11/06/2026
*Stolen from another page*
Let’s break it down why ethical breeders do not earn as much as you think…
- Breeding rights/ initial purchase
We purchase expensive, quality, healthy cats, which are a huge investment to the cattery and obviously it’s a must otherwise the cattery wouldn’t function, when buying active breeding cats, you can be looking at paying anywhere between £2,000-5,000 for a single cat, that is without importation costs yet. If you’re having to pay for import fees on top of this, expect another £500-£1,500 adding to this price.
- Quality food
Raw food, raw snacks, additives, ect are expensive! Especially when you have a whole group of cats within the cattery, and bringing up kittens and pregnant mothers, your monthly bills of food does rack up in the hundreds per month, sometimes even thousands.
-Veterinary costs.
Costs of vaccinations, spay/neuter, microchips, consultations, flea & worm treatments, emergencies, all add up to thousands of pounds in the financial year.
-Enrichments
Cat trees, especially Maine C**n specific are expensive! You’re looking at hundreds of pounds per tree. They last a while, but need areas replacing over time as when you have multiple cats playing, scratching and climbing daily, it obviously wears down.
Cattio’s, there is two ways of doing this, spending thousands for professionals to come build it, or buy a ready made flat pack online. Alternatively, you can buy materials, break your own sweat, get a few injuries and do it yourself for days/weeks on a go, but save yourself some money, possibly paying hundreds this way.
-Registrations/ Pedigrees
Unless you’re a breeder, you wouldn’t know, but us breeders have to pay to register a Cattery with a registry body. We have to register the litter. Then, we have to register the kittens, transfer the kittens. Pay for a pedigree. This adds up to quite a big expense a year.
-Environment
For us especially, we have two bedroom within our home equipped surely for the breeding, the preparation of the room, and all the relevant stuff inside; Expensive.
-Health testing
You need to have health testing for each of your cats, whether that is DNA, heart echos, hip scans, this racks up to thousands of pounds in a year!
I could list a couple more things that make our expenses very very high🙈
This is a bit raw, but over my 3 years of trading, these are my figures:
Income - £48,577
Expenses - £54,652
That means, throughout my time breeding, we are in minus of £6,075.
The reality is, we are not the only ethical breeders who have these struggles. Unless you’re a breeding mill, that cuts corners, you will barely be breaking even and if you do, not by loads.
If it ever gets to a point you’re starting to be in a bit of a profit, or breaking even, bang, you need to retire some of the cats as it wouldn’t be ethical to keep them in the breeding program, so here we have another thousands for new breeding cats.
The purpose of this post, is solely for people to understand why ethical breeders charge the amounts they do. Maybe, just maybe, if the breeding rights, health testing, veterinary costs, quality food, pedigrees wasn’t in the equation, we would be able to afford charging the same as others🙈
