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Post by Wetdog on Aug 28, 2005 13:22:10 GMT 1
To those on here that breed, what sort of consideration do you give to health problems when you are planning a breeding?
Do you have Xrays of hips and/or elbows done to check for dyplasia? Do you submit them to a rating authority for evaluation? If so, what do you use.
Are there any other problems or concerns that you check for? If so, what measures do use to prevent/avoid problems?
What sort of checks or controls do you think should be used more widely?
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Post by marjolein on Aug 30, 2005 11:09:44 GMT 1
When I have more time, I'll get back to you about this.
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Post by marjolein on Aug 30, 2005 14:42:00 GMT 1
Before I even start thinking about breeding a litter, I take absolutely everything in consideration. Not only health, but character, hunting abilities and confirmation as well.
I started with looking at my dogs lines and found out that in Mowgli fathers' lines, is some HD. I even found out that she has brothers and sisters with HD. I really considered spaying, but I contacted people in both the Dutch and German Club and they adviced me it wasn't too bad. Since she has good hips and all her pups from the first litter have perfect hips, I decided to go on.
I then started looking in the rest of her line. Brothers and sisters of her mom and dad and grandpa and grandma. It wasn't too bad after all. I knew an uncle of her had elbow problems so I x-rayed her for that too. I didn't send the photo's to an official comittee, but I asked a bone specialist for advice, and she said nothing was wrong with it. Then I looked at the hunting tests. Since she's an import from Germany, mom is German, dad is Austrian, I was able to look that up. They were ranging from ok to excellent. Confirmation was good as well.
The only thing I was a bit worried about, was character. Mowgli has the most perfect character, but her mom and grandma are not so nice. But I really think that's due to the fact that they're kept in outside kennels and are not really trained like we would do. Both dogs were nice to us btw.
Well, to be on the safe side, I found a dog with a very sound character for both litters (for the third litter as well).
With the first litter, I only looked at the stud and his pedigree, I had no info about his parents. I wasn't really in the know back then. I thought it was good enough just to look at the stud. Well, I'm very satisfied with the litter, but it was a bit shortsighted I think.
For the next litters I asked as much info about the studs and their lines as possible. People were really helpful with that. Providing piccies and info about health, character and hunting abilities. You can never know in advance, if you've done the right thing, but you can rule out many things.
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