Get the Pricing Cheat Sheet
In business, there are two ways to make profit: you have a good margin or you have volume. In dog breeding, it’s very hard to do volume. The more puppies you produce, the more systems you have to have, the more cost that creates, and quality of care can slip—fast.
This means that volume is the slippery slope in dog breeding; it has to be done very intentionally. The easier way to make money in dog breeding is by creating a higher margin; essentially, creating a larger gap between what you charge and what it costs you to produce a puppy.
As you may be familiar, I work with a lot of breeders in both group sessions, but also, through one-on-one coaching clients. I’d like to share with you the areas of breeding in which I commonly see breeders losing money. This is not about cutting corners—it’s about being smarter with how and where you spend your month so you can build a sustainable breeding business.
Let’s break it down.
First off, let’s go with the basics of breeding. Breeding, as in the actual process of mating, can be very complicated or fairly simple. I’ve worked with many breeders who spend a lot of money on stud service and the reproductive vet to do so. There are some of you that will require AI or TCI, but for the majority of breeds, these procedures aren’t necessary. In most instances, buying a stud and doing live cover will be the most cost-effective method for producing puppies. In fact, with a good live-cover stud, you’ll not only be able to skip AI procedures, but you don’t need progesterone testing if he lives with you. They’re usually a little goofy the first two breedings, but they generally get the job done without assistance. Then after that, they’re a seasoned pro.
One client was bleeding $8,000 per year on AI with one stud. This stud was ideal, but the dog would not allow for collection at the clinic and the breeder, last minute, always had to get the stud’s brother, who was good, but not quite the genetic profile he wanted; he was a little larger, not quite the right pattern and color, but still a good fit.
We decided it was worth him trying the more desirable brother in live cover. Despite being unable to be collected at the vet’s office, the stud thrived at his home in breeding females, He was a pro. Making this simple change saved the breeder over $8,000 in veterinary fees and collection over the course of the year. What this $8,000 doesn’t include is the satisfaction of the buyers who will have the size dog they are hoping for, in the color and pattern of their preference.
While I know there are a lot of people who hesitate to step away from the routine of progesterone testing and AI, I encourage you to give it a shot. It can greatly improve the margin on your puppies, not to mention there are less variables because there’s no shipping, freezing nor chilling, nor progesterone-testing machines which have to be calibrated correctly.
Many breeders hesitate to step into live cover because they believe they, the human breeder, need to be able to tell when she is fertile. But in my experience, the studs are the best readers—especially when they’ve bred a few females. You don’t need to know that much! It just works. It is as nature intended, after all.
Other breeders say they can’t do live cover because of the size discrepancy of their breeding dogs. My thinking would be to flip that around and suggest that you go for more size consistency. Not only will this work better for your buyers—because they’ll know what to expect—but it’ll allow you to do live cover, and spare yourself the complication and the cost.
Some breeders are scared to own a stud or multiple studs. I think, for the benefits of owning a stud, it’s much easier to work to solve your facilities problem than it is to continue with the complication of having to do AI all the time. Most breeders worry that having studs will create chaos at their home; but, in truth, you just need a little management support. For me, I recommend that you have two exercise pens that are separate and don’t share a fence where two dogs can see each other—a block wall is fine to share, but chainlink wouldn’t be as ideal. This way you can always keep the dogs separate, as studs often don’t get along.
And yes, I know studs have a tendency to mark. I have not had much luck avoiding the marking, but I have found that belly bands off Amazon work well. We have a policy with our stud dogs that, if they’re in the house, they’re wearing a belly band. If you aren’t familiar, these are simply washable cloth bands that wrap around the belly of the stud, connected by velcro, and ultimately, if the stud goes to hike his leg, the band absorbs it and I’m not cleaning furniture. They are fully washable and, with the slightly higher quality ones, the dogs aren’t too successful trying to work them off. After about a week, they are used to them.
