MainelyBulldogs.com
FACTS ABOUT
BULLDOGS
Why Are Bulldog
Puppies So Expensive?
You would be surprised
how many times I have heard this question "Why are they so expensive? You must
make a lot of money..."
I guess people
just don’t realize what goes into raising a litter of bulldog puppies…raising
the best puppies you possibly can, as responsibly as you
can.
The prices I quote are rounded off, and may vary depending on the
cost of your vet and where you purchase your animal supplies. Some things you
can save money on by doing them yourself, but not very many. I am only basing
this information on a litter of 4 puppies being raised to 12 weeks old. There
are many variables, but this is just going to be an average. I’m sure other
breeds have costs specific to their breed, so this does in no way represent what
other responsible breeders go through with their puppies.
The cost for
puppies starts before breeding. Health screening of the parents is a must.
Knowing the health problems in the lines of both parents, judging temperament,
and the physical qualities you are trying to produce, and the list goes on.
Most, if not all, bulldogs are Artificially Inseminated (A/I) and need to have a
thyroid screening. Our vet charges $125 to collect from the male and inseminate
the bitch. Since I have my own stud dogs and the equipment and knowledge
to do this myself, we save $125. Say you don’t have your own stud dog and have
to go out for stud service, this could be around $700. But for the sake of my
example, we are going to use the $125. Usually you have to do a few tests on the
bitch to see when she’s ovulating at $120 a test, and you usually test twice. Once you figure that out, you usually breed
her 2 times…wow, that’s $250 just for collection from the dog. I won’t add in
the thyroid T-4 test at $40 a test and the ovulating test of $120.
After the bitch has been bred, we put
her on pre-natal vitamins, the same vitamins that would be taken by a pregnant
woman or a woman planning on getting pregnant. These run around $12 for a bottle
of 120, since they are pregnant for 63 days, we will say $6 for pre-natal and $5
for a bottle of folic acid. Folic acid is used to prevent birth defects, the
same reason pregnant women use it. So now we’re up to $261.
The bitch is
switched from her normal dog food to puppy food two weeks after breeding. Proper
nutrition helps ensure healthy puppies. We use Eukunuba Large Dog Breed puppy
food. I can usually pick up a 35 lb bag for $46 at your local pet store. This will usually
last the entire pregnancy, but you may have to get more. Let’s see….we’re up to
just over $307 and puppies haven’t even gotten here.
IT’S PUPPY TIME!!!!!
Ok…the bitch has been pregnant for 9 weeks, she looks like she swallowed a
basketball, she uncomfortable and looks pitiful. 3 days before her 1st due date
(there’s no guess work on this date when you A/I) we take the dog 70 miles to
the vet. WOW…70 miles? Yep, our vet owns bulldogs, loves bulldogs, knows them
inside and out, that’s why he’s the best and we go 70 miles one way. I
trusts him so much, I'd let him do surgery on me. He’s pretty good on other
breeds too. So, we drop the bitch off. The vet takes an x-ray or two for $97
each, monitors her temperature, runs a few progesterone tests, and figures out
exactly when she’s going to start going into labor. At this point he puts her
under anesthesia and performs a c-section. A few hours later, the vet calls up
and says to come get Ma and the kids. He sends us home with vitamin K shots for
the puppies and anything else he might think the pups need. We walk out of the
vet’s office for $1200. This includes the c-section, test, x-rays, blood work,boarding fee,
etc… So, now we’re up to $1507.00
Well, the puppies are home. Now what?
Well, babies need to be kept warm, so let’s turn up the heat. We don’t want to
heat the whole house, just the bedroom, so we turn on the ceramic space heater
and warm the room up to a toasty 85 degrees (Get used to it, it’s going to be
like this for the next few weeks). Ok, the room’s hot, now where are the puppies
going to sleep? Well the floor’s not as warm as the rest of the room and it’s
kind of drafty, so we need to get the babies off the floor. Let’s put them on
the bed. I uses a small wading pool, you know, the blue plastic pools
for little kids? (Don’t plan on sleeping very comfortably
for a while.) We line it with a blanket and cover the blanket with sheepskin
cloth. This keeps the puppies dry if they pee. We also put a heating pad BELOW
the blankets off to one side so if the pups get cold they can get warm, and if
they get too warm they can get off. You also need to cover the puppies with a
thin light blanket to keep any drafts off of them, but still allow them to
breathe. Ceramic heaters use up quite a bit of electricity. Guess what? Our
electric bill just went up an extra $120 a month to keep puppies warm. Is there
a cheaper way? Probably, but I don’t have any ideas around it yet. Wait, what if
you don’t have the pool, or the blankets? You have to buy them. What if you have
them already? Eventually you’ll have to replace them because they’ll wear out,
but it takes a long time for that to happen. Hmmm….$1507.00 so far…this is
starting to get expensive.
