ForestWind Siberian Cats
Adding a little love to your life!
Health Practices Explained; Scroll Down for Links!
The health of our kittens and cats is a primary concern. We feed top grade commercial kibbles, and we make our own raw cat food from human grade meats and home made chicken stock.
Health is not only about our cats having play space, good food, and loving attention, but it is about breeding for more than looks. Siberians, while a well known part of the Russian countryside for hundreds of years, have only recently become registered and shown as pedigreed cats. It is tempting to breed mostly for "show hall looks," and to ignore the expense and challenges of insuring that the breed remains healthy for the distant future.
In order to get show hall looks, one selects for homogeneity. This means that more of the genes are the same. Some breeders choose to mate close relatives together to "set" (stabilize) "type" (how the cat looks). By default, they are ensuring that their cats / breeding lines are highly related ("inbred").
A longer, but healthier, road to breed development and show hall success lies in mating cats together who look the same (phenotype) but are differently genetically (genotype). ensuring kittens are show worthy much more challenging.
However, since we think that the best Siberian cat is a healthy Siberian cat, we import rare lines, and have accepted that we will move more slowly to consistent conformation. But, we will rest easy knowing we have not contributed to a the health problems created by genetic bottleneck created through breeding lines too closely together.
This page includes links about health issues in cats in general, and also specifically in Siberian cats. We are proud to have initially reached out to inquire of Dr. Kate Meurs if she would investigate the possibility of her conducting HCM research in our breed. We've put our money where our mouth is and - aside from our initial invetsments in this research - we donate monthly to the WINN Feline Foundation to support HCM, FIP, and other health research in cats.
Health is not only about our cats having play space, good food, and loving attention, but it is about breeding for more than looks. Siberians, while a well known part of the Russian countryside for hundreds of years, have only recently become registered and shown as pedigreed cats. It is tempting to breed mostly for "show hall looks," and to ignore the expense and challenges of insuring that the breed remains healthy for the distant future.
In order to get show hall looks, one selects for homogeneity. This means that more of the genes are the same. Some breeders choose to mate close relatives together to "set" (stabilize) "type" (how the cat looks). By default, they are ensuring that their cats / breeding lines are highly related ("inbred").
A longer, but healthier, road to breed development and show hall success lies in mating cats together who look the same (phenotype) but are differently genetically (genotype). ensuring kittens are show worthy much more challenging.
However, since we think that the best Siberian cat is a healthy Siberian cat, we import rare lines, and have accepted that we will move more slowly to consistent conformation. But, we will rest easy knowing we have not contributed to a the health problems created by genetic bottleneck created through breeding lines too closely together.
This page includes links about health issues in cats in general, and also specifically in Siberian cats. We are proud to have initially reached out to inquire of Dr. Kate Meurs if she would investigate the possibility of her conducting HCM research in our breed. We've put our money where our mouth is and - aside from our initial invetsments in this research - we donate monthly to the WINN Feline Foundation to support HCM, FIP, and other health research in cats.
