I have been dog breeding for over thirty years. The old style working English springers were where I started. From then on I outcrossed my springer line with Weimaraners and other pointer breeds to develop the Fenlander, my own strain of working dog, to fit my style of shooting and environment. But my story is not about my dogs as much as it is about the current state of the recent breeding laws and licenses. 

I voluntarily got a breeding license a year or two before the new laws were draw up, (so six years ago), even though the council officer reasoned it wasn’t worth me having one for the number of litters I had a year. But I needed to have the flexibility of extra litters if need be to bring in traits and widen gene pools with other breeds if necessary. 

The new laws and regulations came through and we had a bit of a shakeup and sort out with our Heath Robinson set up to bring the kennels into the new focus. That was fair enough and we spent a bit of time, money and thought on the site. But what was not so fair enough was much of mentality and ignorance in the stipulations regarding breeding and whelping. There were many areas that we were not happy with or convinced were in the best interests of animal welfare.

There is the subject of whelping temp. A temp of 26-28c was put forward by DEFRA and adopted as the rule of thumb. I have no idea how they came up with this temp which is more a temperature for hatching reptile eggs. A dog, even with a short coat will start to pant much over 20 degrees Celsius, and at 26 plus and giving birth will be stressed, distracted and in discomfort. I have never whelped pups at this temperature purposely and have found that as long as the floor is dry, of  warm material and the area out of draughts, 10-15c Celsius is adequate, in fact probably the better temperature as nature intended. For in natural settings, from experience, a dog will excavate a deep den under a shed or similar if left to it and whelp there…no excessive heat. The observations suggests the cooler temperature encourages the pups to move around and search for the mother’s warmth and when she is out, to huddle together rather than wander from the creche. There is also good reason to believe that the act of pups laying on their backs, flaked out, in the early days, due to excess heat, is bad for lung and rib cage development. Huddling and competing naturally helps reduce these deformities and strengthens muscles and joints. I would suggest 15-20 Celsius Max. 

The controversial engagement of interfering, meddling, handling the pups and whelping bitch has been pushed to the maximum in this next ruling. A somewhat ridiculous, near pointless, intrusive operation of taking weights, sexes, colours, markings, birth timings and placenta recorded, at a time when the bitch is most vulnerable and stressed is flawed, cruel and detrimental to calm, safe whelping . Every time a pup is picked up it invariable squeals and results in the anxious bitch lurching up and trying to retrieve her pup. In this action the pups are put in definite situation of being kicked, stood or laid upon, not to mention any pups that were settled and feeding get flung across the bed.

All this taking details can surely wait till 24 hours after she has finished and things have settled down. As for checking for every placenta being passed,  I would imagine any following pup would evict the previous pup’s placenta from the birth canal so surely it is only of the last pup’s that any attention needs to be taken.

 Inspecting the bitch every hour and a quick count of pups each time should be enough. If there is no show after an hour or so the bitch should be taken for a ten minute walk around the garden. This does two things, gives them chance to relieve themselves, which would be a discomfort it itself, and also can help get the next pup going in to birthing position. Invariably within ten minutes the next pup is born. 

I struggle to see why pups as young as 6 weeks old can’t travel without the mother. There’s something fundamentally wrong with the rearing if the pups aren’t nearly weaned by six weeks and spending most of the day away from the mother, as much for the mother’s sake. 

‘Rewarding desired behaviour and ignoring unwanted’ Reward based training hits a bit of a wall in my psychology. For it may have it’s uses for light social training such as jumping up or excited barking in an enclosed institution but is totally useless in the real world for a fixated dog chasing cats, livestock, aggressive behaviour or having a jolly across the countryside, which can’t be ignored and will usually need sterner negative or more radical attention. Every dog is different and every dog’s life’s experience is unique. 

Some dogs are leaders/independent, some followers, some are adventurous, some content to potter. Bold, timid.  Dogs’ general perception is black and white, positive and negative and they are NOT HUMAN, they are one step from a wolf. 

In the legislation it states that a person or house hold, I believe, can have up to but no more than two litters in a twelve month period, without a breeder’s license. And no more than a £1000 can be made in profit after the immediate expenses of rearing. This leads to many questions and quandaries. There are something like 23,000 litters being advertised just on the main UK pet site at the moment. A mere 10% of those it seems have a breeders license. A terrier breeder can have a litter and expect around 6 pups. Fenlanders can have up to 14 in a litter. The terrier breeder could keep one for replacement and sell 5 pups for £250 each without a license. A bit under priced but enough. 11 spare Fenlanders from a litter of 12 would have to be sold at a little over £100 each or half the pups culled soon after birth, because those pups, whether Fenlanders, Springers or Labradors, are at great risk and temptation to being bought and sold on at a tidy profit. Buying two pups for £250, a week later advertised for ‘Adoption due to family crisis’ at £500 each. This could easily be done every month under different aliases and addresses. We have rumbled a ring of such people during lockdown when Cockers bitches were sort after for breeding cockerpoos, that as soon as we advertised an ex breeding bitch for rehoming, we got a barrage of callers willing to give her a good home. Doing a search on the phone numbers brought up multitudes of recent adverts of these people selling cocker bitches due to ‘Marriage break ups’ etc.

The two litter, £1000 max profit ruling puts a great bias against those who generally come in under the hobby breeder, the sporting and working dogs such as bred by gamekeepers, hunters, pest control, livestock farmers that rely on their well-bred, often many generation owned strains of specialist dogs. If these professional and experienced breeders are forced to stop breeding, valuable quality gene pools and diversities will be lost. The balance is that if the majority of one and two litter hobby breeders are priced and bullied out of the market it leaves breeding to fill the void for the 1.5 million pups needed a year, open to indiscriminate mass production institutions and kennels where quality of stock and life is given over for quantity, and smuggling pups in from the continent. Surely it is better to have many smaller passionate, conscientious  breeders with diverse gene pools than a few large kennels with closely related stock. A lot of these hobby breeders of working dogs need to have a litter or two yearly for replacements and to help cover the upkeep of their dogs. Often, a keeper will need to have terriers, Labradors and spaniels to cover all the criteria. 

I have only broached the working/sporting dog hobby breeders at this time, which I would think is probably less than ¼ of the 23,000 litters on the main pet advertising site. There will be other classes of pure breed dogs of show or functional purpose such as German Shepherd, Rottweiler, Spitz and gundog breeds sold as pets. Then there is the mass designer type dogs such as the Cocker poo, Cavapoo, Dachapoo and ridiculouspoo hysteria that has seen mass opportunistic, irresponsible, indiscriminate breeding and prices from the home and back yard. 

So, if we were to balance all of these dilemmas is it that we should make it compulsory for everyone to have a license that wants to breed? Would it work if for potential breeders that want up to two litters in twelve month periods, they could do an online test and application?... 

With basic detailing assessment of the breeds, rearing environment, expected number of pups and price per pup sold, VAT details and a question, answer, guide and test for whelping and rearing. Given that they could ask reasonable money for pups and they are tax aware, it should give everyone scope to operate sensibly and at the same time hopefully  filter a lot of the unsavoury breeders and breeding practices out. 

Of course this is not going to be very efficient if the advertising sites aren’t held responsible too. So, you make it easier, more comfortable and workable for the majority of sellers, at the same time the advertising sites by law can’t let people advertise pups unless they produce a minimum of a basic license.