Would you breed to a bitch that was prelimed normal @ 18 months and also had a PennHip rating but didn't have OFA finals done? This bitch is three.

Yes. Penn Hip is satisfactory to me. Prefer OFA though.

prelims on elbows also? i would accept the pennhip on hips if a decent score, but i need the finals on elbows.

No, I would not. Set your goals on what you will and will not do in your breeding program. They need clearances just like you have on your stud. If she is that young she can wait another 6 mos. Your stud will be blamed if pups don't pass.

I bet those elbows are fine. But since Penn Hip counts as a "final" clearance, and if you are crossing your T's and dotting your I's, they do not have a "final" on elbows, so they should want that.

But in reality if the lines are sound behind the bitch, it's YOUR decision. Sure, you "might" take some flack from the breeding police, but sheesh, folks have certainly done worse. Does this bitch have heart, eyes, EIC done too? I'd make sure everything else was done if I were allowing the elbow prelim.

I think most who replied missed the point that the bitch is NOW 3 YEARS OLD.
I would question why she didn't have final OFA's.
They had plenty of time to do her finals, so I would suspect/assume that she failed either her hips or elbows.

I would and have bred off a prelim done over a minimum of 12 months old, if the dogs were like 22 months and too young to do finals but didn't want to wait another 6-8 months for her to come back in.

I didn't miss it. I was just thinking of all the bitching about OFA these days on how their readings are suspect. And the fact that for many Penn Hip is sufficient. Also, not everyone has an endless supply of cash to test and retest, and test some more. Though I do think if you want to breed, you do need to do your due dilligence.

Puppy buyers are getting smarter, and are looking on OFA for final hip and elbow screenings, I would have a hard time justifying no finals to my puppy buyers, no less the stud dog owner. If you are going to do final ofael, you may as well do the final OFA hips too.

I got OFA hip/elbow finals on a 3 year old dog once. Did OFAs on a 4 year old too. Both passed. The OFA takes the age of the dog into consideration when evaluating the films. Why not just do it if you want to breed her.....unless you already KNOW she wont pass.

Prelim at 18 month are pretty accurate. I would do the breeding if she got normal elbows and good or excellent hips. If she got fair, I would ask them to re-do and get the finals.

responding to:
Puppy buyers are getting smarter, and are looking on OFA for final hip and elbow screenings, I would have a hard time justifying no finals to my puppy buyers, no less the stud dog owner.

I can't even get puppy buyers to look at the clearances and paperwork I have on the sire and dam. They could care less. And many times they don't register their pups.

Now why would you "ass-ume" that just because a bitch has prelims at say 18-22 months, that she failed or can't pass xrays at 24 months??
That is just plain ignorant.
I can see where you might think that if the bitch only had been done at say 10-11 months....that is a looooong time in between.
Don't always assume.

It's very possible(the op didn't say what the prelim rating was) that the bitch was a fair at 18 months and didn't pass at 24months and is why the penn hip. What was the prelim rating and what was the penn hip DI?

Some puppy buyers are educated by us the breeders, some aren't. I've had both situations, buyers that want to see clearances and others that are trusting of me. If I say they exist, they believe me. I still make copies of everything for them to have for their records.

In answer to the original question, I would not breed to the situation mentioned. The bitch owner should have finals done. I've heard of entirely too many dogs and bitch's not passing finals in the past couple of years that supposedly were rated Excellent on prelims.

Thanks for the replies, I can see it's a contravercial matter. My vet is PennHip certified and was encouraging me to do PennHip. I was wanting to see what the consencus was to for go the finals and do the PennHip. I can see that it's not a good idea. I'll do the OFA instead of PennHip.

Can anybody tell me what the percentage rate of dogs have hip and elbow dysplasia?
We can do finals here at 12 months of age. We have about 1266 Labradors in Iceland. 366 of them have been hip x-rayed and 75.68% have normal hips. 348 have their elbow x-rayed and 94.58 have normal elbows.
I am just wondering how many percentage of the Labrador population have normal hips and elbows in the states taken that you can only do finals at the age of 24 months??? It would be interesting to know.

Hildur, it would also be interesting if your country retested all their dogs at 2 and see if the results change.

Here is OFA's statistics on Labrador hips

The first number is ranking, the second number is the total number of evaluations, the next number is the % of Excellents, the last is the % dysplastic.

LABRADOR RETRIEVER 85 215336 17.9 11.9
http://www.offa.org/stats_hip.html

Elbows

Again ranking, number of evaluations, % normal, overall % dysplastic, then by the grades I grade II and grade III
LABRADOR RETRIEVER 28 55740 89.0 10.8 8.1 1.9 0.8
http://www.offa.org/stats_ed.html

Your % would change indeed if didn't do them at 12 months. 12 month finals are not what the dog really is at 2yrs. Many elbows for example don't manifest DJD yet at 12 months but it would be seen at 2yrs.