What is the role of a Birman cat breeder?
“A breeder is not just a person who loves cats excessively, but also a person who decides to dedicate their life, their free time, and their money to improving and spreading the breed.”
But what do the words improvement and expansion mean?
Improving the breed means many things: enriching the genetic pool by producing healthy and standard kittens, which presupposes a careful selection of parents, taking into account the degree of consanguinity and their clinical history; enriching knowledge about genetics and issues related to feline health, in order to avoid incorrect mating choices and/or failure to recognize diseases that could affect cats; limiting (by castration or sterilization) carriers of genetic or hereditary diseases, in order to prevent the production of sick kittens or carrier kittens; also constantly monitoring cats already entrusted to families in order to monitor the health of their offspring; constantly informing about the development of research and veterinary medicine regarding the diseases to which the breed is usually exposed. By propagation, we mean both the careful selection for kittens born in breeding, the best possible placement with responsible and attentive owners, and the effort to make the beauty and typical characteristics of the breed known to the outside world.”
Husbandry means:
- have a lot of patience;
- not to be discouraged by failures if the conditions were right;
- follow the advice of those who have more experience, without pride, envy, jealousy;
- the goal is to create physically and mentally healthy cats;
- to hand over to new owners only kittens that meet the aforementioned characteristics, to be able to make sacrifices when necessary, even money or sentimentality;
- to know how to be honest with yourself;
be prepared to sacrifice Sundays, holidays and sometimes even nights, because something can always happen; - to make sure that two samples are not enough to produce many samples;
- to be aware that there is always something to learn;
- to have a thousand eyes that are always awake;
- and finally… luck!
Did you know?
Learning to breed is virtually impossible, because breeding is not a job, but an art, and art is innate and can only be perfected with experience, but it can be taught to those who do not have it.
Learning to breed is practically impossible, because breeding is not a job, but an art, and art is innate and can only be perfected with experience, but it can be taught to those who do not have it.
We must always start from typical, but not excessively, physically and psychologically healthy breeders, we must not consider ourselves to be the new Tesla and be satisfied with raising puppies that meet the requirements of the chosen breed in all respects, and we must consider ourselves satisfied when we manage to produce a high percentage of such subjects.
In fact, it is negative to try to breed a great champion at all costs, while neglecting all the others, instead it is more important to know how to create a high average of subjects that meet the required requirements.
We must also value the experience not only of our own, but also of others and be aware that there is always something new to learn and, so to speak, every litter, every puppy is an example in itself.