Identifying Split Cycles and Silent Seasons

Dr. Marty Greer joins host Laura Reeves to discuss split cycles and silent seasons in our bitches. Both are frustrating for breeders but they are not the same situation.

“Silent heats and split seasons are not the same,” Greer said. “There are some bitches that fail to ovulate. They (likely) have a cystic ovary and that will cause them to have an initial indication that they look like they're in heat, but then they don't persist and they don't ovulate.

“And then there are silent heats, which are kind of the opposite where the bitches come into heat, their ovaries do all the things they're supposed to do. Their hormones do all the things they're supposed to do, but they just don't tell you that they're in heat. They either keep themselves really, really clean or they just don't have much discharge. And there's really not a correlation between small amount of discharge and not having a normal ovulatory cycle.

“So (a silent season) doesn't mean you have an infertile bitch. It doesn't mean that she can't get pregnant. It just means you have to be a little bit more strategic about how you manage her. And then we really have to talk about the nutrition. We have to talk about housing. You have to have at least 14 hours a day of full spectrum light. So if your dogs are in crates with crap stacked on top of it or they're in a room that doesn't have adequate lighting, they're not going to have normal cycles. If you're not feeding them the right kind of diets, they're not going to have normal cycles. If you've got them on weird supplements, they're not going to cycle normally.

“Lots of things can cause a bitch to just pop out of season. And then four to six weeks later, she'll actually be back in season. The bloody discharge will go away and then it comes back. A dog that doesn't ovulate, the bloody discharge persists normally. If it's a split heat, normally the bloody discharge goes away, and then it comes back four to six weeks later, and then you go merrily on your way and breed her.”