If you have to do AI or C-Sections for your breed, as some bulldogs require, I recommend shopping around and trying to build a relationship with your veterinary clinic. I know this is harder than it used to be; vet clinics are getting more and more expensive as people want more dogs, less children, and the veterinary schools can’t kick them out fast enough. However, it is still worth shopping around. Most vet clinics will specialize in something: like one might do special surgeries, one might underprice spay and neuter because that’s all they want to do, while others may prefer breeders because they make for fewer clients to manage and they don’t need as much hand holding. I personally work with four different clinics for my dogs: one for spay and neuter, one for puppy travel vet checks, one for OFA radiographs, and another for those rare injuries, like when a 6-month-old dog had her leg bit in half in a tussle. Each one is selected for their specialization, ability to get me in on their schedule, and their respective prices for these services.
Get the Pricing Cheat Sheet
Here are some quick pricing tips for you to gauge where you’re at with your business. I’ve created a pricing cheatsheet to help you with margins; you can get it in the show notes below. If you don’t have employees or, if you do, it’s minimal part time help, then you want to aim for your overall business profit margin to be around 65-75%. This means, if you sell your dogs for $2000, then you should take home in pretax profit around $1,300-$1,500. If you are looking to break that down further, then half of those expenses should be for that specific puppy and the other half of those expenses should go to overhead. That’s a good gauge. If you’re working with C-Sections and AI, then you need to add the averaged-out cost per puppy to your calculations to produce a puppy. Generally speaking, it will make the entire cost of your puppies higher if this is standard practice. The problem I see with many breeding programs, and why they’re struggling with finances, is that they are doing the high-cost things of TCI or C-Sections when they aren’t standard, nor necessary, for the breed, so the breed pricing doesn’t reflect the higher input costs. This means the puppies will struggle to reach these higher prices, but the costs are elevated, ultimately reducing margins.
If you have staff, either whelpers, kennel cleaning staff, or similar, then you’ll want your margin to be about 50%. This gives you ample income, which should still be good if the theory is that your staff enables you to produce more dogs.
In fact, if you love the numbers, then you’ll love the amazing google sheet spreadsheet I made! It helps you calculate all your costs and allows you to play with the numbers to see what would happen if you adjusted your price, if your margin was different, and what it would look like if you added an employee or subcontractor. This spreadsheet will help you budget and will help you diagnose where you’re leaking money.
You can also get a link to that MasterClass in the show notes.
Something many breeders get stuck on is this idea of “improving the breed.” What does it really mean? I would suggest that what’s best for your buyers is what’s best for the breed. In my own breeding program, I would select a stud that works well for my female and I would use him over and over again with her with all her breedings, unless I didn’t like what I was getting; then, of course, I’d change it up. Some breeders will suggest that this is not improving the breed because I am not trying out new things. I would counter that argument by stating that when you breed to different studs, it is irrelevant if you aren’t keeping a dog from those litters for breeding, since the bloodline will die if all the puppies go to pet homes—it’s perfectly fine for the entire litter to go to pet homes. However, if all the pups are going to pet homes, then the very best thing you can do is offer predictability to your buyers. You have the best predictability with a repeat breeding, especially when those previous buyers from that same breeding are sending you updates on their dog and how they’re growing up and their temperament and personality. You really can’t beat the predictability of repeat breedings. I love how I can use a repeat pair and share those photos of previous pups with my buyers, how I can help them select the right litter for them based on the actual puppies that have previously come out of that breeding.
As a side benefit, this also creates massive predictability for your breeding program. You know what you’re getting, you have a good read on how many puppies you’ll get, what they’ll be like, and the mom is predictable. I know there are a lot of opinions on how many litters to breed a female, but I feel like that sweet spot number is about 6 litters for most breeds. Here’s the math: If you start breeding around the first or second breedable heat–which is when the dog is 12-18 months of age–her body will adapt to pregnancy easiest and bounce back the best. From what I can tell, it’s because her body learns to be pregnant and have puppies as a part of her maturity process. It is something she adapts to readily in a way that older moms struggle. Having that said, you can then breed her back-to-back for six litters, and she’ll be finished breeding when she’s four or four-and-a-half years old. This female is still quite young, you can get her spayed and then rehome her, which will be the case for many breeding dogs when they retire, to ensure a higher quality of life, and the bonus is that she will be perceived as having a lot of value still at her young age of under 5 years old.
