selling kittens

juliethemuse

has anyone bred and sold persian kittens or similar? for years i would have loved a persian ,and would have liked to have sold the kitties, does anyone know what rules etc you have to follow, this is just a general question really, i have other cats so i dont think it would be possible at the moment,

juliethemuse

sorry if this is in the wrong forum didnt know to put it here or in pets forum

Alexandria

http://www.gccfcats.org/

This organisation should have all the info you need to know.

vixxxen

Personally, I don't think you could make any money from it unless you had a LOT of cats, and therefore it would have a large start-up cost.

I personally think it's better to get into breeding animals fronm having them as pets, rather than going into it with a business frame of mind, and intending to make money.

A good breeding quality Queen will cost you around £500-£1000 depending on the breed; and if you're breeding cats, you should be aware of the 'type' for that breed (the type is the show standard) which requires a lot of research, and you should be breeding only from cats that are excellent quality and display perfect 'type'.

You can breed them indoors and have the queens and kittens as 'house cats', but a lot of breeders I think keep the males in aviary-type things outdoors - in any case, the males should be kept away from the females and kittens unless they are being mated.

You can sell 'pet quality' kittens for £100-£300 depending on the breed, but bear in mind that the cost to raise the kittens to 8 weeks - which is the earliest age they can be sold - will be quite high; what with food costs, microchipping, vaccinations, general checks of mum and kittens by the vet and costs for any complications during pregnancy, personally I'd say you wouldn't make a profit.

However, 'hobby breeding' with just having a female pet cat and breeding her once or twice (maximum) with a stud cat, can be fun - but not a long term business opportunity

allan7710

Hi, I used to breed British Shorthairs and can say that most of what vixxxen has said is true. However, you have to keep your kittens until 13wks of age this is because they have to be vaccinated at aged 9wks and then 12wks (which is detailed in the GCCF guidelines). There is also the cost of registering your kittens with the GCCF, which although is not expensive, is essential in order to be properly selling pedigree cats. You also have to take into account the cost of blood tests required before matings and stud fees, then you have to budget for any emergencies (c-sections, emergency vet, etc which can cost a fortune). As a responsible breeder you need to make sure the kittens you are breeding will not have (or carry) any genetic diseases, PKD is quite common in Persians and BSH (there are tests for this too), so all this needs to be taken into consideration too. I would not advise a novice breeder to take on the responsibility of a Stud cat, as Vixxxen quite rightly said, they generally have to be kept outdoors as entire males are very likely to spray to mark their territory and if you have ever smelt stud spray you would understand why you would not want that happening in your house lol. However, your stud cat still needs a lot of attention so therefore you would need to commit to spending a lot of time with him otherwise he is likely to become quite stressed and even possibly agressive/antisocial if you don't spend enough time with him. Also stud cats would require to be with quite a few females a year in order to keep them 'satisfied' so if you are only planning on having one queen it really wouldn't be sensible to have your own boy (Stud cats are also very expensive to buy). I did enjoy breeding for a while but I have to admit that the constant cleaning up of cat litter scattered over your floor (potty accidents) and the numerous rounds of feeding, meaning that I was basically housebound when I had kittens ended up getting to me and I didn't enjoy it after a while. I was lucky that I never had many vet problems (when I did it was mainly kittens with tummy upsets or conjunctivitis etc) but my friend who also bred was unfortunate to have 2 queens, one after the other, require emergency c-sections which left her with a £500 bill each time (this was during the day when the vet was open, if it had happened throught the night she could have been looking at up to £1000!) so as you can see it's not really a hobby you really make money on. The cost of my first queen was £600, you always pay more for a queen on the active register than a pet pedigree(non-active register), stud fees were around £150-250, initial blood test before mating around £50-80, kittens sold for £350 each but it's not that unusal to only have 1 or 2 kittens in there and by the time you have fed them for 9-10 weeks, vaccinations, medications, registrations, advertising, lots of time wasters coming into your home etc, I ended up deciding it just wasn't worth it lol. But that was just my experience, I know a lot of people that breed and love it but it just wasn't for me :-)

juliethemuse

wow thanks everybody for the info, just didnt realise all the expense involved allan,

vixxxen

I posted my info just from common sense really; and a general knowledge of what Bengals cost - as I wanted a bengal kitten for a while and also bridefly considered breeding.

I think breeding animals should be left to those that are truly interested in preserving/improving the breed as there's really not much money to be made from it; I used to breed chickens ('rare breed' ones sold as pets, not for food! lol) and it cost me about £20 a week in food, medications etc which doesn't seem bad; but when you bear in mind I had to spend A LOT of time with the young chicks, sitting in the shed with them to socialise them with human nd make sure they would make good pets for families/children, the real cost was probably much more. I sold my chickens for £25 at 4 months, so for me the cost wasn't worth it - but it was fun.

Lol rambling on about chickens a bit there, sorry! I did have a point :rotfl:

If you want to get Persian in future then I'd say go for it, get a breeding-quality Queen if you want to breed her eventually but keep her as a pet, love her and maybe try the breeding thing by mating her to a Stud cat. It's not really fair IMO to breed a female cat more than twice in a year, I personally would only do it once a year, so at least having one litter out of a pet (but breeding quality) cat would give you a taster as to how much it all costs, etc.

Don't forget, there's no guarantee you'd sell all the kittens, either - so you'd have to be prepared and have the space to keep them if necessary.

Caroline_a

Also, if you buy a pedigree cat, for the most part breeders sell them as 'pet' standard, which means you can't breed from them until you have that removed and the cat placed on the breeding register. This has to be done by the original breeder, and can cost up to an additional £300 or more, so your 'bargain' of a couple of hundred pounds will soon mount up!