People see that pedigreed kittens are sold for $400 or more and assume that
breeders must be making a profit. It's hard to understand how expensive
breeding is without actually trying it. Breeding each domestic species is
different with different special challenges. With cats, the biggest challenge is
preventing and managing infectious disease because cats evolved as loners,
almost never in contact with other cats after reaching adulthood. Cats also
tend to start manifesting behavioral problems in a multicat
situation. Hence there is no such thing as “economies of scale” when breeding
cats. As long as you continue to give the cats all the veterinary care and other
things they deserve, the more cats
I. GETTING STARTED
When a breeder starts breeding for the first time, they have to buy at least one
very good female kitten to eventually be used for breeding. This female
(queen) must be registered and have an excellent pedigree. In addition, the
queen needs to be an outstanding example of her breed, absolutely sound and
cosmetically much better than pet quality. Outstanding examples of the breed
don't grow on trees and so usually the price of a breeding queen is high. Also,
it's very unlikely that the new breeder will be able to find and persuade a
reputable breeder to sell you a healthy, high quality female unless you have
first spent about a year educating yourself and networking with more
experienced breeders (see part G below). Experienced breeders don't want to
sell breeding cats to a newbie without abundant evidence that
the newbie will do right by her cats and by the breed. This cat will also have
to be shown to it highest level of championship which may take 4-8 months of
showing.
Expense #1: one year of prior networking (breed club dues, advertising,
telephone calls: $160) and one female kitten who costs $500 to $1000. Cat
show entries $1000-2500; hotels/gas/food for the cat shows and additional
$1500-2500. Total at least one year advance preparation and $2660 to $4160.
B. Next, every time a breeder buys a new kitten or cat for breeding they must
make certain that cat is healthy and won't transmit any diseases, parasites, or
genetic defects to the kittens (or to other cats already living in the home). The
veterinary testing includes a physical exam, stool exam for parasites,
blood tests (FIV, feline leukemia), and it's also wise to do PCR testing for hard-
to-detect parasites.
Expense #2: veterinary health screening, about $200 per cat.
The new breeder must either purchase an excellent stud and build him stud
quarters (very, very expensive and challenging for a newbie) - or must locate a
breeder with an excellent stud who is willing to provide stud service. A
responsible stud owner will want to protect the stud from possible exposure to
disease. Therefore, even though you had a thorough vet exam of your queen
when you first bought her, you will probably be asked to repeat at least the
blood tests and show the test results to the stud owner prior to each and every
breeding.
Expense #3: stud service and further health testing of queen, about $400 to
$600 per breeding. It's MORE expensive and much more work to keep your
own stud, but usually consistent quality stud service is not available and there
is no choice.
The breeder must pay to register a cattery name with at least one cat
association ($50 for CFA to be paid for a five-year registration), must register
her new breeding queen ($10), and must register each litter produced ($10).
There will be at least one litter per year and at least one kitten kept and
registered per year thereafter.
Expense #4: registration fees, at least $70 the first year and at least $20 per
year thereafter.
The breeder must buy two or three textbook type reference books to help learn
what she needs to know about making breeding decisions, veterinary
screening, genetic screening, rearing kittens, caring for females in heat, caring
for pregnant and lactating females, common feline diseases, feline nutrition,
and much more. Visiting the library is not sufficient because the library is
unlikely to have books that are up-to-date on feline husbandry - or may not
have books on that topic at all.
Expense #5: reference books, about $100 the first year and at least $10 per
year thereafter.
The breeder needs special equipment to rear litters of kittens. At minimum,
the breeder needs a heating pad designed specifically to be safe for kittens to
keep them warm ($40). Hypothermia is the leading cause of death of young
kittens. Also needed are clean rags for bedding and cleaning (cheap),
disinfectants and special urinary enzyme deodorizers to reduce disease risk
and aid in housebreaking ($20), feeding tubes and feeding syringes for weak or
sick kittens ($5), KMR kitten formula (there is a kitten who needs
supplementation or who threatens to need it in almost every litter, $20),
cardboard kittening box (cheap), at least two small litter pans for built for
kittens ($15), an accurate scale to weigh kittens every day ($15 to $100), first
aid and kitten delivery kit (latex gloves, twine, food coloring, betadine,
kaopectate, millions of paper towels, terramycin, eyedroppers, etc., about
$30).
Expense #6: kitten rearing equipment, about $145 to $230 for first litter and
at least $30 per year thereafter, or at least $30 for every subsequent litter.
