Why Are Bulldog Puppies So Expensive?

You would be surprised how many times I have heard this question "Why are they so expensive? You must make a lot of money..." I guess people just don’t realize what goes into raising a litter of bulldog puppies…raising the best puppies you possibly can, as responsibly as you can.

The prices I quote are rounded off, and may vary depending on the cost of your vet and where you purchase your animal supplies. Some things you can save money on by doing them yourself, but not very many. I am only basing this information on a litter of 4 puppies being raised to 12 weeks old. There are many variables, but this is just going to be an average. I’m sure other breeds have costs specific to their breed, so this does in no way represent what other responsible breeders go through with their puppies.

The cost for puppies starts before breeding. Health screening of the parents is a must. Knowing the health problems in the lines of both parents, judging temperament, and the physical qualities you are trying to produce, and the list goes on. Most, if not all, bulldogs are Artificially Inseminated (A/I) and need to have a thyroid screening. Our vet charges $60 to collect from the male and inseminate the bitch. Since my wife has her own stud dogs and the equipment and knowledge to do this herself, we saved $60. Say you don’t have your own stud dog and have to go out for stud service, this could be around $500. But for the sake of my example, we are going to use the $60. Usually you have to do a few tests on the bitch to see when she’s ovulating. Once you figure that out, you usually breed her 3 times…wow, that’s $180 just for collection from the dog. I won’t add in the thyroid T-4 test at $40 a test.

After the bitch has been bred, we put her on pre-natal vitamins, the same vitamins that would be taken by a pregnant woman or a woman planning on getting pregnant. These run around $12 for a bottle of 120, since they are pregnant for 63 days, we will say $6 for pre-natal and $5 for a bottle of folic acid. Folic acid is used to prevent birth defects, the same reason pregnant women use it. So now we’re up to $191.

The bitch is switched from her normal dog food to puppy food two weeks after breeding. Proper nutrition helps ensure healthy puppies. We use Pro Plan Large Dog Breed puppy food. I can usually pick up a 37.5 lb bag for $30 at Petsmart. This will usually last the entire pregnancy, but you may have to get more. Let’s see….we’re up to just over $210 and puppies haven’t even gotten here.

IT’S PUPPY TIME!!!!! Ok…the bitch has been pregnant for 9 weeks, she looks like she swallowed a basketball, she uncomfortable and looks pitiful. 3 days before her 1st due date (there’s no guess work on this date when you A/I) we take the dog 70 miles to the vet. WOW…70 miles? Yep, our vet owns bulldogs, loves bulldogs, knows them inside and out, that’s why he’s the best and we go 70 miles one way. My wife trusts him so much, she’d let him do surgery on her. He’s pretty good on other breeds too. So, we drop the bitch off. The vet takes an x-ray or two for $60 each, monitors her temperature, runs a few progesterone tests, and figures out exactly when she’s going to start going into labor. At this point he puts her under anesthesia and performs a c-section. A few days later, the vet calls up and says to come get Ma and the kids. He sends us home with vitamin K shots for the puppies and anything else he might think the pups need. We walk out of the vet’s office for $1200. This includes the c-section, test, x-rays, boarding fee, etc… So, now we’re up to $.1410.00

Well, the puppies are home. Now what? Well, babies need to be kept warm, so let’s turn up the heat. We don’t want to heat the whole house, just the bedroom, so we turn on the ceramic space heater and warm the room up to a toasty 85 degrees (Get used to it, it’s going to be like this for the next few weeks). Ok, the room’s hot, now where are the puppies going to sleep? Well the floor’s not as warm as the rest of the room and it’s kind of drafty, so we need to get the babies off the floor. Let’s put them on the bed. My wife uses a small wading pool, you know, the blue plastic pools for little kids? (Don’t plan on sleeping very comfortably for a while.) We line it with a blanket and cover the blanket with sheepskin cloth. This keeps the puppies dry if they pee. We also put a heating pad BELOW the blankets off to one side so if the pups get cold they can get warm, and if they get too warm they can get off. You also need to cover the puppies with a thin light blanket to keep any drafts off of them, but still allow them to breathe. Ceramic heaters use up quite a bit of electricity. Guess what? Our electric bill just went up an extra $120 a month to keep puppies warm. Is there a cheaper way? Probably, but I don’t have any ideas around it yet. Wait, what if you don’t have the pool, or the blankets? You have to buy them. What if you have them already? Eventually you’ll have to replace them because they’ll wear out, but it takes a long time for that to happen. Hmmm….$1410.00 so far…this is starting to get expensive.

