Food for thought

Tacitly related and something I've been mulling over this evening, some breeding stats have been posted on one of the husky forums.

Excluding the notorious puppy farmers (88 litters, 13 per year :eek:), even some of the big-name breeders who work and show their dogs, do all relevant health tests etc. are still producing large numbers of pups (50-60 litters at 4 litters a year not being unusual).

I think it's the case that breeders can be doing all the right things and still simply be producing too many dogs.
 
I do agree with you there BC. There are some GSD breeders who produce some lovely stock, top winners, all health tests but breed far too many litters imho. Having said that their pups do all find homes and probably won't end up in rescue. The person who wrote that blog breeds very occasionally , she bred and owned my Buffys sire.
 
A friend of mine has said they were thinking of getting a Lancashire Heeler puppy so we went on line and couldnt find one. The LH is now on the endangered list or something similar and the LH code of ethics say you cannot breed more that 4 litters from your bitch in her lifetime. The reasoning being if you havnt bred what you want by then you never will. Whilst I think this is good I cant help thinking this is one of the reasons its endangered. As far as I knowthey have 4-6 puppies per litter so another reason the numbers are low.
 
I actually think 4 litters in a lifetime is plenty, but in a numerically rare breed like Heelers I suppose it might make sense to stretch to another litter. I know when we were looking for our we really struggled to find a litter of the lines we wanted, we ended up going to Wiltshire, crazy when we ain't far from the birthplace of the breed. There were only pups in the litter we got our girl from.
 
MM I went to Devon for my 2 bitches, never bred them so they were out of the equation. The breeder was the club secretary at the time. My friend is now thinking of a black & tan JR as they are similar in looks.

I could never understand why they were not more popular as they are a jack of all trades and with no health issues. Still rather they are rare than puppy farms.

Just thought at one time there were a couple of breeders in Wales but perhaps they were not there while you were looking.
 
A deerhound breeder I know, who could be churning them out for £££ as they look cool and are relatively rare here, always said to me: "Most people breeding look at one litter a year from their bitch, I only want one litter in their lives".

The people I know, who are working at the very top level of their sport, don't breed. They don't have time for it, apart from anything else :p
 
I said on a thread just the other day that there were too many dogs being bred- pedigree or not. Really interesting read!
 
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