A Michael Broad Blog
“Inbreeding depression” is a euphemism for a general lack of health in an individual purebred cat which has been selectively bred (using artificial selection) for appearance, which automatically incorporates inbreeding. Cat breeders often have to inbreed their purebred cats in order to fix their appearance. This is because the appearance is held on a …
I think it is useful to look at the difference between Commercial Breeding Enterprises (CBEs) and registered dog and cat breeders. My interest in comparing these commercial enterprises came about because Nathan Winograd tells us that about 400 cities and 4 states have passed laws which ban the sale of commercially bred dogs, cats …
It has been suggested that cat association breed standards might be encouraging breeders to select breeding cats with genetic traits that promote an overweight physique in order to meet the breed standard. There is a very interesting article on the Pet MD website (2015) which points to this possibility. I discuss that article below …
“The most active discussion on adverse breeding effects in companion animals has been in the German speaking community” (The Welfare of Cats page 261 – a section written by A Steiger). It is nice to venture into other areas and visit German websites to see what the Germans have to say about cats and …
Selective cat breeding is what cat breeding is all about. So, what is it? This is an outline discussion. It is slightly controversial in keeping with my slightly rebellious nature. Before I continue, I would like to say that I am not against cat breeding. But I am for high levels of responsibility in …
There has been a series of high-profile, media-reported examples in which individuals have failed to obtain planning permission before they operated a cat breeding facility or shelter from their home or built a catio in their front yard. In the UK it is called “planning permission”. In the USA it’s about zoning and whether …
I feel that humankind is gradually approaching the time when we could argue that the inbreeding of some wild cat species might effectively extinguish them in the wild. Through human activity we have brought many wild cat species to their knees. The classic causes are habitat loss and direct persecution such as poaching for …
Through Persian cat selective breeding the appearance of the cat that you know (probably the extreme Persian look) has been altered over a period of time (substantially over the last 30-40 years) resulting in a facial appearance that has been described as “pansy-like” by the Cat Fanciers’ Association (CFA), and “peeked”, “peke-faced”, “extreme”, “ultra”, …