The breeder needs to advertise kittens, promote the cattery, promote their
breed, and network with other breeders. Advertising of kittens can be done
various ways, but will cost an absolute minimum of $100 per year if you are
very lucky. Cattery promotion involves a form of year-round advertising,
which will cost at least $80 per year independent of kitten advertising. Breed
promotion and networking is not only to help the breeder advertise long-term,
but to altruistically help the breed, to help the breeder educate themselves,
and to provide the breeder with contacts that will help to achieve breeding
goals far into the future. To do these things a breeder must join at least one
cat association and at least one breeder's club at a cost of about $50 per year
in dues.
Expense #7: advertising, breed promotion, networking, about $320 per year
minimum.
The breeder must have a sales contract and other cattery forms, a cattery
brochure with which to answer written inquiries, may need business cards, and
must take photos of breeding cats and all kittens for cattery documentation,
advertising, and other purposes. The breeder must make many phone calls,
including long distance phone calls, as a courtesy in returning calls received
from kitten clients and even those merely curious about the breed. The
breeder must also do long-term follow-up on every kitten sold, telephoning
new owners regularly to answer questions and nip problems in the bud. All
these forms of communication come at a cost that is hard to estimate
accurately, but I would say a bare minimum of $10 per month.
Expense #8: forms, photos, phone calls, and other modes of communication,
about $120 per year.
II. MAINTENANCE OF ADULT CATS
Food, litter, routine veterinary bills, and other basic maintenance costs will
vary depending on the quality of the food and litter, the number of toys and
special furniture items purchased for the cat(s) and more.
But it always costs more than $500 per year to maintain one healthy adult cat
- and it can average as much as $2000 per cat per year, especially as cats
age. A queen can only be bred for 1 to 2 litters per
year for 5-6 years after which she must be spayed and retired. Every breeder
may begin with one queen, but eventually there will be other queens, perhaps
one or two studs, retirees, and a cat or two of any age that was too special to
the breeder to adopt out or that was unadoptable because of health or
behavioral problems. As cats age, their vet bills increase substantially,
beginning with annual dental cleaning ($150 per year) and accelerating to
much higher costs as the cat develops physical problems with aging. Even
though they retire some of their adult cats early and adopt them out into
loving homes, breeders sooner or later accumulate more elderly cats than a
pet owner usually would, with the result that their yearly expenses for taking
care of their beloved retirees and pensioners can be substantial. Even
adopting cats out all cats while still young is not a financial solution (and
certainly not an easy solution from an emotional perspective!) because the
more often cats are retired and adopted out, the more often the breeder must
buy a new breeding cat, pay for health screening, and register her/him. In
addition, an occasional new breeding cat will prove to be unbreedable for
various reasons and the effort and expense of finding a replacement must be
repeated yet again.
II. THE COSTS PER LITTER
Even once you have the kittening equipment and other overhead expenses
taken care of, there are additional costs incurred per litter. They include:
The queen must be vaccinated right before she is bred or in some cases during
the pregnancy. That's at least $10 if the vet does it (more if he charges for an
office visit) and $3 if you learn how to do it yourself (that's if you manage your
inventory perfectly and can avoid having vaccines expire before you can use
them all up, not that easy to do).
Stud fee and health screening discussed in part I section C above. $400 to
$600.
Queen will eat up to twice as much as usual during her pregnancy and up to
three times as much as usual while she is nursing the kittens. She needs
special premium quality food that is approved for pregnancy and lactation.
That is two 6-ounce cans per day for 9 weeks of pregnancy and 3 cans per day
for at least 8 weeks of lactation. Each can costs about 50 cents for premium
food, so that is 63 days X $1.00 + 56 days X $1.50 = $147.00.
Kittens can die within hours if they don't get enough to eat because of a
feeding problem. So you need to keep emergency formula, feeding tubes, and
feeding syringes on hand. The formula needs to be purchased fresh nearly
every time you have a litter, so that's $20 per litter.
The kittens will begin to eat solid food at age 4-6 weeks and will be eating
almost entirely solid food at age 8 weeks. At age 8 weeks, each kitten eats
about two 3-ounce cans per day of premium food rated for growing kittens and
will eat perhaps 1/8 cup of dry premium kitten food each day. What they
don't eat, they spill soil, scatter, or play with until it must be discarded. The
kittens will stay with the breeder usually until age 12 weeks - and sometimes
for much longer. So that's a minimum of 3 cans X 4 weeks X 33 cents per can
= $28 per kitten. Average litter size for Siamese is five kittens, so 5 X $28 =
$140.00. Then the dry food adds up to 1/8 cup X 5 kittens X 28 days = 17.5
cups. So that's about one 4 pound bag of premium kitten food per litter, or
$8.00. Total food for kittens is $140 + $8 = $148.00.