Puppies love to eat. I mean it,
they LOVE to eat. And, they usually let you know when they’re ready to eat, even
if you think you should be sleeping at 2 or 3am. Unfortunately, mommy bulldogs
don’t produce that much milk, so, we have to supplement with formula. You could
use Esbilac, but we found something easier for the puppies to digest, Just Born.
It comes in an 8 oz box. Let’s see, for the first week puppies eat every 2 to 3
hours, and they eat about one quarter of an ounce, so that’s about 2 oz a day
right? And I said that this is going to be an average for 4 puppies, so that’s 8
oz or a box a day for the first week. Week 2 they’re eating around half an ounce
every 4 hours, so that’s 10 boxes for the week. By week 3 they’re eating a whole
ounce every 6 hours, so that’s 14 boxes for the week. All together that’s around
31 boxes of formula. After shipping, we pay around $100 for 36 boxes. The extra
boxes are used in the weaning process. So, we’re up to $1607.00 after
formula.
Weaning
begins at 4 to 5 weeks old. We take dry puppy food, soak it in water overnight,
toss it in the blender and add formula and a jar of Gerber’s baby food meats
(Turkey, chicken, beef, veal, lamb). Puppy food is $30 a bag. The Gerber’s baby
food is $.70 a jar and we usually end up getting 5 jars of each so that’s $18.
And we figure after weaning they’ll go through another 3 bags of puppy food, so
that’s another $90. Ummm….that’s $1697.00 total.
Hidden
costs, things you might not think about being in the cost of raising a
puppy….
Laundry. They can make a big mess of things or on things as
the case may be, so we do 4 loads of puppy blankets a day. 4 loads a day for 12
weeks, that’s 336 loads of laundry. We get our soap from the Dollar Store, and I
don’t know how many loads a box can do, but I can hear my electricity bill going
up again….Let’s say $10 a week for soap and electricity to wash and dry puppy
blankets. That would be $120. I guess it’s a good thing we have well water, or
that would be even more.
Toys. Can’t walk out of Pawsitively Pets
with just a bag of puppy food. Each puppy gets a toy and gets to take that toy
with them if we place them. We try not to spend more than $15 on each toy, so
that’s $60.
Gas. Without fail puppies get sick and have to go see the
vet. 140 miles round trip. We usually end up going at least 6 times. Call it 3
tanks of gas, that’s $180.
Vet. Those 6 trips to the vet?
$50 each on average for the office visit and medication, so that’s $300. Oh…I
almost forgot shots, 2 sets of shots and a health certificate…that’s another
$320. We need some special equipment from the vet…syringes, feeding tubes for
sick puppies, ringers solution if they get dehydrated from diarrhea,
antibiotics…..that’s another $100 easy.
Health care. You don’t have to
go to the vet for everything. We add supplements to the formula, we use baby
nasal spray if they get the sniffles, we use Desitin if they get "diaper rash"
from diarrhea, baby wash. All added together that’s about another
$50.
Baby wipes. You can never have
enough baby wipes. Remember me saying puppies love to eat? Guess what they love
to do 5 minutes after eating and any time in between feedings? We go through
about 5 refills. I think the last time I bought baby wipes, I bought store
brand, and they were around $5 each, so that’s $25.
Time
lost from work. I’m lucky enough to work in a small company that I can
take time off at the drop of a hat or I can change my work schedule. I
take off the first three weeks . I net $13 an hour after taxes, so
that’s $2080 I didn’t bring home, because I’m home with puppies.
Advertising. Advertising on AKC is $20 a
month, and the website is $9 a month, so that’s $375 a year.
AKC
Litter registration is $25 and $8 for each puppy, so that’s $57.
