KELPIE breeder Rex Hocking, Washpool Working Kelpies, Avenue Range, believes the new dog and cat management rules will help 'tidy up' the dog breeding industry.
"I'd like to see a crackdown on puppy farms, people breeding dogs for no reason and even cockies who breed a litter of pups and keep one and give the rest away," he said.
"I think it's going to tidy things up a lot."
He said farmers often didn't apply the same selection criteria to buying a dog as they did to selecting livestock.
"When they go to buy a stud ram, they go to a reputable stud and get a well-bred ram, but when some people get a dog, they'll just go and grab one the neighbours have, but it's not good enough," he said.
Rex said he didn't agree that desexing negatively impacted a working dog's ability.
"I don't think that's an issue - what about racehorses, geldings and stallions and so forth?" he said. "There's as many good geldings as there are stallions racing. That's a bit of a myth in my book.
"One of my old male dogs was a desexed dog and I've got a little bitch that had to be desexed when she was 12 months old. She's an exceptional little dog."
Rex welcomed the move to introduce compulsory registration for breeders.
"At the moment it's only a voluntary thing, but if you want to get dogs registered, you must be a registered breeder with the Australian Kelpie Council," he said.
"We breed for ability, obedience, ease of training and we breed well-structured dogs. There's a lot of poorly structured dogs getting about, which isn't a good thing for the Kelpie breed.
"We have about three litters - 20 pups - a year and we sell them overseas and across Australia. We make sure we sell them to reputable people and check up on the owners."
Jacinta Rose
Stock Journal's online editor.
Stock Journal's online editor.