The kittens will require at least two vaccinations, one at age 9 weeks and one
at age 12 weeks. Those cost $10 each if the vet does it, or $3 each if the
breeder does it. So that's five kittens X 2 vaccinations X $10 per vacc =
$100.00, or alternatively it is $30.00 if the breeder does her own vaccinations.
Each kitten must be spayed or neutered prior to adoption. This is responsible
breeding that prevents new owners from unintentionally failing to neuter
kittens in time to prevent accidental litters. Breeders aim to preserve their
breeds but they also wish to avoid adding to the numbers of homeless cats on
the streets and in shelters. If you can find a good low-cost early neuter clinic
(not always possible), average cost of neutering is $25.00 per kitten X four
kittens = $100.00. NOTE: If you can't find a low-cost neutering clinic, it will
cost you about $50.00 and up to neuter and or spay each kitten. The reason
there are only four kittens neutered, and not five, is because the breeder
nearly always keeps one kitten from each litter to see if it will have potential
as a future breeding or show cat. Obviously, in many cases the kitten does not
realize its potential and thus is eventually placed in a home as a pet, but
placed at a later age it may have to be sold for almost nothing.
In virtually all litters there is at least one kitten who during his 12 weeks
living with the breeder requires veterinary attention due to an umbilical
infection, failure to thrive normally, getting poked in the eye, falling off a
table the wrong way, developing an upper respiratory infection, developing a
minor eye infection during the period when the eyes are starting to open,
needing a re-examination after neutering, being born with a minor birth defect,
developing a mysterious limp, swallowing a foreign object, or many
other possible calamities. Kittens are like small human children. They have a
talent for getting themselves into scrapes or picking up bugs. The veterinary
costs typically vary from a $35 exam (to be on the safe side) to $300
emergency surgery or treatment (off-hours).
Occasionally, the queen requires a C-section to deliver her kittens or may
require treatment after the birth of the kittens due to lactational diarrhea,
intestinal obstruction, mastitis, hemorrhaging, uterine infection, or other
complications. The costs associated with treating these problems may run up
to $1200 for an emergency off-hours C-section. Also, if C-section is required
up to half of the litter may die due to side effects of the anesthesia. Kittens
may also be lost due to the effects of complications on the queen's
milk production.
The queen will require at least one precautionary prenatal or perinatal
veterinary examination, $35.00.
The litter must be registered and the one kitten who is kept must be
individually registered, $20.00.
You must replenish, repair, replace some of the kittening equipment each
litter (see part I), $30.
Total costs per litter in best case scenario where all goes well, breeder does
own vaccinations,and
somehow no kitten gets sick = $933.00
IV. INCOME FROM ONE LITTER OF KITTENS
If the breeder keeps one kitten and sells four, the income is 4 X $400 =
$1600.00
In the best-case scenario J-1 and if you ignore start-up costs and overhead for
a moment, you have
$1600 - 933 = $667.00
But the queen originally cost you at least $500 + $160 for advance networking
+ $200 for health screening + $10 for registration + min $500 per year
maintenance for perhaps six years of reproductive
life. Total cost of queen = $1370. Divide that by six years and you get $228
per year (and that's the minimum she cost you assuming you don't have to
support her after her retirement). Since she only produced one litter per year,
you have to subtract the cost of her support from the litter income: $667.00
- $228.00 = $439.00. And of course in reality you didn't get a best-case
scenario from every litter she produced. But let's suppose you did...
You also paid $160 per year in networking and advertising for six years while
you were breeding her. $439 - 160 = $279.00.
You had $120 per year of long distance phone calls and related expenses.
$279 - $120 = $159.00.
You had the costs of registering a cattery name with CFA $50 per five years.
We are actually talking about breeding the queen for six years, but let's be
generous and average the cattery reg fees over five years, or $10 per year.
$159.00 - 10 = $149.00.
Oh, and Uncle Sam won't let you deduct your cattery expenses as business
expenses because it will turn out you never make a profit. So you have to
declare your kitten income as hobby income and pay taxes on at LEAST
everything you make in immediate "profit," so let's say that's 25% of part A's
$667.00 = $167.00.Now $149.00 - 167.00 = - $18.00. So now you've LOST
$18.00 per year even with a best-case scenario.
But we're not done. Reference books were $100 (during preparatory year) +
$10 per year X 6 years = $160.00 divided by 6 = $27.00. So that makes a loss
of $45.00 per year.
