Can anyone tell me if it is every 24 or 48 hours that the levels are expected to double? My bitch had 2.9 on day 8.  Thanks

It goes up approx by 50% per day - so if you call it 3 on day 8 - it'll be around 4.5 on day 9, 6.75 day 10 and so on.  But bitches can stay the same for a couple of days or levels rise quickly, so it's always advisable to test again as suggested by whoever does your tests.

That's very helpful. Thank you. Idexx have suggested a retest on day 11 (Friday.)

Hope you get a 'mating date' by then - by my reckoning mating should be day 13/14 - lets wait and see what the result says.

Do you work at the lab?

No - just from what I've been told and experience, but the bitch will probably prove me wrong!

I wish we were still in the dinosaur days of "when they turn their tails and are obviously ready, we just go to the stud dog and a litter results." Oh the good ol' days! Never had any of this premate testing when I had my last litter in 1988 but I kind of feel obliged to do what everyone else seems to do. Were we so wrong to rely on our own judgement? In the past I bred 8 litters to 5 bitches and only on one occasion did the bitch "miss". Also only had one mating each time. Nowadays it seems that you are expected to go 2 or 3 times. How are you expected to know the due date when you do this?  Hypothetical questions really!

In the dinosaur days we always seemed to know when was the right time and have to say that we didn't have any problems.  Though for some reason nowadays I have with two of my girls and the Idexx test has been the one that has worked.  Awaiting a litter from one of my girls, it will be her first litter had her Idexx tested on Day 6 as the previous time she'd finished at day 9 so I didn't breed from her.  This time had her done day 6 as per above then day 11 she was still quite low and she ended up being mated days 16, 17 and 18, thankfully she has been scanned and is pregnant......