I need information about breeding labrador retrievers.?

Question

I already have a 2 year old Chocolate Lab and I am wanting to obtain a Yellow Lab for a pet/breeding. I don't want to become a kennel. I just would like to have a few sets of puppies out of these two. I have been told there is a lot involved with this. Does anyone know of any good websites that would provide me with the information I need??

The dog I have is not show quality...he is just a pet. And where can you find out about these puppy lemon laws for Illinois?? Because I have had a 6 month old dog die from a blood disease and a 1.5 yr old die for no reason...

Answer 1

Here ya go:
http://www.woodhavenlabs.com/breeding.html

Answer 2

A good place to start is to contact your local kennel club, and if you don't know who that is, find out from the AKC.org website. They can help you find a mentor and recommend books for you to read.

I am not a lab breeder, but I own a yellow lab. I know that breeders typically do not breed a yellow lab with a chocolate lab because the resulting pups can be yellow with a chocolate noses. The AKC standard calls for a black nose on a yellow dog, so these pups would automatically be pet quality dogs. And you don't want to SET OUT to breed pet quality dogs. You want to try to improve the breed, and even then you will end up with some/most of pet quality. Here is a discussion and chart of color and inheritance from a company that can test your dog for recessive coat color traits.

http://www.vetgen.com/chromagene-coat-color.html

Since you already have a chocolate dog, I think you will want to breed him/her with a black or chocolate dog. You may still be able to produce yellow pups depending on the colors that the parents carry. But you don't want to breed a yellow and a chocolate.

EDIT: Well, if your dog is not show quality, you shouldn't breed him/her. If you're interested in breeding, look for a show quality dog. and while you're waiting, you can learn more about breeding.

Answer 3

You shouldn't breed them because there are WAY too many homeless dogs out there. There are 125,160 homeless dogs on petfinder.com. And that's just a website. There are so many other dogs out there in other shelters that need home, but people are obsessed with getting a Pure breed (I know you said you don't care, but most people do), but there are so many dogs that are put to sleep everyday because of unwanted litters. Or because they are not purebreds. When purebreds have so many more health problems when mutts. Ever if you do only bred them a few times what if they have 12 puppies each time? I know that's very rare, but it could happen. That would just be 24 more homes for puppies, when instead people could go to a shelter and save 24 lives. My family has 3 dogs and we bred them once and they had 6 puppies, 2 of them went to the pound cause the people didn’t want them anymore cause they acted like puppies, 2 of them we don’t know about cause we don’t know the people, we kept one (that's because we couldn't find a home for her, but that's ok, we wanted her anyways and we love her) and the other one the people gave away cause they didn’t want her anymore. And every single person we gave the puppies to they told use there was "no way at all that they would give anyway the puppy" and every one of them did. I’m not saying that you’re a bad person; I’m just saying that you should really reconsider breeding your dogs.

Answer 4

Take your current Lab for all the health checks that are needed for Labs. Hip and elbow x-rays, eye certification......etc. IF he passes all the health clearances, then go from there. You would have to get a female, wait until she is two, and do the same thing. THEN worry about breeding. There is NO excuse for bringing unhealthy puppies into the world. If you do not care about showing and making sure the parents are both excellent examples of the breed, then at least make sure they are healthy.
Also become aquainted with the laws regarding selling puppies in your state. You are held to some basic laws even if you are not a big breeder. You can still be sued under the state puppy lemon laws, and may be required to provide certain paperwork to puppy buyers.
Better to be informed.

Just do a web serch for puppy lemon laws. They have them for every state.

If you have had bad experience with crappy breeders, stop trying to become one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 5

Glad to see you are doing research, however have you done it on the dogs? Hip dysplayia is common in labs. Have you checked the bloodlines of yours to see if it has breed out? Are your dogs champions and have they been shown and won? These are just the start of things that need to be done before you breed. Also Labs are a dime a dozen in rescues and shelters ans are always overlooked. They are a hard breed to own as they are very energetic and act like puppies alot longer then most breeds. Please consider everything before you breed and Please make sure you have high quality dogs.

Answer 6

Bare minimum:

Dogs with titles that have pedigrees with titles (hunting, showing).
Understanding of the pedigree for faults and genetic issues
Realization that the dog you own is RARELY the right dog to breed your b*tch to (cross faulting and pedigree compatability is a must)
OFA for hips/elbows, CERF for eyes, Heart & Thyroid certified
Understanding of color inheritance in labs.

Then you start learning about reproduction, whelping and rearing pups as well as writing contracts for puppy sales (so the pups you produce don't end up in a shelter).

You can't make money at it if you do it correctly. (Even the IRS agrees with me).

EDIT: So what you're saying is you've been stung twice by purchasing dogs from less than responsible breeders ... yet you are considering doing a breeding with "just a pet"? What makes you think you won't end up selling pups with the same sorts of issues??

Answer 7

Do you have show quality labs? Because even Show quality dogs have pet quality puppies. There's no reason to breed pet quality dogs. There's too many "sets of puppies" out there in need of homes to create more.

Answer 8

You are in for a rude awakening.
50% of the time when you breed a chocolate to a yellow you will get all black puppies. Half of the yellow puppies, if you get any, will be "dudleys".
As a normal rule of thumb NEVER BREED A CHOCOLATE TO A YELLOW!!!! So you defiantly need to educate yourself about Labrador genetics.

Any time you breed for the purpose of color the quality of the dogs goes down. So two other normal rules are;
Always breed to quality.
Always breed back to black

Almost all quality yellow or chocolate Labs have at least one black parent.
Even if breed your chocolate to a "BbEe" black dog any yellow that recieves the recessive "b" from the black dog will still be a dudley.

Answer 9

Do have your dogs examined for hip issues first. This is important in big dogs and especially in labs.
As far as breeding, any two intact dogs figure out how to do it without help. Thousands of years before humans decided to intervene, dogs were procreating. They really do know how to do it by instinct.

Answer 10

well, let me just stress this, it is hard to take care of a litter of puppies, you have to have a room just for them, because if not your house will be filled with crap and pee spots and they chew EVERYTHING. and, it can be hard to sell all the puppies and you might end up giving some up just to get rid of them. Other than that there's really not much else to do. the dog starts to bleed and they breed and about 3 months later you have puppies.

Answer 11

I am exhausted by telling people over and over not to breed. Labs are the most common breed in shelters. Making more will only keep helpless dogs in shelters. If you want more puppies, please contact your local shelter.