At what age do you mate your bitches?

How old are the bitches when you mate them in your contry? Is there a rule in your club?
In iceland you can mate them when they are 18 months old.
And you can have 2 litters in one year, and then you have to wait for one year after that to be able to mate them again.

Hy,
As a veterinary student I can suggest that one can mate his dog, after he is 2 years old, because the growing period should completely end by that time. After mating the dog it stops growing and it can affect his well-fare, specially speaking about bitches. Males usually can mate earlier, but only after reaching 75% of his mature body-weight. Mating a bitch 2 times a year is a little bit exhausting for her, it is better to mate every year once, more likely in springtime. This way she has enough time to regenerate his body reserves after nursing, her bones have time to go back to normal position and you will have smaller chance to face small litters, difficult births and maybe undersized puppies.
Even when feeding high quality dog food, you can not keep her in maximum condition to give birth for 5-6 puppies 2 times a year.

If the rules are sett it should be followed. But if vetenary thinks the best age is 2 years for bitches it has to be based on genology.

To mate before 18 months are for puppymills and commercial breeding.

For the males it should be at least 15 months especialy for breeders that want to be responsible. For test it is usally at 12 months that they count for real. For PRA and CATRACT it is the minimum age to be able to see if it is developing or not. To use males before that even if they have gone through test it should not be counted at all. 12 months is the rule in most countries that have looked at......

But greed and commercial breeding is the biggest problem in the whole world Some breeder do even false the birthdates and mate in every heat season, that is greed....and if there is "an unplaned" it can be stoped if you are thinking for the breed not the greed.......... there is no exscuse to say it was an acident you should know better when your bitch is in heat to keep her separted other wise you are careless in your breeding.....

In the UK the youngest case of PRA was in a 3 year old dog and it can come on anytime later. Eye screening only shows you if a dog is affected at the time, so as a basis for choosing a breeding age, it is a very hit and miss way of going about it, IMO.

There have been cases of HC in giants that didn't appear until the dog was 10 or in one case 13 years of age, well passed the breeding age for a bitch. Until we can get DNA tests for these problems, we can only use our judgement on the individual dog and know what the history of eye testing is in that dogs pedigree. Some breeders rehome ex-breeding stock or just stop eye testing once they have finished breeding, this can then allow a problem with the eyes to go undetected and unreported in the breed.


With the breeding age, I think with minis that 18 months is a nice minimum age if the dog is mentally mature enough, some are not. I'm not saying that they should be bred at that age though!

I mate females after 2 years old. Our breed club sets minimum age 16 months.

Cornish Rex wrote:
For the males it should be at least 15 months especialy for breeders that want to be responsible. For test it is usally at 12 months that they count for real. For PRA and CATRACT it is the minimum age to be able to see if it is developing or not. To use males before that even if they have gone through test it should not be counted at all. 12 months is the rule in most countries that have looked at......

If it is not congenital hereditary cataract, than you can see already in a puppy age, than 15 months doesn't help anything. Mostly PRA comes in about 4 years of age, and cataract can appear in age 2-5 years, and later, of course.

So, if we think about eye deseases we shouldn't mate dog before 5 years old. And the most safe way - not to mate at all.

Normally We don't use our females before 3 years old.Much breeders think that we are crazy but they can think of they want.My female Dama has her firts and unique litter with 4 years old,Contry with 5years old and the second wih 6 years,after a litter we wait minimum 1 year.
For Xsara has been her firts litter with 6 year old ,very later I know...but she only has one season in the year.For our female AC ,this year will be her firts litter and she has now 3 years old.

Here in Spain for the females the age minimum are 15 month old,for me they are very youngs...and is crazy for me to think in use one of my females with that age but this is only my opinion.The age maximun are 9 years old.
For the males are 10 month old minimun and 11 years old maximun.

Here in Germany with the PSK, miniatures are allowed to be bred with from 15 months and the giants from 18 months. By the time you have gone to your dog shows for breeding permission they are usually around 2 years old before mating (minis). I have never had a problem with any of my bitches when they were bred with at that age or sometimes a few months younger (even when I bred Yorkies years ago).
Cornish Rex said:To mate before 18 months are for puppymills and commercial breeding.
Excuse me? Germany has very high standards where dog breeding is concerned (VDH) and if the attached clubs allow breeding your bitch from 15 months then how can you compare that with a puppymill or even commercial breeding?

Lipgloss wrote:Here in Germany with the PSK, miniatures are allowed to be bred with from 15 months and the giants from 18 months. By the time you have gone to your dog shows for breeding permission they are usually around 2 years old before mating (minis). I have never had a problem with any of my bitches when they were bred with at that age or sometimes a few months younger (even when I bred Yorkies years ago).
Cornish Rex said:To mate before 18 months are for puppymills and commercial breeding.
Excuse me? Germany has very high standards where dog breeding is concerned (VDH) and if the attached clubs allow breeding your bitch from 15 months then how can you compare that with a puppymill or even commercial breeding?

Yes I will Excuse you no problem at all. But no one is perfect even for your very strict rules by VDH you can find bad seeds everywhere. And in germany you have bad seeds in many breeds just like other countires.

But I am not going to change my mind about my opnion off responsible breeding and other kind of breeding aproved by kennel clubs.

Not me you or anyone else can speak for a whole nation at all but our own opnion can stay as we think....

So true Cornish Rex, nobody is perfect and there always bad seeds amongst the good ones.
I see myself as a good seed, eventhough I 'use' my bitches for mating under the age of 2 years.
Whether or not you see me as a good seed or not is immaterial.
The fact is I treat my dogs well, I feed them accordingly and I go by the rules of my breed club and Kennel Club. I.E. I am not a puppy farmer, nor do I drink my tea from gold cups.

I had bad experience breeding 2 years old bitch.
After puppies it was very complicated to get her back in shape (like at some women extra weight stayed)...
Now I prefer to close all titles and only then get puppies.

Also I have bitch who looks her best only after puppies. She was winning while kids were 2-3 months of age.

But I prefer not to experiment anymore-all women are different and lets first have society life and only then big family with husband and kids....

I have always questioned why you see the same people having puppies for sale so frequently and I do think you are correct---it is greed.