Two new litters within 3 days!!

Very cute. Congratulations on all the healthy babies. I'm a little confused, though. You said Bonnie had 3 kittens, but there are 4 in the picture. Does one of them belong to Molly?

Wow you have had a few busy days. congratulations

Didn't Molly just have a litter in early March????? It's not even been 3 months since she last gave birth. . . You might want to give her a decent break after this litter. The birthing process is hard on a cat, and the ideal waiting period is three months after birth and an additional month for every kitten raised to weaning age.

I think Oreo and Maddie are the ones who had kittens earlier this year.

Surely the kittens can't be either Sphynx or Devons, they've got to be Sphynx generation xx or Devon generation xx.

Ferris....very late Feb (just a couple of days before March)
http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=212783

You're right Missymotus, I thought I remembered things correctly. Molly had her first litter on March 4th and her second on May 17th. 77 days between deliveries!!! I've had girls whose pregnancies last just about as long (71 days. . .)

Skewch, you need to give your girls much more time to recover between deliveries. It does not matter if there are one or ten in a litter, a birth is hard on a girl and she needs to recover the strength and muscle tone in her uterus before you can expect her to have to go through labor again. You are very fortunate that she was able to deliver that last kitten. It could have ended very badly for the mommy and babies. The lag between kittens is a clear sign of uterine inertia, and I think a rest before her second litter would have helped a lot. That lag also means she is going to need a break before you breed her again. You do not want to breed a girl on her first heat after having delivered. You risk mommies and babies when you run a cattery like that.

I agree - WAY too close in litters. That means she was bred again when nursing the first litter. Breeders will give their females about 6 months before they even BREED them - which gives you a good 8 or 8 1/2 months between the litters.

We are sorry of jumping on you. I understand now - breeders will sometimes do close breedings if ONE kitten is born (like in your case). Guess we were thinking it was a normal litter.

While you say you don't want to lock up Monty (being a stud); sooner or later you will have to face that. Part of owning breeding males. Some breeders are lucky to have an entire room that the boy can live in. But he really cannot be running around in the house unless you lock up the girls (unspayed).

Either way - breeding cats will have to be caged at some point in time - not be running together.

No excuse, IMO. It doesn't matter if she did not have to nurse the kitten, she still had go though labor and delivery and THAT is what weakens the uterus. Most vets do not know much about animal husbandry. Afterall, they are in the business of spaying and neutering pets to prevent unwanted births. Sure, she was young and delivered the litter without too much complication, but for her sake you cannot allow this to happen again.

If you are going to be a successful breeder, your family also needs to follow the procedures that keep your cattery running safely and smoothly.

It's not just about regaining lost weight and nutrients, it's about rebuilding muscle tone and condition. If the uterus is weakened, then the contractions will not be strong enough to push the kittens out. Kittens can get stuck in the birth canal and die. Mommies can develop infections from retained kittens and placentas and die. Do you see where I am going with this???

I don't think that the bitter apple will be enough to dissuade a determined stud. You do realize they are hard wired to breed? He might hate the smell of it, but is it worth the risk to see if he hates the smell of bitter apple more than he loves to breed? I wouldn't trust a stud to not breed. You need at least two doors between any boy and the breeding queens. That is the only thing that will prevent 'accidental' breedings.

As for never caging your cats. . . you don't need to cage Monty, but you must not let him have access to the girls! Stud males do not make good pets because of their studly habits. At worst they spray, they mate anything that doesn't smell like another male, and whatever they don't mate they fight. There is nothing you can do about these behaviors. You cannot treat Monty like a normal pet because he is NOT a normal pet.

Then perhaps now is not the time for you to be breeding, I know breeders who left for 15-20yrs to raise a family then go back to breeding because they wanted to do it right.

Bitter apple to stop a boy mating, I cannot believe I'm reading that

I also have an unspayed female and two unneutered males running free in the house. The boys have Suprelorin-implants so they can't (and don't want to) get her pregnant at the moment. During the nights and when I'm not home the boys are in different room and the female is with my neutered male in another room, just in case.

I don't know if you have Suprelorin available over there, but it sure has worked for us. The boys got their implants on November, they are said to be good for approx. a year or even year and a half which is good for me. They can also be removed earlier if needed and the male will be able to breed very soon after that.