Adult
dogs. 1 stud dogs,3 brood bitches, 1 spayed bitches and 1 of which are old
timers. The price of the puppy also goes to pay for the food and veterinary cost
of the adult dogs. After all, you wouldn’t have any puppies at this point if you
didn’t have some adult dogs for breeding to begin with. A bag of food lasts 7
days for 6 dogs, so that’s 52 bags a year at $46 each for a total of $2392. One
of those spayed dogs is on a prescription food for Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
That food is $33 for a 20lb bag, which lasts 2 weeks. So that dog’s food is
another $858 a year. That’s just dog food. I don’t even want to think of the
veterinary cost of yearly shots, check ups, emergency visits, etc… I’m also not
adding in the cost of showing a dog – gas, hotel, entry fees and who knows what
else.
So, we are finally up to what $8414? Call it $8000 for
argument’s sake. If I sells all 4 puppies for $2600 each, after all of the
expenses related to the dogs are taken out, that leaves me with $1600 ($400 per
puppy). If you take that and divide it by 12, you get $133 a week. Now divide
that by 7, and you’ll get $19 a day. Now take that $19 and divide it by the 16
hours I spends taking care of the puppies and you’ll see that I only
makes $1.19 an hour. (If you really want to sit and do the math, you’re more than
welcome to, I’m just rounding everything off to the nearest whole dollar before
I go to the next division.) Granted, not all of the cost is associated directly
with the puppies, and is paid out over time whether there are puppies sold or
not. This probably isn’t even half the expense for the bulldogs.
Let’s say one out of those
puppies dies. Now subtract that $8000 from $7200. Oops, you’re $800 in the
hole, looks like you didn’t make enough money from puppies to pay for your dogs.
You didn’t even make $.75 an hour putting your sweat and tears into that
puppy.
Let’s
say one of those puppies is good enough to show and I decides to keep
it. That’s $2400 that has to be absorbed by the other three.
Let’s say there was only one puppy in the litter and you
manage to keep it alive. You decide it’s not exactly to the standard you were
breeding for, so you decide to sell it. Well, then you’d be down $5600, and
barely able to pay for the c-section and raising that one puppy. And if you did
keep it, then you would just have to eat everything and hope your boss at your
regular full time job is taking heavy medication when it comes time to give out
the Christmas bonuses and adds an extra zero or two to the end of yours. Hey, it
could happen…..just not in this example or my lifetime.
Ok,
worst case scenario. (And it’s happened to us, twice) You drop the bitch off at
the vet, he finds out there was a dead puppy inside her, which spread infection
throughout her body, which caused her to die an excruciatingly painful death as
her major organs shut down one by one, and kills off the rest of the puppies as
well. Not only are you out the puppies, pre-breeding costs, and c-section, but
you’ve lost a family member, and any future puppies she may have produced for
you. How do you put a price tag on that loss?
When you have done this, $2400
for a puppy suddenly doesn’t seem like very much, and then you understand, that
you aren’t and can’t possibly be in it for the money.
I
don’t understand why people are saying breeders like my self are trying
to ram it to someone when they ask $2400 or $2600 for a puppy. How are
you begrudging a breeder $.75 an hour, when they work a regular full
time job? So it’s wrong for a responsible breeder to make $400 for
raising a puppy for 12 weeks and not call it a business? It’s wrong for
a responsible breeder to do it once, maybe twice a year? But it’s OK
for a puppy mill or BYB to make more than that… because they don’t put
as much money into the pre-breeding expenses, or any of the other
expenses that I do? Now, there’s a lot of things I didn’t add in to the
total cost of breeding bulldogs, so in reality I didn't even make that
$.75 an hour. In fact sometimes I wonder how anyone can breed dogs and
still afford to eat. I know the IRS won’t let you operate a business
unless you MAKE a PROFIT,
If you don’t care about what
breed of dog you want, and you just want A DOG / ANY DOG, go to the local
shelter and save a life. If you know what breed of dog you really, really want,
and you can’t afford it right now, save your money to get what you want. If you have enough money to get
any dog you want, get the best. If you just want a pet, but don’t care if it has
any ribbons or is a champion, go to a responsible breeder, they try as hard as
they can to breed the perfect dog, and end up creating a lot of great pets along
the way.
So now that I’ve given you something to think about, go
ahead and talk about it amongst yourselves. No wonder they say breeding should
be left to those individuals who can dedicate their lives to
it. Thanks for reading this and if you have any questions please feel free to email me.
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Here we have listed some frequently
asked questions and their answers.
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What Do You Mean
They Can't Swim?
