Can someone explain to me how hip scores work. For example, is 11 = 14 (23) bad or good? I know about hip problems, particularly in larger breeds, but don't know how this score system works.

In my breed I would be disappointed with that core and would only consider breeding if the dog was outstanding, and then to a very low scoring mate, and only if it's ancestors were lower scoring.

In some breeds that would be Ok as few score much better.

This will explain it, and you can also look up the breed mean scores:

http://www.bva.co.uk/public/chs/hip_scheme.asp

The lower the total figure, the better. The ideal is 0:0, and the worst is 53:53. In my breed the average is a total 10, so the figures you gave would be very disappointing.

My youngest Lab has a combined score of 86

A question to pose how many Labs get a 0:0 score  ?

Another question, how many Labs get hip scored in a year ?

Lucy
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As my breed is numerically small and all responsible breeders hip score all breeding stock, and may owners like to score some of the others we get a good represetative number scored.

In 2003 we had 122 pups biorn and 26 dogs hip scored so aroudn 30% are scored a year.

I doubt if the figures for po9pular breeds are that representative as the vast majority of breeding stock is not tested.

How can we therefore change ?

Lucy
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We do our breed, which is a numerically small one in this country.  I've only done 2 of mine at the moment one scored 10 and the other 23, the breed average at the moment is 16.  Our lowest score is 8, highest is 42.

I do feel that before people start calling those breeds that bother scoring their dogs that more and more breeds should be done.  It's easy saying "our breed doesn't have any problems" when they are not even tested to see if they do.  I bet in reality most dogs, even x breeds have a number of health problems but because there isn't enough research nobody knows about it !  Though still feel that we need to be careful.  Thank God that they don't do all these tests on us or we'd be extinct !!

I can't answer your question Lucy but the total of Labradors scored as of 1/1/04 is 44383. the BMS is 15, a median of 10 and the range is from 0 to 106. There are actually quite a few 0/0's that I know of.

Best wishes, John

It would depend on the breed you are referring to, all breeds have an average so you would have to first find out what the average is for your chosen breed. Then if you are looking at a puppy you need to look at not only the parents but the grand parents/siblings as well.  What a lot of people don't do is look at the score sheets of the parents themselves, ie if a bitch with a score of say 5:5 total 10 is mated to a dog of the same score it is always a good idea to see where the scores marry up:  each point on the dog's hip can score a max 6 points and the first 3 points are classed as the weight bearing parts.  Therefore if the dogs top 3 scores are 1:1 4:1 0:1 0:2 you can see that on the second point the dog scores a 4 on his left hip - now if the bitch scores 2 or more on the same point it will be over the max for that point and not desirable so I personally would avoid that compared to a mating that both had 2 on that point.