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What determines the cost of a puppy?
Breeding a litter is not as easy as most people think. Beginners think that all you do is throw two dogs in the back yard and BANG 8 weeks later you have puppies. Nothing could be farther from the truth. A lot of time, energy, planning and expense go into a breeding. Lets first look at the female. You can expect to pay between $1000.00 and $2000.00 for your new breeding quality puppy. After completing all required health tests and clearances you will have racked up and additional $900 to $1500 What health test are that expensive you might ask. OFA Hips / Elbows, Eye CERF's, Von Willenbrands Blood Test, Cardio Test, Thyroid Test as well as spinal Test for wobblers disease. Now that your female has passed all the required health test lets look at her temperament. Did she receive adequate training to proof her intelligence and train ability. If so this could run from $295 up to $2500 if you wanted to train for an advanced competition title. What about your average vet bills for yearly health maintenance. Barring any unforeseen accidents this will average about $900 per year. Now your total investment just for you female is well over $4000 if we take a low average.
Now you want to breed her. Well you must locate a qualified Stud dog. Of course you could try to cut corners and find a local Doberman, right? Wrong, of the Tens of Thousands of Dobermans in the USA today. Less then 10% are of true Breeding/Show/Working quality. Any conformation judge from any national organization can attest to this fact. The chances of finding a quality stud with in your local area is extremely low. Unless you are fortunate enough to have a qualified reputable breeder who is a member of the national Doberman clubs in your area don't try to cheat on this one. Now that you located your Stud of choice what is the stud fee going to cost you. On average you will pay somewhere between $1000 and $1500 for stud fee. This does not include your travel expenses to get your female to the Stud. Shipping could cost as much as $500 each way depending on the airline. What if your female does not travel well and you decide to Artificially Inseminate. Now you have to do Progesterone Test every other day to determine when your female will ovulate. These test range from $50 to $70 each you may need as many as 6 to successfully time your females ovulation.
WAIT, WE STILL HAVE MORE EXPENSES !
Now you must contact the stud's veterinarian and arrange for a semen collection and shipment. You will have to do 2 of these to have a high chance at conception. Not every Veterinarian is qualified to do A.I. collections. You must choose a licenced Veterinarian who has experience at collection and shipment this could run as high a $250 per collection. Now you can't just ship semen in an envelop you must have a approved container you can rent one from the semen bank for around $80. But, wait you say you want to do a FROZEN semen breeding well now, instead of 6 progesterone test you must do a more accurate test to determine ovulation. LH test will be AT LEAST $70 each and you will have to do these daily because if you do not time your females ovulation perfectly you will miss the opprotunity at a litter. In the past I have done as many as 11 LH tests to time the breeding. The tank for shipping semen is available from the Semen bank for $300.
So by the time to pay for your female and all of her expenses you will be into this dog well over $4000. When you decide to breed and choose a Stud dog and all the expenses related to breeding you will be out of pocket another $2000 to $3000 and GUESS WHAT? There is NO GUARANTEE that your female will even get pregnant. Now, that is what breeding is all about !
But wait. Lets say your female did get pregnant. She delivered 10 healthy puppies. If you were lucky enough not to have to do a C-Section. Our last C-Section to save mom and pups cost us over $1000. You still have to dock the puppies tails and dewclaws $167 for a litter of 10 at our vet (and this is with our employee discount) plus the pups worming medication and Puppy Shots $19.00 per puppy.
Now who is going to buy these pups. You must advertise so that people will come buy your pups right? It takes usually 4 - 6 weeks to sell a litter of 10 puppies. A local ad in your newspaper will run about $45 per week, and what kind of qualified homes are you going to find from people who see your ad in the newspaper ? Your guess is as good as mine. If you place an ad in the National Doberman Magazine this could cost you several hundred dollars. Plus you must be a member of that National Club before the let you put an ad in there magazine. Assuming you did everything as cheaply as possible. You may not have sold all your pups, now what? you 4 or 5 of the pups left at 12 weeks. Well you better decide if you are going to do the ears and if so this could run you as much as $450 per puppy. If not what are you going to do with these left over pups. If you don't socialize them properly you will have a wild bunch of puppies that nobody will want to buy.
Now looking at the total investment of over $7000 to $10,000 before you get any pups sold. You are probably wondering why anyone would want to breed a litter. It is not for the money I can tell you that. If I had 10 litters and everything went perfectly I still wouldn't break even with the money I have invested in my dogs. So looking at it this way $750 - $1500 is not a bad price to pay for a quality puppy is it? If breeders were more like business professionals they would have to sell each puppy for over $3000 just to clear a profit.
Will my new Doberman be good with kids?
If a picture is worth a thousand words then we have tens of thousand of words worth of proof on our kids and dogs page. Check it out.
Do you Guarantee your pups?
Absolutely, each puppy comes with complete written health and hip guarantee. Plus, we also give FREE obedience classes with each puppy sold. See our training company website at www.abetterpetboise.com for a complete information on classes.
