Picking a Keeper: What Does a Breeder Look For?
It takes a good eye for the written standard, an unwavering love for the breed, and a whole lot of self control to be a preservation breeder. Having a support system that helps to remind you of your breeding goals and ethics is a must.
Pedigree Lines
A good Maine Coon breeder will be familiar with key elements of the pedigree lines they are working with, including recent ancestors, character trait heritability, oral health, cardiovascular health, orthopedic health, conformation, and temperament to name a few. I am not aware of a single breeder who can say they know their pedigree lines 100%. However, the longer a breeder works with a line, the more they will know. And, the more likely they will make the right choice when it comes to pairing a queen with a stud and picking a keeper from the litter.
The majority of Maine Coon pedigree lines that breeders work with today have been around for several decades. That is to say, the lines don’t belong to any one person, but they are the result of the work of many breeders collaborating over a long period of time. Ethical and responsible breeders will breed with the written standard and health of the cats they are working with in mind. A breeder without the proper knowledge, support, or motivations will breed with their own personal preferences in mind and not much else. Each generation of breeders will play their part, collectively adding or detracting from the work of those that came before them.
Health, Temperament, and Conformation
If you’ve been in the Maine Coon Breeding Community long enough, or interviewed your share of breeders, you will hear one sentiment being repeated often: Good breeders breed for health, temperament, and confirmation (or for health, temperament, and “type”).
When breeders speak of breeding for health, they should not be referring to only the genetic test results of their breeding cats. DNA is not the “be all, end all” of health screening. Especially when it comes to heart health and orthopedic health in the Maine Coon cat. While responsible breeders will make sure NOT to pair two cats together that carry a recessive gene mutation, which could affect the physical health of their offspring, they will also be keenly aware of each of their breeding cats overall health. This includes annual wellness exams with a licensed veterinarian, routine visits with a board certified veterinary cardiologist, and with a veterinarian who specializes in obtaining (properly positioned hip) x-rays for hip grading.
Knowing their lines should NEVER be an excuse for a breeder not to perform regular health screening, whether that’s genetic testing, routine echocardiogram screening, or hip grading. Surprises can and do happen, especially when it comes to recessive genes (“recessives live forever”), or conditions that have environmental triggers outside of a breeder’s control. This is why it’s unwise for a breeder to repeatedly bring in new lines each year and retire last year’s cats. These “surprises” are a lot less likely to happen when a breeder has a long working knowledge and history of the lines they are working with.
General Health
Monitoring the general health of a breeding cat is not much different from monitoring the general health of a pet. This involves annual wellness exams which typically includes a physical exam (don’t forget teeth and gums), routine lab work, and age appropriate vaccinations.
A breeder will also want to confirm the blood type of each of their breeding cats and make pairing decisions with this information in mind. A mismatch with blood type could be fatal to newborns when they first start nursing.
Just as important as a cat’s general health, is the immune health of a breeding cat and any offspring they produce. Breeders don’t breed in a sterile environment. Just like young children aren’t raised in a bubble. Kids are known to spread germs when they begin daycare or start school. Young kittens are notorious for passing around common kitty colds, or developing the equivalent of pink eye (thanks to playful bunny kicking of the face, right after they’ve walked around in their litter box). While some who are less knowledgeable on the subject may preach otherwise, trying to limit breeding cats to those who have never been exposed to a kitty cold isn’t a realistic goal for a breeder. As per current research, some feline viruses are present in over 90% of healthy cats raised in multi-cat environments.
Instead of trying to achieve an unrealistic goal (only breeding with cats that have never been sick), what’s important for a breeder to focus on is obtaining cats and producing kittens with robust immune health. Cats and kittens with a robust immune system are the ones that have been exposed to certain illnesses, but recover from symptoms effortlessly and build immunity in the process (versus cats that present with severe symptoms and take an excessive amount of time to recover, or relapse repeatedly).
