to Doghealth. They do have side panels for the K700. If I'd known I would have just bought this one http://www.doghealth.co.uk/collections/puppy-pens/products/puppy-pen-run-big-foot

Good luck with your little ones!

Edited to add: the whelping box I had made for this lot has twice the floor space of the standard K700/K900 pen, so I think without the extra side panels it's too small

I agree, my recent litter of 10 had two of the extra height freedom puppy pens PLUS extra panels all joined together.  Even for a smallish litter of medium sized gundogs one pen would be nowhere near big enough.  They are a very active breed from a very early age.

JAY15 - I just rang Doghealth and although the extra panels are showing out of stock on their website, they tell me they do now have some. However still can decide whether to get this one or the Crufts Freedom - it was the internal divider that was swinging me towards the Doghealth K900 - is it any benefit ?

Thanks Alinnes, I will give them a ring and order the extra panels now :-)

I guess the effectiveness of the divider depends in on the age at which you plan to introduce your litter to the pen--they will be able to climb over it easily, but the smaller section of the run is then good for padding out with vetbed as a little nest, and you can paper the rest for the inevitable mess they will make. Of course if you use the extra panels the divider is a bit redundant, unless you can create a longer run rather than a wide one...

My litter of 4 has just made 21 days, and they only are just moving confidently around the whelping box chasing their mum. I wasn't going to use the run till later in the week when I start to wean them.

I have the crufts freedom puppy pen and I am very happy with it. I have had to purchase extra panels as otherwise it would be much too small and found the 700mm height perfect for medium gundogs.

It scrubs very well and still looks great for its age.

My Bichon puppies can get out of an 18" puppy pen.

If it is of interest to you Amazon have an Elli-bo heavy duty puppy pen coming up on their Black Friday deals in 30mins time. It looks very similar to the Croft Freedom puppy pen

Aliness I presume the KT6 is too big for your house ?

I can't find the offer on the pens on amazon, they're all full puice

It was on one of their flash deals which are only available at that price for a short period of time, usually 1/2 hour I think.

Ah.. I did go through the deals and that would explain it

They do seem to offer some items on a daily basis so it may be on again today at some point, they seem to add things through the day so you do need to check throughout the day.

Just thought I would say that I have always used a  home made melamine coated whelping box which worked well. After reading on here people using the Crufts Freedom pen and I needed a new puppy pen anyway I bought ( albeit 2nd hand it had been hardly used) one and I thought it was brilliant. For the early days I dis line 3 sides with a cleanable material ( a sort of thin polycarbonate) until the pups were big enough not to get heads through and it provided some extra privacy as well. I bought pieces of vet bed to fit the trays and it all worked superbly well.
Good luck with your litter.