Puppies love to eat. I mean it, they LOVE to eat. And, they usually let you know when they’re ready to eat, even if you think you should be sleeping at 2 or 3am. Unfortunately, mommy bulldogs don’t produce that much milk, so, we have to supplement with formula. You could use Esbilac, but we found something easier for the puppies to digest, Just Born. It comes in an 8 oz box. Let’s see, for the first week puppies eat every 2 to 3 hours, and they eat about one quarter of an ounce, so that’s about 2 oz a day right? And I said that this is going to be an average for 4 puppies, so that’s 8 oz or a box a day for the first week. Week 2 they’re eating around half an ounce every 4 hours, so that’s 10 boxes for the week. By week 3 they’re eating a whole ounce every 6 hours, so that’s 14 boxes for the week. All together that’s around 31 boxes of formula. After shipping, we pay around $100 for 36 boxes. The extra boxes are used in the weaning process. So, we’re up to $1510.00 after formula.

Weaning begins at 4 to 5 weeks old. We take dry puppy food, soak it in water overnight, toss it in the blender and add formula and a jar of Gerber’s baby food meats (Turkey, chicken, beef, veal, lamb). Puppy food is $30 a bag. The Gerber’s baby food is $.70 a jar and we usually end up getting 5 jars of each so that’s $18. And we figure after weaning they’ll go through another 3 bags of puppy food, so that’s another $90. Ummm….that’s $1600.00 total.

Hidden costs, things you might not think about being in the cost of raising a puppy….

Laundry. They can make a big mess of things or on things as the case may be, so we do 4 loads of puppy blankets a day. 4 loads a day for 12 weeks, that’s 336 loads of laundry. We get our soap from the Dollar Store, and I don’t know how many loads a box can do, but I can hear my electricity bill going up again….Let’s say $10 a week for soap and electricity to wash and dry puppy blankets. That would be $120. I guess it’s a good thing we have well water, or that would be even more.

Toys. Can’t walk out of Petsmart with just a bag of puppy food. Each puppy gets a toy and gets to take that toy with them if we place them. We try not to spend more than $15 on each toy, so that’s $60.

Gas. Without fail puppies get sick and have to go see the vet. 140 miles round trip. We usually end up going at least 6 times. Call it 3 tanks of gas, that’s $45.

Vet. Those 6 trips to the vet? $50 each on average for the office visit and medication, so that’s $300. Oh…I almost forgot shots, 2 sets of shots and a health certificate…that’s another $320. We need some special equipment from the vet…syringes, feeding tubes for sick puppies, ringers solution if they get dehydrated from diarrhea, antibiotics…..that’s another $100 easy.

Health care. You don’t have to go to the vet for everything. We add supplements to the formula, we use baby nasal spray if they get the sniffles, we use Desitin if they get "diaper rash" from diarrhea, baby wash. All added together that’s about another $50.

Baby wipes. You can never have enough baby wipes. Remember me saying puppies love to eat? Guess what they love to do 5 minutes after eating and any time in between feedings? We go through about 5 refills. I think the last time I bought baby wipes, I bought store brand, and they were around $5 each, so that’s $25.

Time lost from work. I’m lucky enough to work in a small company that I can take time off at the drop of a hat or I can change my work schedule. My wife will use 1 week vacation for the 1st week, and I work half days for the next three weeks because my company is more flexible than hers. I net $13 an hour after taxes, so that’s $780 I didn’t bring home, because I’m home with puppies.

Advertising. Advertising in Dog World Magazine is $23 a month, and the website is $9 a month, so that’s $384 a year.

AKC Litter registration is $25 and $2 for each puppy, so that’s $33.