Working with genetically diverse lines and working to lower the coefficient of inbreeding, clones percentage, and Top5 percentage can also help with improving immune health in the Maine Coon.
Cardiac Health
Routine echocardiograms help to screen for not just congenital heart defects, but early signs of degenerative conditions like HCM too. Having a young breeding cat that has a clean echo is good, but having generational history of clean echos is a thousand times better. Especially when you have multiple ancestors with clean echos all the way up to 8 years of age or older. While nothing is a 100% guarantee when you work with living, breathing things, the more ancestral history a breeder has relating to health, the more confident they can be that the future offspring they produce will be healthy.
Orthopedic Health
Just as important as general health and cardiac health, is orthopedic health. While some breeders choose not to use a cat in breeding whose hip grading score is less than excellent, I think it bears repeating: It’s important to know your pedigree lines! Just because a cat does not receive an excellent hip grading score does not mean it’s unacceptable to breed with. Cats with good, fair, or mild laxity can also be used; however, it’s important to pair fair or mild graded hips with good or excellent hips (and not with another cat that has fair or mild subluxation too).
It’s also important to understand that two cats with good or excellent graded hips can create offspring with a lesser hip grading score, and cats with moderate to severe dysplasia may not show any symptoms or be affected in any way. This is why it’s so important for a breeder to use hip grading as a tool and make the very best breeding decisions available to them, not just rely on the way a cat appears to walk, jump, or run.
Temperament
The personality of a kitten or cat begins to develop within the early weeks of its life. Much of the temperament is due to genetic factors, but there is also some environmental factors that will come into play. When a breeder selects a cat for future breeding, it’s important to select based on what the breed is known for. In the case of the Maine Coon, it’s their gentle, laid back personality, playful demeanor, and high intelligence.
Conformation (“Type”)
If a kitten or cat that has caught the eye of a breeder, checks all the boxes for health and temperament, then the next thing that needs to be considered is the conformation or “type.” To understand what a breeder is looking for when picking a keeper, it’s important to look to the written breed standard.
Maine Coon Breed Standard
The written breed standard, as outlined by The International Cat Association says this:
“The Maine Coon is America's native longhaired cat. The breed, with its essentially amiable disposition, developed through a natural selection process where only the fittest survived. It should always be remembered that the Maine Coon developed basically as a "working cat" able to fend for itself in rough, woody terrain and under extreme climatic conditions. The Maine Coon is a large breed with big ears, broad chest, substantial boning, a long, hard-muscled, rectangular body and a long, flowing tail, and large feet with tufts.”
Tips for Picking a Keeper
My mentor once told me, “You need to build the barn before you can paint it!”
And, “A good show cat does not always make a good breeding cat, and a good breeding cat will not always make a good show cat.”
Before picking a keeper, it’s important for a breeder to have a clear idea of their cattery goals, and to know the strengths and weaknesses of their breeding cats. Building the barn first means picking a keeper based on how well the kitten meets the written breed standard and not based on size, coat color, or pattern alone.
There’s no such thing as a perfect cat. A breeder should pick a kitten that is better than what they started with, and whose strengths will help compliment their pedigree lines. For example, if a breeder has a stud that has great boning, well shaped eyes, well shaped and sized ears that are set well on the head, but the boy has a chin that is slightly weak or a nose that has a slight bump, they most definitely do not want to keep a kitten that is showing signs of having those same weaknesses too. Instead, they would want to be sure to pick a kitten with a strong profile. Their choice for keepers will of course be more limited if they only have access to one stud, whereas a breeder with multiple studs, each with their owns strengths, will have more options to consider.
Summary
Breeding always involves taking calculated risks, but a breeder can mitigate those risks by knowing the pedigree lines they are working with and performing all of the necessary health screening that’s recommended for the breed. When it comes to picking keepers, it’s important for a breeder to make decisions based on the written standard and prioritize the work of preserving the Maine Coon breed.
