Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Breeding Cats - Business or Hobby

Can breeding cats ever be a true business? Fair Question? Probably yes, because the first concern is always the cat and the second concern is the breed generally. Finally there are commercial concerns. Is that a way to run a business?

A properly run business should have one target - making money. When you try and make money out of animals you will invariably have a conflict of interest.

This is because to give best welfare to your cats (as a breeder) will be more expensive than not giving best welfare. Higher overheads, less profit.

There are also breeding issues. As a breeder you need to sell kittens. That means reducing kittens to a product that sells. There must be a compromise in welfare there.

Sometimes as for Dwarf cats, breeding dwarf to dwarf results in more dwarf kittens than breeding non-dwarf to dwarf. But it is dangerous to breed dwarf to dwarf cat as some kittens inherit both dwarf genes and die in the womb. Bad welfare - conflict of interest.

The answer is that breeding cats is foremost a hobby and if money comes from this, that's OK. The wider issues should also be addressed such as feral cat populations on the rise and the need to regulate cat breeding to help control this.


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