Bulldogs
and swimming pools are a lethal combination as a lot of bulldogs can't swim,
NONE of them can get themselves out of a pool, and they ALL love water. A pool
or pond with broad shallow steps where they can sit in summer is ideal. But
supervision is essential at all
times. |
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Do
Bulldogs Slobber?
As a general rule, Bulldogs
do not slobber. However, they are a flat-faced breed, which means when they get
a drink of water, they must lay their lips in the bowl. This will lead to
dribble trails across the floor. It cannot be helped. It is always a good idea
to have a hand towel handy for this type of
occasion. |
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Aren't Bulldogs
Stubborn and Hard to Train?
The most common
misconception about bulldogs is that they cannot be trained. Forget this
straight away. They are exceptionally intelligent, and are capable of strategic
thinking ie plotting and planning moves with a specific result in mind. Bulldogs
have LOTS of common sense....more than some people I
know! |
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Well Who Wants a
Dog Who Can't Breathe? All Bulldogs Have Breathing Problems, Right?
Yes and no. Bulldogs are very
sensitive to heat. They do not have efficient thermostats.
Heat, over-exertion, stress and
anxiety contribute to the Bulldogs' breathing issues. They have big flat faces
and throats with lots of loose skin and flesh. When a Bulldog gets overheated,
overly excited or stressed out, that loose skin and flesh can being to swell,
cutting off the dogs airway.
You must at all costs avoid taking them out in cars, on
walks, to beaches or other hot places, or exercising them, during the summer.
They get heatstrokes and die more easily than any other breed.
If your
dog overheats, get him/her into the shade immediately, or better still get the
dog into a pool of cold water. Otherwise, get to a tap fast. Wet the neck and
stomach first, wrap a dripping cold towel round the neck, and keep him quiet
until his breathing stabilizes and he is absolutely comfortable again. The very
best precaution is always having a tub of cold water accessible to the dog in
summer--they'll get in themselves, and cool off quickly.
Your
Bulldog doesn't know he can't do things like jog with you, play ball or frisbee
in the warm weather or go for long walks on summer days. The Bulldog is loyal
and will try to keep up with you and do your bidding, even if it costs him his
life. It is up to YOU to ensure the saftey and well being of your Bulldog. You
know what he can and can't do. Your Bullie's life is in your
hands. |
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What Kind of Toys
Should I Get For My Bulldog?
Bulldogs must
never be given bones or small balls to chew or play with. Chew hooves (the kind
of chewy hooves you get from the vet) and pig ears are very dangerous. Because
of their bite, they do not chew efficiently and can choke to death on balls and
bones. Large Nylabones are preferred as they are excellent exercise for the dog
and are very safe. Never give a Bulldog rawhide sticks or chips...these are too
small and once chewed on they be come slimy and can slip down the throat causing
the dog to choke. |
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Do
Bulldogs Shed?
Yes, all short coated breeds of
dog shed. Regular grooming and care can reduce the amount of hair that the dogs
sheds. A nice brushing twice a week during heavy shedding season (Spring and
Fall) can pull out those loose hairs and keep them from winding up on your
clothes. However, if you are looking for a dog who does not shed at all....then
purchase yourself a non-shedding breed or a stuffed
animal. |
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Do
Bulldogs Bark?
Bulldogs can and will bark,
occasionally. They are not a "yappy" breed. Normally a Bulldog will only bark
when someone knocks on the door or if they are confronted with someone or
something they are unfamiliar with. They are not incessant
barkers. |
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Are Bulldogs Good
Watch Dogs?
Certainly! They have no problem
watching a burgler come into your house and watching him carry out all your
stuff! Honestly though, Bulldogs are not your typical watch dog. They will alert
you when something isn't right. But they aren't one for guarding the junk yard!
Bulldogs have a tender nature and should not be overly protective to the point
of having to be put away when company
visits. |
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How Long Do
Bulldogs Usually Live?
A Bulldog's life
expectancy is approximately 8-12 years, but some dogs live years beyond that.
The key to a long life for your Bulldog begins with his breeding. If he comes
from good quality, healthy bloodlines who are vigorus and free from genetic
disorders, the chances of your Bulldog living longer, are better. Of course no
one can guarantee life...but having a healthy dog just isn't enough. You need to
ensure he stays in good health by feeding good quality food and providing him
with excellent vet
care |
