@Eachandeveryone
How often they have kittens depends on the breeder really. They are physically capable of having litters much more often then is healthy for them but sadly some breeders do mate them on every season.
For example Bella’s last litter, she was calling again when her kittens were only 5 weeks old, she could have been mated then but she would have been feeding kittens while pregnant and giving birth just 2 weeks after her kittens left, no time to regain weight or condition at all.
The GCCF (that’s who registers pedigree cats) won’t register more than 3 litters in 2 years from one cat to stop breeders doing this. I like mine to have around a year gap so 2 litters in 2 years as this gives them a nice long break to gain their weight back and recover.
They stop at around 5 years old, depending on the cat, but their fertility starts to decline around then so they have smaller litters and can have more problems. Ragdoll’s have an average litter size of 4, as they get older that will reduce to maybe 2 kittens in the litter and that’s when it’s time to stop and neuter them. You want to avoid them having a litter of 1 kitten as a) that kitten ends up HUGE and the cat can struggle to deliver it and b) they tend to get bored of only raising 1 kitten and will often abandon it. That tends to mean maximum 4-5 litters from one female, assuming you are leaving the appropriate gap between litters as they don’t start breeding until 12-18 months.
Finding the dad is much harder than people think.
First of all your female has to have all her health tests and DNA tests depending on the breed. So Ragdoll’s are know to have a genetic heart condition called HCM. Cats can either have 2 copies of this gene (which means they are positive and will get HCM and should never be bred from), 1 copy of the gene (meaning they are a carrier but won’t get HCM) or 0 copies of the gene which is the ideal.
If your female has 0 copies you have more studs open to you, but if your female has 1 copy you need to find a male with 0 copies as a male and female each with 1 copy can produce a kitten with 2 copies that will develop HCM.
After that you DNA test them to see what they carry in terms of colour. So my girl Bella is blue, she carries chocolate. That means I had to find a stud also carrying chocolate to have a chance at chocolate or lilac kittens. My girl Indie is seal and carries nothing so no matter what colour male she goes to she will only ever have seal kittens so she can go to a wider range of males.
Then once you’ve FINALLY found a male that has the correct HCM status and the correct colours carried you need to make sure they are not related. There is very clever software that you input the pedigrees into and it looks back across 10 generations and calculates how related they are, this needs to be as little as possible as too closely related and you will have problems with the kittens. It can be hard to find a none related male with the correct colours, especially in rarer colours like lilac as Ragdoll’s were imported not natural to the UK so keeping the genes diverse relies on breeders importing new cats every now and again, which is VERY VERY expensive.
Once you’ve got a male lined up you wait for your female to come into heat and take her to the male. The stud Bella went to was 60 miles away from me as he was the closest that was suitable. Less common breeds will have to travel in further but Ragdoll’s are popular so that’s reasonable. Your female needs to be tested for FIV and FELV the day before she goes, these are sexually transmitted cat diseases and are incurable so very important. Then you pay the stud fee (£200-£350 average) and leave your girl there. Some girls get pregnant straight away, some take many trips. You pay the stud fee regardless of the outcome.
So by the time you’ve got to the stage of a pregnant cat, with all the tests, fees and travel etc. you’ve usually spent around £600-£700!
Sorry that’s so long, just realised I’ve wrote an essay! Hope it all makes sense x