My question to you is do you think it unreasonable to charge $200 for a dog like a lab? You might think that that is a stupid question because we are dealing with Yorkies, but look at it from this stand point. Say it costs about the same to breed and welp a litter of labs as it does Yorkies (Yes it cost more to feed the labs, but usually Yorkie breeders will take their dog to the vet more times during pregnancy, so we're going with the cost is the same) Okay the lab has 12 pups (labs litters range from 6 to 17 pups so 9 is a nice middle number) So at $200 a pup for 12 pups the breeder gets $2400. Now a Yorkie has 3 pups (if your lucky) and the breeder gets $800 a pup, so that breeder also gets $2400 for the litter. Their costs are about the same, so shouldn't they get the same income?
Now I know that when you look at the cost of producing a litter it never adds up to the price of the pup; however, there are tons of cost that are never mentioned on those. Like the cost of showing the parent dogs to make sure that they are up to standard and worth breeding. The time that the breeder puts into the parent dogs and the puppies (we spend at least 2 complete hours a day just playing with our pups, heck that should be worth at least minimum wage, so you could figure $10 a day everyday for 12 weeks). The cost to house the puppies. We had to hand feed our pups from 3 weeks on, so we spent quite a bit on puppy formula. The costs of registering the pups.
We spent $1000 for our Roxi but she is so worth 10 times that in the happiness she has given us.
__________________ Anna  & Roxy  |