Labrador hip scores

[DifficultDIY]

Mum has hip score of 3/4, Dad has 7/7. All elbow scores 0/0.

We were told there is some sort of hip score system out of 150 points but not sure how this correlates. I thought you ideally need the score to add up to less than 12.

Any experts shed any light?

BVA breed specific statistics

Guide to interpretation of BVA hip scores

At its most basic, breeders should be selecting from stock with scores at or below the median for the breed, so superficially those scores are perfectly fine for labradors. I say superficially because ideally there are lots of other factors to take into account, the numbers shouldn't just be looked at in isolation.

So am I right in thinking that a score of 7 is the worst possible outcome?

No 7 is not the worse outcome and is below the median for a lab (which is 12 at the moment)

I think your 3/4 and 7/7 is not 3 out of 4 or 7 out of 7. But left hip 3 and right hip 4 (both out of 53).
So you’ve got scores of 7 and 14 for the parents out of 106

12 being breed ‘average’. So the bitch is better than average. The dog is slightly worse than average

Does an under average of 5 points compensate for an over average of 2 points?

It's unfortunately not that simple - there are multiple genes at work and also environmental causes of HD to consider.

In your example, I'd want to know why the breeder was considering using a dog with a score slightly above the breed median. There could be good reasons to - a working dog not x-rayed until later life could have legitimate age-related changes which bump up the score a little, maybe grandparents and siblings have better scores and there's reason to believe he's anomalous. If he's otherwise a sound and healthy dog with working or show credentials it might be a calculated risk to use him, otherwise you risk rapidly losing genetic diversity by excluding anything not 100% 'perfect'.