And there was the $145.00 of up-front kittening equipment. Divide that by 6
years and you have $24.00.
So now we have lost $69.00 per year under the very best of circumstances.
Remember that due to the occasional accident of nature, you may also end up
with at least one unadoptable kitten, a kitten with a special health or
behavioral problem, to which you must give a lifetime of love and good care.
That adds to the richness of your emotional experience with the cats, but it
also costs you a lot more.
And we haven't even talked about what it would cost you if you were showing
your cats several times per year at cat shows!
ECONOMIES OF SCALE? Well, you say, maybe if you buy more than one
breeding queen and start raising more litters per year, THEN you can make a
profit. Unfortunately, it turns out that with cats the more breeding cats you
have living together, the higher your costs climb.
First of all, you absolutely can bet you won't have a best-case scenario with all
the litters produced by every cat, so you will be much more in debt from some
cats than others. You can also bet that a percentage of the breeding cats you
buy will turn out to be unbreedable, will die unexpectedly, will
develop pyometra and have their reproductive lives cut short, and so on.
As the number of cats you buy climbs beyond about one, you will find that it
becomes nearly impossible to continue to get by with stud service. There
aren't many breeders who will offer stud service and who have a high quality
stud and who are located near you. In fact, there may not be any. And if you
have multiple queens, you can't be shipping them ALL long distances on a
regular basis. Also, your stud service provider may be unable to offer you all
the stud services you need WHEN you need them.
So you buy a stud. That means you have to have special stud housing that will
cost you at least several hundred dollars in materials and several hundred
more in equipment (e.g., special cleanable surfaces, heated bed and other
niceties for the studhouse). Now you also have to maintain the stud year-round
whether he is siring litters or not. And you have to hire someone to care for
him while you are out of town. Studs are not cats you can leave in the hands
of just anyone, especially if they spray urine heavily on a daily basis.
If you have multiple queens, you will begin to have some problems with them
getting along. In some cases, that may mean you have to spay one and adopt
her out to keep the peace. And you may suddenly have extra vet trips to help
you differentiate and treat behavioral versus medical problems. You will also
need cages (about $175 per cage and up). With multiple queens often several
of them will come into heat at once. If allowed to roam the house, the wailing
will drive you and possibly your neighbors to distraction. Queens in heat also
tend to spray urine on furniture. It's easy to monitor the behavior of just one
queen in heat and leave her free to roam, but when you have several queens in
heat that's not feasible. You have to confine them during each heat cycle. You
will need more kittening equipment, such as multiple heating pads, because
often more than one queen will have kittens at the same time.
You will need to remodel portions of your home. When you have multiple
breeding cats and several litters of kittens born per year, you need rooms in
which to separately isolate young fragile litters. You need cleanable,
bleachable surfaces so you can disinfect because having litters around all the
time greatly increases the risk of infectious disease. It becomes extremely
difficult to keep carpets clean in a house of multiple cats, especially with
young ones underfoot all the time, so you need to replace the carpets with
Pergo or tile or similar cleanable surface. You need to get rid of the lacy
curtains because young kittens can poke their heads through them and
strangle themselves. You need to replace your old furniture with furniture you
can easily clean.
Yes, you can keep the home sanitary and odorless when you have multiple
breeding cats. You can keep the cats happy and healthy. But it will require
remodeling. It will cost you money. When you only have one queen and one
litter per year you can work around the limitations of your home. But once
you have multiple cats and multiple litters per year, you can't. The
remodeling will cost you thousands of dollars. Just replacing all the carpets
with Pergo or tile can cost ten thousand dollars. With multiple cats and
multiple litters you will, despite the best of vaccination and quarantine
systems, occasionally end up with epidemics. Those may be minor or they
may be serious, but they always mean large vet bills. It's very much like
running a day-care center full of young children who succumb to every new
virus and bug that's out there. When you only have one queen and one litter
per year, you have very minimal vet bills, but once you graduate to multiple
breeding cats and litters, the vet bills can be substantial. Cats evolved to
live by themselves most of the time. Consequently, they are very susceptible
to epidemic diseases, much more so than dogs.
So why do breeders bother to breed multiple cats and litters?
Because they want to keep the breed going and also hopefully improve its
health and appearance. You can't accomplish much for a breed when breeding
only one cat.
So much for the "profits" in cat-breeding.
When you buy a kitten from a reputable breeder, you are helping the breeder
with some of the expenses of breeding so she or he can keep the breed going.
It's that simple.
by Dr. C. Bird of Sarsenstone Cattery