OT rant: Now that my breeding plans were flushed down the toilet (my point stud I was going to use had to be suddenly pts because of cancer, he wasn't wearing the implant and was living elsewhere), I need to re-think everything. I'm propably going to use one of the two boys I have here (not colorpoints), unless a miracle happens and a pointed male appears out of nowhere and I can use him (we don't have any unneutered point BSHs in this country anymore)... Sigh.

I'm really interested in exactly who determined this. So basically you're saying to wait nearly a year from birth if the litter consisted of 8 kittens.

That's actually dangerous for some breeds of cats, especially for those queens who go into heat when the kittens are being weaned and continue to have heat after heat without being bred.

It's pretty easy to keep queens healthy and robust during the nursing process. Feeding them as much high quality food as they can consume and keeping them off of the grain filled dry food that just fills them up and has low nutritional value. A good raw diet will keep queens at their normal weight all the way up to weaning. We've rarely had a queen drop weight, even with large litters. They just eat more.

A well known breeder and judge frequently posts this advice on his forum on allexperts.com. Not sure if list rules would allow me to cross post, but a little bit of searching should pull it up for you. The key word is 'ideal.' Not always. Every queen is different and of course this can't apply to every situation, but the important thing is that we as breeders always put the needs of our cats first. You do not breed on the first heat cycle after delivery. Nothing justifies 77 days between litters.

I once had a litter of 9 out of a queen who cycled constantly. Re-breeding her was not an option, as she began cycling when the kittens were 6 weeks old. I elected to have my vet give her a form a birth control that would last 6 months so that she could recover from the delivery without risking a Pyo. My vet is also a breeder and he does the same with his own She went on to have a litter of 5.

I have read through this whole thread and found some things worrying!

Firstly, as a Devon Rex breeder, I know that these kitten cannot be Sphynx or Devons.. They can only be 'hybrids' of either breed. Even if you are allowed to use Devons as an allowable outcross the resulting kittens would be Sphynx gen 1 or Devon Rex gen 1. Either must then be mated to a 'pure' cat from the same breed and the resulting kittens will be gen 2. Generally, following this process, Gen 4 is then considered to be pure to the breed.

Secondly, breeding a queen straight back after having 1 kitten that did not survive it not a huge NO NO but your reasons for doing this must be very solid and the health of the queen is paramount!

That brings me to housing a stud cat... Studs are studs and not pets.. In some of the more gentle breeds you may find a very placid stud but with Devons or Sphynx you have a highly active, demanding breed who have a tendency to think it is all about them no matter how fantastic their temperament is..
Consider this.. A child or even a teenager holding a mature stud cat and it is mellow and happy having some cuddles... Then some queen starts up calling and the hormones on the stud start to kick in and suddenly he has something he is 'programmed' to do on his mind and he then wants to get down.. The child or teenager doesn't 'read' the signs and holds onto the stud.. The stud gets upset and struggles more, the kid holds tighter... See where I am going with this???
Eventually, the stud is going to attack the child because it HAS to get to that queen.. All his hormones are screaming at him and no matter how good his temperament is, hormones RULE a mature stud cat!

Well there you go, my first post! LOL

Sarah
Mirex Devon Rex

Sarah brings up a good point about studs. A long time ago a friend of mine used to breed British SH's. He had his studs in floor to ceiling cages that you could easily walk in with plenty of room. The stud had a female in there with him at the time.

They were not doing anything when the owner came in the door. However, the owner wound up being attacked by the stud - why? Because he walked between the stud and the female in heat and the stud just got aggressive thinking the owner was gonna take the female away! Granted its an extreme example and not typical, but it could happen to any breeding male.

BTW Sarah - welcome to Cat Site - I know you are on the other board cause I'm there too Love your Devons, tho I'm more of a Cornie fan in the rexes.

I guess I would more inclined to accept that theory if some sort of study had been done by some researching vets. Being a breeder and judge really doesn't qualify someone to make blanket statements like that, even if the word 'ideal" is stressed.

