Can someone please tell me  is 4/6 or 2/6 a good or bad hip score for a lab when looking at the parents of a lab puppy?

I Am assuming 0/0 on elbows is good.

Thanks Karen

Yep you can get any better than 0/0 elbows or hips.
3/3 would be the worst for elbows.

The lower the better for hips I'm not 100% on breed average for labs but I would guess its a similar number to my breed. If thats the case I would consider a total of 8 and 10 good.
Maybe someone can help with regards to the breed average but I would consider those decent scores for a lab :-)

ETA: You CANT get better than 0/0 elbows or hips

I not sure how up to date it is but I think Ive found that the breed average is 16. So both scores are below the breed average :-)

Thank you, very helpful :)

Karen

I like to put it into perspective with the schemes used by other countries.

The mean score for Labradors (from those who bother to score) is 14, like my own breed, so anything below that is good, and a few points above would be acceptable.  I'd be very content with scores of 8 and 10 totals

The Americans grade hips in three categories Considered Normal, a Borderline grade and three Dysplastic grades.

Other Hip Dysplasia Registries--An Approximation

OFA                FCI (European)    BVA (UK/Australia)     SV (Germany)
Excellent          A-1                      0-4 (no > 3/hip)           Normal
Good               A-2                      5-10 (no > 6/hip)         Normal
Fair                  B-1                     11-18                          Normal
Borderline         B-2                     19-25                          Fast Normal
Mild                  C                         26-35                         Noch Zugelassen
Moderate          D                         36-50                         Mittlere
Severe              E                         51-106                       Schwere

This helpful :) trying to help guide folk, who may jump in otherwise.
They will be brilliant owners but are young and impatient.

Karen.

Actually I dont think that those hip scores are very good, certainly not ones that I would consider a lab pup from. Even though the breed average is 16 (or 14 it depends on what you are reading at the time, I prefer to take 14 as that is the most recent average), that is just one part of it, the other issue is how even they are.  A hip score of 2/6 would indicate to me that one hip was considerably different on x ray than the other side. For example an early injury or perhaps a potential issue on one side. 4/6 isnt so bad, but still an issue with a right hip, but if these were the parents of a particular pup, I would avoid due to so many other litters out there that have more even scores. Im not sure that hip issues can favour a particular side genetically, but its strange that both these scores have right hips that have higher scores.

Actually I dont think that those hip scores are very good, certainly not ones that I would consider a lab pup from.

Speechless.

uneveness of scores, as you say, points to environmental factors affecting the score, as HD is a bilateral condition, and there should be little difference in the scores for each hip based on heredity, which is why your scoring.

So I would much rather have a 4/6 score or a 2/6, or even a 3/12 than say an 8/8.

A 6/6 would also be a perfectly good score so why would you object to one hip being lower than 6?

But whatever scores of half or little more than half the mean no matter how broken up are very good scores.

Why are you speechless, Ive spent several years researching labradors, I bred my first litter last year after researching lines, hip scores, backgrounds, speaking at length to breeders and at shows/trials and in the end she was mated to the father of the current IGL champion with their knowledge and support helping me. There are many other litters out there that have parents that have better and more even hip scores. Thats just a fact. Why not go for something better to improve the outcome as much as you can?

A dog is more than a pair of hips, so why the need to get hung up on one aspect and making the deciding factor the lowest between several functionally normal results.  Why reject perfectly good hips just because another may be slightly better. 

A difference of 2 or 4 points on a hip is not a huge difference, and can easily add up with most dogs scoring in teh first 3 or 4 criteria, the difference between one panelist asigning a 0 and a 1, on one or two parmeters.  The consensus of the three panelists is asigned, if two say 0 and 1 says 1 then it gets a 0, and so on.

Ditto to Brainless -to reject scores of 10 and 8 is just plain ridiculous -there are far more to a dog than a pair of hips, and not in the wildest imagination could you say either score was bad, especially not for the breed. By rejecting good hips in favour of even better ones you may instead create other problems you know nothing about, as you are narrowing the genepool instantly.

A hip score of 2/6 would indicate to me that one hip was considerably different on x ray than the other side.

Or, that the dog wasn't placed correctly by the person carrying out the x-ray. Good x-rays wont make bad hips good, but bad x-rays (and I'm not talking so bad for the scoring panel to return them) can make good hips less good when it comes to applying a number!

I think you'd be hard pushed to find much better, unless you were searching purely for hip scores. I would never choose a puppy based on hip scores alone and sacrifice other things. I have bought 5 lab puppies in my life time and I would be more than happy with these scores.

> xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Actually I dont think that those hip scores are very good, certainly not ones that I would consider a lab pup from.<br /><br />Speechless.

With you there Marianne.    As Brainless says, there's more to a dog than a pair of hips etc.     A dog can be 0/0 for hips but throw some horrendous scores in its progeny, a low score is no guarantee the pups will be likewise.  I hate the way health testing is seen as the green light to breed from anything, it should be part of the thought process but conformation, temperament, show/working ability are all equally as important.