Adult dogs. 2 stud dogs, 2 brood bitches, 5 spayed bitches and 3 of which are old timers. The price of the puppy also goes to pay for the food and veterinary cost of the adult dogs. After all, you wouldn’t have any puppies at this point if you didn’t have some adult dogs for breeding to begin with. A bag of food lasts 4 days for 9 dogs, so that’s 92 bags a year at $30 each for a total of $2760. One of those spayed dogs is on a prescription food for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. That food is $33 for a 20lb bag, which lasts 2 weeks. So that dog’s food is another $858 a year. That’s just dog food. I don’t even want to think of the veterinary cost of yearly shots, check ups, emergency visits, etc… I’m also not adding in the cost of showing a dog – gas, hotel, entry fees and who knows what else.

So, we are finally up to what $7034? Call it $7000 for argument’s sake. If I sells all 4 puppies for $2000 each, after all of the expenses related to the dogs are taken out, that leaves her with $1000 ($250 per puppy). If you take that and divide it by 12, you get $83 a week. Now divide that by 7, and you’ll get $12 a day. Now take that $12 and divide it by the 16 hours my wife spends taking care of the puppies and you’ll see that my wife only makes $.75 an hour. (If you really want to sit and do the math, you’re more than welcome to, I’m just rounding everything off to the nearest whole dollar before I go to the next division.) Granted, not all of the cost is associated directly with the puppies, and is paid out over time whether there are puppies sold or not. This probably isn’t even half the expense for the bulldogs.

Let’s say one out of those puppies dies. Now subtract that $7000 from $6000. Oops, you’re $1000 in the hole, looks like you didn’t make enough money from puppies to pay for your dogs. You didn’t even make $.75 an hour putting your sweat and tears into that puppy.

Let’s say one of those puppies is good enough to show and my wife decides to keep it. That’s $2000 that has to be absorbed by the other three.

Let’s say there was only one puppy in the litter and you manage to keep it alive. You decide it’s not exactly to the standard you were breeding for, so you decide to sell it. Well, then you’d be down $6000, and barely able to pay for the c-section and raising that one puppy. And if you did keep it, then you would just have to eat everything and hope your boss at your regular full time job is taking heavy medication when it comes time to give out the Christmas bonuses and adds an extra zero or two to the end of yours. Hey, it could happen…..just not in this example or my lifetime.

Ok, worst case scenario. (And it’s happened to us, twice) You drop the bitch off at the vet, he finds out there was a dead puppy inside her, which spread infection throughout her body, which caused her to die an excruciatingly painful death as her major organs shut down one by one, and kills off the rest of the puppies as well. Not only are you out the puppies, pre-breeding costs, and c-section, but you’ve lost a family member, and any future puppies she may have produced for you. How do you put a price tag on that loss?

When you have done this, $2000 for a puppy suddenly doesn’t seem like very much, and then you understand, that you aren’t and can’t possibly be in it for the money.

I don’t understand why people are saying breeders like my wife are trying to ram it to someone when they ask $2000 for a puppy. How are you begrudging a breeder $.75 an hour, when they work a regular full time job? So it’s wrong for a responsible breeder to make $250 for raising a puppy for 12 weeks and not call it a business? It’s wrong for a responsible breeder to do it once, maybe twice a year? But it’s OK for a puppy mill or BYB to make more than that… because they don’t put as much money into the pre-breeding expenses, or any of the other expenses that my wife does? Now, there’s a lot of things I didn’t add in to the total cost of breeding bulldogs, so in reality she doesn’t even make that $.75 an hour. In fact sometimes I wonder how anyone can breed dogs and still afford to eat. I know the IRS won’t let you operate a business unless you MAKE a PROFIT,

If you don’t care about what breed of dog you want, and you just want A DOG / ANY DOG, go to the local shelter and save a life. If you know what breed of dog you really, really want, and you can’t afford it right now, save your money to get what you want. If you have enough money to get any dog you want, get the best. If you just want a pet, but don’t care if it has any ribbons or is a champion, go to a responsible breeder, they try as hard as they can to breed the perfect dog, and end up creating a lot of great pets along the way.

So now that I’ve given you something to think about, go ahead and talk about it amongst yourselves. No wonder they say breeding should be left to those individuals who can dedicate their lives to it.