There are a number of reasons why you pay more for Bulldog puppies. The primary being the fact that bulldogs are not easy to breed. In almost all breedings, female bulldogs need to be artificially inseminated.  It is uncommon for a female to naturally whelp her puppies at home—for the health of the bitch and puppies a c-section is the recommended form of delivery.

A successful breeding requires A LOT of veterinary expense just to get your female pregnant. First you need to determine if your female is in sound health and free from hereditary defects; thus you need to understand and be familiar with the bloodlines in which you are breeding!  Before artificially inseminating a bulldog bitch, a breeder needs to do multiple progesterone testing to determine ovulation and the optimal time to breed.  The male bulldog will need to be collected and the semen examined for viability.  If the male is not local you will need to plan the careful shipping of the semen to the vet clinic. Once you know your female is ready to be bred, then you can proceed with the artificial, transcervical or surgical implantation.  Regular veterinarian care, pregnancy nutrition, and ultra sounds are required to make sure all is well.

At 63 days of gestation, puppies are ready to be delivered by cesarean.  The week before the anticipated delivery, your expecting female will need to be monitored closely for possible early labor.  When the day arrives for puppy delivery, a trip to the veterinary clinic for the c-section happens.  It's important to find a quality vet experienced in reproduction, bulldogs and cesarean births!  Newborns may require special care and immediate veterinary attention and there is a high mortality rate with bulldog puppies.  It can be heartbreaking and is always stressful!  Bulldogs litters are not generally large—3 or 4 being average sized.

Once home, a heating source such as an incubator is essential.  For the first two weeks, puppies will need 24/7 care with feedings every couple of hours.  That is not much sleep for the human breeder. There is a lot that can go wrong!  Human attention is needed to constantly monitor the heat source temperature; humans will need to fully assist with the feeding of puppies by placing puppies with the mothers to nurse and always monitoring them closely to make sure all are eating well and thriving.  All females are not “natural” mothers and many will need prompting to clean their puppies to stimulate urinary and fecal elimination.  Newborns do not do this on their own—some females may never provide this and thus it falls to the human caregiver to stimulate the elimination each and every feeding.  Bulldog mothers cannot be left alone with a newborn for fear of suffocating them.  Hopefully the bulldog mother has enough, and good milk, or there may be the need to bottle feed or tube feed a whole litter.  If dehydration occurs in the puppies, then they will need fluid injections.

Raising a litter to 8-12 weeks can be very expensive and exhausting.  You hope for the best but are always prepared for the setbacks and death of beautiful bully babies.

SAMPLE COST FOR ONE LITTER – IF EVEN SUCCESSFUL!

These costs are estimations and can vary greatly depending on the area in which you live.

• Cost for need equipment:  heating source, supplies, puppy pen / $300 plus
• Determining the accurate timing of insemination / $200-300 (at least 3 progesterone tests are needed, often more)
• Artificial Insemination and stud expesne / $800-1200
• Planned cesarean / $700-1000.  In case of emergency or middle of the night c-section plan more!
• Numerous expenses incurred in the care of newborns / $300 plus
• It is difficult to put a value on the time and many hours invested in raising a healthy litter!  For the first two weeks of their life, this is your priority! Time off from work is a reality and time available for your family is minimal.  Sleep deprivation is always anticipated!

It is not unusual to spend over $2500 to get your female pregnant and in the end not even have a successful breeding or a live puppy.