I of course agree that breeding on first heat is not advisable and the time period in question was too short. The catch 22 is that often the milk goes bad when the queens cycle into heat. If kittens are still nursing, suddenly you have kittens vomiting up curdled milk and bouts of diarrhea. If you breed her, then the milk dries up and the kittens nurse but get nothing.

I wasn't aware that there was any approved form of birth control for cats in the USA. I know there is a product in Europe that some breeders have used here, but there have been reports of sterility after it's use.
What was it that you used?

This seriously sounds very very wrong to me. What are the studs for you if not pets? Are they just some objects you use and then what? That's just horrible.
The breeders over here never cage their studs or keep them anywhere 'out of sight'. I've never heard of anyone being attacked by a stud, no matter what breed we are talking about. I can see that happening with an isolated stud who isn't that familiar with it's owner (because of being isolated), but that sounds very disturbing to me and that something must be wrong! I wouldn't use an aggressive stud in a breeding program. Is that really normal to you?!

My studs are my pets, my much loved family members. It just sounds very sad to me that apparently in other side of the world they are just 'studs'.

My thinking is more in your corner too. Our studs are pets, they are not banished to cages, yet they are not allowed to roam freely either. If I could not provide a spacious room with windows and natural light for each stud, I would not be breeding.
13 years of breeding and we have never had a stud attack for any reason and I have gotten in between a stud and his girl in heat, many a time.

If any one of my breeding cats ever attacked me, they would be removed from the breeding program post haste.

I did say this was not normal stud behavior and at the time (first got into purebred cats) thought this was wrong to let the cat breed with a temperament like that. But I was nieve about things.

This was just a related story. I did get to see the set up and the male was not isolated - the guy had 2-3 studs in separate pens and they were pretty roomy (could hold a full size treehouse and plenty of room). He just said this was normal for male Brits - I didn't have Brits, so how would I know it was just this one male?

When I had my breeding Rex male - he was a lover and he was allowed to run in the house a lot - he was my pet even tho he was a breeding cat. But he was caged at night or when I could not watch him so he didn't just breed my female when he wanted to.

Being a new breeder I don’t keep my own studs yet, but I know one very smoochy boy who almost attacked his owner.

Once the situation was over, he was back to being smoochy. He acted on instinct and hormones, no reason to remove him from a breeding program for one incident.

Studs are not kept out of site, it’s just most owners here don’t like to live in pee soaked houses and it’s not practical to keep them loose in the house.
They are often housed so they can still see the family and are visited several times a day. Some do come inside when fitted with stud pants for visits.

From what I've seen online stud enclosures here are much larger than those I've seen in the US, many breeders have almost another house built on their property for the cats.

Oh yeah, as we all know Brits are very famous for being aggressive and dangerous breed.. (kidding..)

My males (Brits and a Foldie) haven't been spraying. One male did for a while but stopped doing it. My boys are 3 and 1,5 years old so maybe they will start later.. But of course no one wants to live in cat pee, so if a male does it a lot, he usually ends up having just one or two litters and will be neutered and continues to live as a family member as he did before the neutering.

Depo-Provera, sent you a PM

Wait, I didn't get any of that from Mirex's posts. Studs are not pets because they do not act like pets. That doesn't mean we breeders do not love them and we treat them as commodities, but we also can't afford to treat them like pets either.

It's great that you have the luxury of implants that let your cats live like pets. I do not think those implants are available here, and to be frank, the thought of them makes me very squeamish so even if they were I'm not sure I'd use them myself.

I bet we all think of our studs with much love and affection, but we can't expect them to behave in the same way as a neuter. We just can't. My stud lives in my bedroom with me. I adore him, he adores me. He gets to live in my bedroom because he does not spray where he sleeps. Thank goodness! I think of him as my pet first, but I know that he has certain studly habits that he just can't help. He will call if aroused. He will grab the necks of anything that doesn't smell like a boy. And if they don't fight, he'll try to breed. He tends to pee on anything that smells like another male. And even though he's my baby, I know he has the potential to fight another male in order to protect what is 'his' That doesn't mean he has a bad temperament. This cat sleeps cuddled in my arms at night! He's just a male cat, and he's doing what nature has hardwired him to do in order to keep the feline species going. I would never let my darling run loose with the girls. I love him, but I sure as heck don't trust him!!!