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Think you want to try this at home….

Breeding dogs can be a wonderful event. You've got a great looking animal which is very special to you, and you have found a great looking mate who is also wonderful, and between the two of them, you reckon that you can produce some wonderful pups.

Unfortunately, the reality of life is that while beautiful puppies can result, in a large number of cases events happen during the breeding of a dog that far outweigh the much-wanted puppies.

A lot of people think that breeders make a lot of money And sometimes that thought alone is enough for some people to put their beloved friend at risk. I'm yet to make money out of breeding.

When you breed your dog, you put her at risk. Yes, she can die giving birth, and you don’t have time to greive since you will be raising orphaned pups.

Regardless of how much experience you have, you can still have disasters.

Death of just one pup, even in a large litter, can be heartbreaking. remember liver orange collar girl?

Its almost impossible to get a fading puppy to survive, and you can lose a whole litter to fading puppy syndrome.

These are some of the costs that you will have to budget for:

• stud fee
• cost of shipping the bitch to the stud. In my case, shipping Gabby out here and back. $350 each way.
• brucellosis testing on both the bitch and the dog.
• Whelping box, heat pads, heat lamps, thermometer, scissors, towels, baby scales, tweezers, hemostats, baby suction bulb
• milk replacement formula and/or goats milk, baby bottles, tubes for tube feeding, sterilizing solution, nail clippers
• puppy wormer (2,4,6,& 8 weeks), puppy diarrhea medicine
• food - a pregnant female may need up to four times what she normally eats, and a nursing female will also need a lot of food. Puppies also eat much more food than what you would think
• vaccinations
• dewclaw removal
• Vet visit for health checks prior to going to new homes

Here are some of the hidden and not so hidden costs that you may not have thought about:

• vet checks and health tests to make sure that the bitch is ok to be mated and whelp
• ultrasounds
• lots of extra washing for bedding in whelping box (water, detergent, paper towels, mops, bleach…)
• emergency vet trips (invariably late at night)for the emergency c-section
• emergency vet trips to save a dying pup
• Increased electric and heat bill to keep pups warm.
• time off from work that you need to take to help the bitch and to make sure that no puppies get squashed, etc - allow at least 5 days off work for this
• vet visit and antibiotics for the bitch for such things as mastisis
• advertising to sell puppies (puppy packets, pedigrees, pictures)
• lots of phone calls to and from interested and not so interested puppy buyers

Let's look at the costs:

• stud fee - usually equivalent to the cost of one pup
• neonatal deaths - average 25% per litter - ok so let's say you lose two pups here (this means that so far after the stud fee, we only really have 5 left that we can sell to make money from)
• vaccinations, worming, eye certifications - that adds up to another pup (of course, you can save money by ignoring these important steps)
• food - extra food for bitch, and then food for puppies until the age of 8 weeks - that's half a pup
• emergency vet visits to try and save the dying pup, or the emergency c-section on the mum - maybe both! - that's at least one pup, and more likely two. Let's say 1 and a half pups.
• Health checks on the bitch prior to whelping - checks for hd, annual eye certifications, thyroid checks, etc - that's another pup (but if you want to cut corners and ignore these very important checks you can save money here)
• Advertising the litter and answering numerous phone calls - that's half a pup
• Time off taken from work to whelp litter - that's at least one pup, more likely two, and in some cases, equivalent to the total selling price of whole litter. Let's say one and a half pups.
• Breeder support - for the life of the pup a good breeder will be there to take back those pups whose owners can no longer keep them. Also a good breeder will keep in regular contact with her puppy owners. Let's be really conservative here and say, that's the cost of just one pup.
• And you want to keep one pup for yourself, so you can't sell that one.

Okay, now go back through the list and work out, realistically, how many pups you need to breed from a litter so that you just break even. 12 - maybe. And of course, for those of us that have bred litter with that many pups know exactly how much extra work that is, especially if the bitch is not a great mum, and only has 8 working tits.

If you make any profit at all, set aside some of it. You want to guarantee your litter don’t you? What is someone comes to you 2 years down the road, who purchased a show quality bitch and her hips don’t pass OFA? You will want to refund their money, and give them a pup from your next litter.

It has been well documented that about 75% of 1st time breeders do not attempt to breed again because of the cost, work and time involved.