At what age would you recommend OFA prelims on hips and elbows? Would you wait until a pup is one year old or older?
Do you find that the preliminary results are pretty consistent with finals at age 2?
I always thought a pup should be 1 year old for prelims, but just read the OFA site and now I am not so sure.
TIA.
I have a friend who does them at 6 mos...just to see. I personally think it is too early at this age. Just my opinion though.
I usually wait until at least 12 mos unless I am seeing something that is causing me concern.
I think they can and do change alot as they grow...what is the purpose of the prelim for you? Just to make sure they are on track? Then 12 mos might be a good milestone. That is usually the point that I am making decisions on who stays or if they are getting out in the ring.
Several years ago I read a research article that stated if prelims are done at 1 year or later, results are the same at 2 years over 95% of the time. However, I've had 2 prelims at 12 mos that were good and finals came out excellent. A friend had a prelim at 12 months that was good and finals came our fair.
My vet has rated all prelims and finals the same as OFA, so now I just have vet give opinion on x-rays at 1 year and only send final evaluations to OFA after 2 years.
"A recent publication* compared the reliability of the preliminary evaluation hip grade phenotype with the 2 year old evaluation in dogs and there was 100% reliability for a preliminary grade of excellent being normal at 2 years of age (excellent, good, or fair). There was 97.9% reliability for a preliminary grade of good being normal at 2 years of age, and 76.9% reliability for a preliminary grade of fair being normal at 2 years of age. Reliability of preliminary evaluations increased as age at the time of preliminary evaluation increased, regardless of whether dogs received a preliminary evaluation of normal hip conformation or HD. For normal hip conformations, the reliability was 89.6% at 3-6 months, 93.8% at 7-12 months, and 95.2% at 13-18 months. These results suggest that preliminary evaluations of hip joint status in dogs are generally reliable. However, dogs that receive a preliminary evaluation of fair or mild hip joint conformation should be reevaluated at an older age (24 months)".
