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Best Practices For Running
A Dog Breeding Business
Owning a dog as a pet is one thing, actually breeding them and being good at it is a whole other ball game. Regular dog owners have it easy; they don’t need to know much (or anything) about canine genetics, they don’t have to worry about picking the right mate, or any number of other things a professional has to keep track of.
But you wouldn’t be reading this article if you didn’t at least consider starting a proper kennel. We’ll do our best to explain various best practices and considerations any prospective kennel owner has to have in mind. That way, you’ll be able to decide if a dog breeding business is the right choice for you and, if so, how to get started.
Learn As Much
As You Can
Things you should know about the breed include:
● Cycle frequency
● Lifespan
● Fertile age
● Average litter size
● Pregnancy length
● Dietary restrictions
● Common genetic problems
And these are just the basics. The amount of knowledge required to properly start a dog breeding business is rather extensive. You shouldn’t just put two dogs together without doing in-depth research and expect great results. A dog breeder doesn’t rely on their gut but on knowledge and science.
Canine genetics
So brush up on the following terms:
● DNA
● Chromosomes
● Genes (dominant and recessive)
● Phenotype
● Environmental influences on the phenotype
● Genetic influences on the phenotype
● Gene pool
● Genetic expression
This may sound like a lot of big words but any dog breeder worth their salt will know what they mean and how they affect their dogs and their business.
You can start by checking out what other breeders are doing and how they’re achieving their goals. This will also help you determine your goals, and you need to have goals in order to be able to evaluate your performance. Don’t rely on surface information either. Contact the breeders themselves, ask around, learn as much as you can and start networking. The breeding business requires extensive contacts. Breeders often trade or hire out studs or bitches, and you want to get off on the right foot with the community.
Speaking of goals.
Keep your goals
in mind
Ask yourself – what do I want my dogs to be good at or famous for? This is the very start of your business. The answer to that question will determine what breed you’ll pick and which breeding techniques you’ll use, and a myriad of other factors.
Establish your short- and long-term objectives because dog breeding can be a long and involved process. It might take several generations for your dogs to improve, and you need to be both patient enough and to have a short-term plan to keep your business viable. Not everyone can afford to wait for a couple of years to start selling litters.
Your goal may be to breed dogs that will win awards or dogs for a specific purpose (hunting, shepherding, disability assistance, etc.). Alternatively, you might be happy with raising healthy litters and selling them as they come.
Whatever your goal is, you need to know it before you start. That’s the best way to guarantee that everyone involved will be satisfied – you, your customers, and your dogs.
Plan a budget
Common expenses include:
● The property expenses – this includes kennels, the land itself, and property renovations
● Dog food, toys, and miscellaneous supplies
● Veterinary expenses – including vaccinations, tests, checkups, supplements, treatment, etc.
● Breeding stock – i.e., dogs themselves
● Mandatory licenses
● Marketing expenses
That’s just what you need to start a business, and the list isn’t comprehensive. As time goes on, you can expect your expenses to increase. Medical expenses only grow as the dog gets older. They also require more care, and you can never rule out unexpected expenses.
Annual, breeding, and litter expenses
Annual expenses cover a dog’s food, supplements, licenses, and veterinary checkups. This can run you up anywhere from $500 to over a thousand dollars, depending on the dog breed, location, and quality of service.
Breeding expenses include a variety of medical tests (there’s some overlap with “maintenance”) and prenatal and postnatal care of the puppies, as well as the birth itself. These expenses are much more significant, totaling anywhere between $1,000–$3,000, but depending on the breeding frequency, you might not have to pay them as often or might have to pay them much more often.
Litter expenses are basically everything required to breed a single litter of puppies. Again, this mostly covers medical expenses, like shots, deworming, C-section (if necessary), etc. In addition, you’ll need to register each litter (and puppy) with relevant authorities and organizations, which comes with fees attached. Of course, puppies need to be fed and taken care of until they’re sold, so you’ll need to factor in these expenses as well. Litter expenses will run you up from several hundred to several thousands of dollars. The higher end of that price range only happens in case something goes wrong and the bitch and the puppies need serious medical attention.
Get All The Latest News
Do the research
and keep records
This is fairly straightforward. You need to know every dog’s lineage as far back as the data goes. The more information you have, the better decisions you can make. Before every breeding, you need to analyze each of the dogs’ pedigree. Look into their ancestry and see if you can spot patterns or repeated instances of desirable or undesirable characteristics.
Here’s what you should pay attention to:
● Awards
● History of health problems
● Trait patterns
● Inbreeding level
● Coat patterns, types, and colors
Public databases and DNA screening tests can help you with this. It’s much easier to breed out certain defects out of a breed than it was before these tools were available.
Again, these are just the basics. Just because one specific dog exhibits great traits does not mean its direct offspring will exhibit them too. They may have genetic defects hidden in their bloodline you can easily miss if you aren’t meticulous with your research.
Also, make sure to keep detailed records of all of your dogs. It’s a no-brainer but keeping clear track of which dogs mated, when, and what traits their offspring had are key for any long-standing dog breeding business. This will allow you to cycle their offspring back into the gene pool if they have desirable traits and generally expand your database.
Use the best tool
at your disposal
Technology permeates our lives and has been for a long time. This didn’t pass the dog breeding industry by. That’s not really surprising. We use apps to track our health, our sleeping habits, our budget… Why not dog breeding?
We’ve mentioned before that you need an extensive knowledge base to start a dog breeding business. While you can simply google all the information or go fully analog and read up on it from a book, having all the information accessible on your phone with the right filters can make the whole process much easier. Generally, you want to reduce your mental workload so you can focus on really important things.
In addition, the right app or a platform can keep track of the dog’s pedigree. You can do this with a simple spreadsheet, but having the data presented in an easy-to-read, perhaps even visual format will make it much cleaner and easier to use. Of course, the best option is to find a comprehensive platform that has all the features you want to use.
Here’s a basicoverview of what you can get with the right digital tool:
● Dog and litter tracking – food, medical records, heats, and matings
● Collaboration and networking with other dog breeders
● Seamless sharing of information
● Finances and budget planning
● Potential homes and buyer info for puppies
Again, this isn’t necessary, but it reduces the mental overhead. Having more time and energy to deal with unexpected situations and to plan breeding strategies is just sound business sense.
Remain ethical
The runts of the litter should be either given away or sold at a discount (it doesn’t matter if it’s at a loss). These dogs are weaker, smaller, or exhibit poorer traits than their littermates and require special attention. Provide them with enough care and perhaps a specific nutrition plan to keep them healthy.
Make sure your facilities are clean and spacious. This is absolutely essential to keep the dogs healthy. Don’t own more dogs than you can reasonably provide a good quality of life for and ensure they’re socialized properly.
Also, be mindful of the dogs’ ages. Don’t breed dogs younger than 18 months and keep the puppies with their mother until they’re weaned – generally, don’t allow puppies to leave until they’re at least eight weeks old.
Wrapping up
Knowing the basic science and the specifics of the dog breeds is the foundation of your business – everything else builds up on that. From goals, budgeting, further research, and the use of digital tools.
Of course, any truly dedicated dog breeder will expand on this and develop their own best practices and methods that will take their business to the next level.
