I think my youngest cat may be the product of over breeding, but im not too sure. Lately we have found she has some defects that are becoming more apparent over time. Could someone tell me the mental and physical defects that come as part of being over bred? Thanks for any help

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You're going to have to be a bit more specific. Over breeding to me means breeding too much, too often from one cat. This would lead to the girl being in poor condition but not inherited defects.

Exactly. Overbreeding affects the mother, not the kitten!

liz

Perhaps the OP means inbreeding?

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Proud mum to Tiffany, Bellinda and Jessica

This is probably a dim question… but if a queen has been used in back to back breeding, and hasn’t had adequate (or any) time to recover between litters… would her kittens still be healthy? I mean I can understand that back to back breeding will really screw up a queen … I just can’t imagine that her offspring would be healthy. If the mother’s body is running on empty, wouldn’t that be reflected in the kittens? I obviously dint mean genetic defects… just general poor ill health in the kittens. Low body weight etc.

(this is what I often think with mothers I have had from shelters… that it’s probably their 3rd litter in a year or something… but I know bad diet and street life takes a terrible toll on cats).

To the OP… this is NOT a reply to you… I know zero about this or breeding as whole …. just trying to learn something myself

I don't think you're wrong Tje but I'd imagine it would more likely lead to stillbirths or undersized kittens which didn't thrive/survive. Even then this would be a fairly extreme situation. The mother's body would be the one which really suffers, foetuses are very selfish entities.

I was meaning the mother not being given a rest between breeding sessions, I've seen cases before of the offspring having health defects due to this. I have no knowledge in the subject itself really, It was just a possible theory out of many we have, another being inbreeding, the breeder we received the kitten from seemed not to be giving the females a rest, and could possibly have inbreeding also going on.

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What sort of thing? I'd have thought it would be the sort of thing that showed up while they were still very young but I am guessing.

I don't see how it can be due to this. The babies simply take what they need. You would have to have something as extreme as starvation to actually affect the kittens. I am not aware of any evidence that overbred queens produce less milk. I think it is far far more likely that you have a genetic issue or perhaps something connected with infection - what exactly are the issues with your cat?

Liz

I think overbreeding and health problems are linked in that the breeders who tend to do this, are not good at other aspects of breeding either, so you probably will find inbreeding, the breeding of cats with genetic defects, the lack of interest in health testing and increased infection rates associated with a "bad" cattery.

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Lauren

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