But to be fair, nothing else regarding the pup was mentioned and the question was only about the hip scores of a pups parents and what were people's opinion.  I totally agree that there is much more to a dog than a pair of hips, it is also very much one of the pieces of the jigsaw and has to be seen in balance. Nothing was mentioned about the lines of the parents, other health testing done, working/show results, conformation or temperament.

However I may swim against the majority perhaps, but I would prefer a more even pair of hips from parents for a pup I buy, that is just my preference :) it was also just one of my criteria for when I was looking for a stud, that was my preference too. It doesn't mean it is wrong :) it just means that is what is important to me.

The question was;

Can someone please tell me  is 4/6 or 2/6 a good or bad hip score for a lab when looking at the parents of a lab puppy?

I think the simple answer is - good!!

I hate the way health testing is seen as the green light to breed from anything, it should be part of the thought process but conformation, temperament, show/working ability are all equally as important.

I remember years ago now, reading the breed notes in one of the dog papers for a breed that is not one of mine. The breed note writer had been to another country (European) to judge, and was not impressed. Apparently the hips were all better than in the breed here but instead a lot of the dogs judged had issues with aggressive temperament. That's the first time I saw the expression about a good dog being more than a good hip score.

Going back even further, to when I still lived in Sweden (80s), it wasn't uncommon to see show line Golden Retrievers with good hips and looks but which would NOT retrieve -they had simply lost the very instinct the entire breed was based on. It was one particular line that was like this.

Those results are good.  It's only a couple of points out and not as though either are scoring highly.  I would be happy from a pup with parents with those hipscores, if all other health tests and character were good.

My working cocker, who has been an airborne loon since he was 8 weeks old, despite my care with his exercise, has a score of 3/8. I was told that is more likely to be environmental than anything else and nothing to worry about. It certainly hasn't put ppl off using him in the future, in fact I think they're happy to find a hipscored stud dog.

I wouldn't have a problem with those results either.

> Ive spent several years researching labradors, I bred my first litter last year after researching lines, hip scores, backgrounds, speaking at length to breeders and at shows/trials and in the end she was mated to the father of the current IGL champion with their knowledge and support helping me.

What will you do Alfieshmalfie if the pick of your litter ( assuming you kept one) has a Hip score of 2/6? Breed from it or not?

One thing that tends to happen when you've been breeding dogs for a long time ......you tend to start to see the bigger picture.
You begin to thank your lucky stars for 'good enough' results.

Brilliant scores as they are below average for the breed.

As others have stated a dog is more than just a pair of hips and if you look at any of the documented statements by the genetics expert Malcolm Willis you will have a good understanding of breeding.

My working cocker, who has been an airborne loon since he was 8 weeks old, despite my care with his exercise, has a score of 3/8. I was told that is more likely to be environmental than anything else and nothing to worry about.

I have a dog that was returned to me aged 20 months. By then he had done obedience, agility, working trials -you name it, he'd done it. His littermates scored 3/3, 3/4, and 5/4. This dog scored 2/6. I am in no doubt whatsoever that his uneven score is due to overdoing things when he was young, as he was the only one who did so much. And it's still a great low score which I am very happy with. Parents were 5/6 and 6/4 so he's lower than both, as in fact were his siblings too! (Just 2 in the litter not been scored.)

Somebody once told me that a dog going up stairs which have a turn in them could affect hips. She reckoned she could tell by the way the dog moved if it was kept in a house with a right or left bend in the stairs! Could this be so and account for uneven hip scores?

I was amazed he got the score he did tbh, as his nickname is tigger. He bounces everywhere, regularly to my head height. Thankfully hes a little boy otherwise with more weight behind him he may have done more damage. I waited till he was 10 months before starting agility, didn't allow him upstairs, etc, but pinging off the sofa and so on has obviously had an effect.

> A hip score of 2/6 would indicate to me that one hip was considerably different on x ray than the other side.

Actually, IMO, it doesn't tell you enough to come to that conclusion.  For that, you would need to see the actual score.  A hip at scores 6, scoring 1 on each of 6 points is a very different hip to one that scores 6 on a single point.
Also, the positioning can have a bearing on the final score - either improving or worsening the score.  Not by a lot, but can affect it by a few points.

> Actually I dont think that those hip scores are very good,

They are perfectly good scores.

Good scores

Karen, both hips are excellent scores.. Any breeder would be happy to have these results. 

As others have mentioned though.. you have to look at the 'whole' of the parents, test results are only a small part of what you should be looking for.

I too would be happy with these scores, yes 0/0 is the ultimate but its something to work towards.

There is a paper worth reading which shows you how to evaluate the break down of the scores on the BVA website which someone has mentioned above. 6 in one part only is very poor and I'd avoid, so yes it does depend on how it's set across the scoring system as to whether an apparent low score is really that good. We always look at te whole number not how it's broken down, which is actually quite important with hip scoring