I know a lot of breeders opt for 4 litters, but 6 litters is not hard on a good female. She consistently bounces back easily, and it greatly reduces the unpredictability that new females bring. Here’s what I mean. If you only breed your females for four litters, then, statistically, one out of every fourth litter is a first-time mom. First-time moms are the most unpredictable. We can reduce this by breeding six litters per female, which will allow us to reduce first-time moms to one in every six litters. We can also reduce the number of moms we need by a third to produce the same number of litters over the same stretch of years. All in all, it’s simpler, and honors the breeding female and her life after breeding, but also greatly reduces unpredictability in your breeding program.
Obviously, you’ll need to adjust this a little for dogs that don’t cycle every 6 months or for dogs who aren’t at a physical maturity for breeding at 12-18 months. This is usually the larger breeds who take a while for their size to come in, but also their heat cycles. I believe it still makes sense to use the heat cycles as your gauge for readiness; if her body wasn’t ready, then she wouldn’t come into heat. This, to me, feels much more appropriate as a gauge than any age.
For those of you who are worried about hip scores and not having a permanent score until 2 years of age, I hear you. I feel very comfortable using preliminary scores on my dogs to gauge if they are fit for breeding. These can be done around 5-6 months of age and will allow you to pass on a female much earlier than waiting the full two years to learn this and then need to rehome her. I don’t really have any hip issues in my bloodlines, but it’s less of a concern with my two breeds as a whole. So for me, at this point in my breeding program, I know my dogs won’t have hip issues; rather, doing preliminary testing is more of a checking of the box for me. If you are worried about hips, then I recommend you work with PennHip to get a more scientific process for eliminating hip dysplasia in your bloodlines. PennHip can be done as early as 4 months of age;one of the radiographs can be sent to OFA for prelims, as it is the same radiograph position used in both OFA and PennHip. This kills two birds with one stone. I know this is very important for many breeds like German Shepherds and Poodles where many of the dogs in the breed have shallower hip sockets, making hip dysplasia more common. And, of course, you can always redo the testing after two years of age to get a permanent score. The statistics from OFA suggest there is less than a 5% deviation from 5 months to 2 years in hips, meaning that, if your dog is rated “good” at 5 months of age, then it is highly unlikely they’ll be dysplastic at 2 years, which is further supported by PennHip testing.
I understand that having a permanent score PRIOR to breeding is a very important consideration for many of you, especially for those in the show world or in breed communities that will create reputation problems for you. While it isn’t exactly backed by science—waiting until the dog is an arbitrary age because of others’ opinions of you—sometimes you have to ask yourself if the extra litter is worth the harassment. And I understand that, for many of you, it won’t be. It’s okay! You might decide to breed 4-5 litters or more if you intend to keep the mama and not rehome her. As such, the marketability of a dog you’re keeping is irrelevant.
Okay, so let’s recap: the money in dog breeding is in the margins; you’ll need the margin before you ever entertain growing your production.
Here are some action steps you can take to improve your breeding program and better understand your margins:
- Grab the cheatsheet in the show notes below and see where your margins fell on your last litter—what was your profit margin?
- Audit your reproductive costs, and determine if there are ways you could save through owning your own stud or opting for live cover.
- Price shop for your veterinary care. It’s very common to use multiple veterinarians or clinics for breeders; they have their own specialities, just like you!
This is just the first episode of a series of three episodes where I discuss the ins and outs of money leaks for dog breeding businesses. Here’s what’s coming up in Part Two: Outsourcing without the money-drain—how to pay others only for work that actually widens your margin.
Then on to Part Three: Marketing Money Leaks for Dog Breeders–how you can prevent a loss of income in your marketing plan. Marketing needs to make you money, not lose it for you.
If you take nothing else from today, remember this: every dollar you don’t hand to the repro vet or an overpriced all-purpose clinic is a dollar you can reinvest in better puppy care—or keep as profit that lets your program breathe.
I want you to be profitable because it’ll allow you to give your puppies, buyers, and your own family the best care in a sustainable way.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Honest Dog Breeder Podcast, with me, your host, Julie Swan. I can’t wait to see you in the next episode!
