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Letter to all who it may concern: Notes of breeding /delivery problems in cats

Obstructive dystocia is a rare incidence of a individual problem of a cat. Mostly difficult deliveries that we see in clinical material are not of obstructive origin but consequences of endometritis > mummified fetuses, so stimuli is not correct during labor.

Endometritis in breeding cats is caused by several factors: to big catteries with stress, improper breeding management (hormones parenterally, per os not on the regular bases), showing cats until they are too old to start the breeding carrier, castrated toms housed together with breeding queens, breeding the queen only once a year or less etc. Endometritis will lead to a small number of viable kittens or at its worse, sterility.

Also breeding catteries mostly use quite close inbreeding especially in some countries, this will lead to small litters of kittens, smaller size in kittens and further breeding problems of the cats. Inbreeding as a method gives best results a getting more uniform type of cats, so breeders get better show results, but more health problems also.

When the results (Thrustfield et al.) show that Siamese, Persian and Devon Rex have higher level of risk, this can be explained be the fact that Siamese is the most popular short hair breed as Persian is the most popular long hair breed, so the competition among the breeders in highest in these breeds as also probably the inbreeding of the individuals. Devon rex carriers a very narrow gene base and lots in inbreeding problems.

From the summary of Ekstrand et al. I got the feeling that starting breeding age between 2-3 years is normal? It is far to late. The Siamese type of cat matures very quickly. Normally the female kittens start to call when 4-6 months old. To prevent endometrial problems they should have their first kittens when they are 9-12 months old. - About the pregnancy length, Niels Pedersen in his book Feline Husbandry suggests according to the hormone measurements that 66 days is probably the best estimate. From the clinical material we know that those cats that have had several day weddings can have pregnancy length over 70 days and still have viable kittens. So getting kittens born in normal time, weddings should take place only in one day (or only for a couple of hours) during the high estrus. This will ensure that the hormonal change to end the pregnancy and start delivery occurs clearly and sharply.

Nutrition plays very active role, especially the role of EFA´s in often underestimated. With the premium food to my mind, no nutritional risk factors need to be counted considering breeding cats. To my mind more education is needed about breeding management, often cats are thought to have similar breeding physiology than dogs have. At least breeders in Finland often have very curious management methods.

SPS

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