Why are there always more male greyhounds than females waiting for new homes?

  Greyhounds should retire from the registered tracks by the time they are five.

  The girls can be usefully occupied for a few more years as mothers, ie brood bitches.

  After this they are very likely to be smalls friendly and easier to home or worn out.

  Not so the boys.

  There are relatively few popular fathers,

  ie stud dogs .... and they're all very busy.

Greyhound-Data.Com provides some fascinating figures for us to ponder.

For example.

Supreme Goran, pictured above, who is now living happily in Avon and called Bob, is one of the many sons of Top Honcho.

At the last count Bob had 6,720 brothers and sisters listed who became racers.

Top Honcho's daddy was Head Honcho.

At the last count Top Honcho had 4,769 brothers and sisters who became racers.

Which means that two male greyhounds have produced over 10,000 listed progeny.

A lot of work for lady greyhounds but not much for the gents.

By adding an estimate for the ones who didn't become track racers we might conclude that young Bob has around 16,000 close relatives .....with only two Stud Dogs invloved.

Please see below for details of how we arrived at our estimate

  A bit more Maths

Greyhound litters usually number 8 - 10 and a breeder

will be lucky if 5 or 6 complete their training successfully

and achieve "racer status"

A rough estimate would put Bob's non-racing siblings

at around 2,688.

The calculation was .... 6720 divided by 10

(the size of a large litter)

and multiplied by 4

(reasonable number of unsuccessful racers) = 2,688

Add 6,720 and 2,688 for a total of 9,408

Which means that Bob actually has 9,408 brothers and sisters.

Max. pictured above, is a son of Spiral Nikita with 5,968 siblings .... and the trail begins again.

Our system is quite generous because some litters only produce one or two successful racers.

If we go back to Bob and his dad, Top Honcho, we can estimate that a further 1,908 greyhounds were born but didn't make it to the tracks.

Which means that Bob's father has a slightly smaller total of 6,677 brothers and sisters.

Young Bob, therefore, has around 9,408 half brothers and sisters and 6,677 uncles and aunties. Or just over 16,000 close relatives.

Max has only just arrived and we're still doing sums for him but these figures are by no means unnusual.

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