Breeders Blog

By Zena Pigden

When I first got interested breeding Maine Coons some 23 years ago I wrote to 15 or so Maine Coon breeders in the UK looking for a male and a female breeding Maine Coon (no internet then). Many didn’t bother to reply and some of those who did, wouldn’t even consider selling me a kitten.

Their reasons were varied. More than one breeder told me that I could not or should not start with just one male and one female as a male could not be happy in that situation. They require more matings than they would get. What it showed me at the time is that clearly these UK breeders had no conception of the reality of starting to breed a new breed in New Zealand. Cost considerations alone precluded importing 3 plus queens at the same time or soon after getting a male, and as there were no male Maine Coons in New Zealand at that time, stud service was not an option. At the same time, OF COURSE in the future I would be bringing in more girls, as and when I could find suitable girls and breeders willing to export.

Setting that aside, though, I am going to question this quite widely held belief that a male needs access to (at least) three females to ‘keep him happy’. Let’s think about what this really means. Depending on how often you breed your queens, which in turn may depend on a wide range of factors, your male with three queens may get three matings in a year, or maybe an average of 4 or 5. Most of the time, he won’t have a female with him and most of the year, including during the breeding season when cats are having heats regularly, he won’t be mating. I fail to see how three matings or four are going to keep him happier than one or two, and I think this idea is based on a misconception about what it is about stud life that runs contrary to a male’s needs or instincts.

I can also report from personal experience that it simply isn’t true. Males vary greatly in temperament and attitude and I suspect there’s some variation from breed to breed. I’ve now been breeding for over 25 years. I’ve bred Birmans and am still breeding Maine Coons. Very hormonal males (the ones that pace, howl and spray a lot) may need a lot of mating opportunities to keep them more or less happy. If so, I’m going to hazard a guess that 3 or 4 or even 5 matings a year isn’t going satisfy them. But I would argue that these males simply aren’t well suited to stud life. In the wild they would be able to roam widely searching for females (even if they did not always find them). This is what their natural instincts drive them to do, and being confined, perhaps able to smell or hear willing females but not able to get to them (because it’s not time for that female to be mated yet/again/to that stud) goes contrary to what they need and want to do. One of the breeders who told me I shouldn’t think of importing one male and one female told me with some pride that she had 32 females and 4 males and therefore that her males usually had a female with them. Well and good. If any of her males were the super hormonal type, they were probably reasonably content. Mind you, I have no idea how she managed to socialise 32 litters a year.

But my males have never been in that situation. Typically, I and my breeding partner have 2 or 3 unrelated males and around 5 females. The males are in separate cages with outside runs, but the cages are in the same stud house so they are well aware of each other, and their runs adjoin the big outside play area we have for girls and kittens, so they are very aware of the girls when they are on heat. Throughout my time as a breeder my males have been OK with this. I’ve even had to put a male ‘on ice’ and not use him for a year when he had an equivocal heart scan (this was long before Superlorin chips) and he handled this just fine. I will say though that I neutered one boy before ever using him, in part because he was a pacer/howler/sprayer and was clearly stressed by stud life. How do I know they are OK? They look relaxed. They are affectionate and responsive to me. They don’t howl all the time

although if someone is on heat, there will be some calling. They don’t pace at all. Temperaments are cruisy and relaxed. (I should mention that in Europe some males live with a friend or relative of the breeder, who undertakes to keep them as indoor only or indoor/ outside safe enclosure cats). Away from females and other males, many of these males don’t spray and are able to lead a comfortable and happy life and may be kept entire and used now and then for breeding for many years. And very possibly they are not even getting 3 matings a year…

We do owe it to our boys to give them positive human attention and the best environment that we can. One of my males has also had and benefited from a spay companion, but this is a bit rough on the spayed companion – it is a very limited life compared to what they would enjoy as a pet. It only came about because my very timid retired queen kept running away from our new house, and each time couldn’t be recaptured for weeks. (She settled very happily into a more confined life with my boy).

We should also be mindful that although the opportunity to mate satisfies the instinct an entire cat has to mate when able, it is not without some cost in stress to the cat. Females are not always amenable. Perhaps they are not quite ready, perhaps they are unfamiliar with the stud, perhaps they are simply contrary. In many cases the male must wait and watch for the right moment when she will accept his attentions. Then most females are at least temporarily aggressive immediately following mating, requiring a swift retreat and fine judgement about when it is safe to approach again. Because cats are not naturally unselectively social (by which I mean that they can have feline friends but that they are not naturally friendly with all other cats), having a strange female (or a familiar female but not a friend) in the male’s space is also stressful, at least initially, even though the instinct to mate overrules territorial concerns. (We see this clearly illustrated by the reports of some breeders that their male is aggressive with all females, even if fully on heat and very willing).

So yes, if a male is entire, having the opportunity to mate from time to time meets one of their needs, but it is not an unmixed blessing. And no, boys that are suited to living a few years as a stud do not require a set number of females (or matings) a year to be happy.