Cat vaccination schedule for breeders: kitten series, queens, studs and records

The core kitten series, week by week

The schedule below is the shape most feline vaccination guidance takes: a core FVRCP series started at 6–8 weeks, repeated every 3–4 weeks, and finished at or after 16 weeks. The repeats exist for one reason — nobody can tell you the exact day a particular kitten loses the antibodies it absorbed from the queen. Vaccinating repeatedly across that window is how you catch each kitten shortly after its own maternal antibody drops.

Treat this as a planning frame, not a prescription. Your veterinarian sets the actual protocol based on the products available in your country, the disease pressure in your area, the queen's vaccination history, and whether your cattery has an infection history. Anything on this page that touches health is general information — consult your veterinarian before you change what you do.

Why a cattery breaks a single-cat schedule

A pet owner has one cat and one due date. You have overlapping litters, kittens that leave halfway through the series, adults on annual intervals, and visitors. The schedule is not harder in a cattery — it is simply too big to hold in your head, and the failure mode is always the same: a dose that was due during a busy week and was never given.

These are the situations where doses go missing. Each one is worth a standing rule in your own cattery, written down where whoever is covering for you can read it.

• Overlapping litters: two litters born three weeks apart put you on two different repeat cycles at once. Track doses per kitten, not per litter.
• Kittens leaving mid-series: if a kitten goes home before the final dose, the remaining doses, who books them and who pays belongs in writing before pick-up day.
• New arrivals: an incoming cat should arrive with proof of current vaccination and recent FeLV/FIV testing, and should still be quarantined away from the nursery. Ask your veterinarian how long, given what is circulating locally.
• Stud visits and shows: cats that leave the property and come back are your main route of introduction. Vaccination status for both cats, and the isolation you run afterwards, should be agreed before the booking.
• A queen due for a booster: give it before mating, not during pregnancy. A booster that comes due mid-pregnancy is a scheduling failure you can prevent a season ahead.
• Staff or family covering for you: if the schedule lives only in your phone, nobody can step in. It has to be readable by someone else.

Queens, studs and the pre-breeding booster

For adults, the calendar hangs off the breeding plan rather than off the calendar year. The general principle used by most breeders is to bring a queen fully up to date before she is mated, so that she carries good antibody levels through pregnancy and passes as much as possible into the colostrum her kittens will drink in the first day of life.

Vaccinating during pregnancy is a different question, and not one to answer from a website. Modified live products in particular are generally avoided in pregnant queens; whether any vaccine should be given to a pregnant or lactating cat is a decision for your veterinarian, who can weigh the product label against the risk in your cattery.

• Book the pre-breeding booster into the mating plan itself, so "she is due next month" never collides with "she is calling now".
• Test breeding cats for FeLV and FIV, and keep the certificate. Buyers and stud owners ask for it, and it is the reasonable thing to require of anyone else's cat entering your house.
• Agree vaccination and testing requirements with the stud owner in writing before travel, in both directions. Neither side should discover the other's policy on the doorstep.
• Cats that travel — shows, stud visits, flights — usually need rabies and a veterinary health certificate depending on the destination. Check the current rules for the specific route; they change.
• Ask your veterinarian about injection sites. Published feline guidance favours distal limb or tail sites over the space between the shoulder blades, so that any later reaction is easier to manage, and it asks that the site be written in the record.
• Retired queens and pet-home cats you have kept still need their own schedule. They fall off the list first because they are not in the breeding plan.

What to record for every dose

A vaccination record is only as good as the fields in it. "FVRCP, May" is not a record — it cannot be checked, cannot be handed to a new veterinarian, and will not stand up when a buyer asks a question two years later. Capture the same fields every time, for every cat, including deworming entries.

The record that goes home with the kitten

Careful buyers check vaccination paperwork the way you would check a used car. They compare the dates against the kitten's date of birth, look for the clinic stamp or the lot sticker, and check that the breed, colour and microchip on the document match the kitten in front of them. Giving them a complete record is the cheapest trust you will ever buy, and it removes most post-sale arguments before they start.

Send a printed or exported record with every kitten, and keep an identical copy yourself. Where transport is involved, many jurisdictions also require a veterinary health certificate issued shortly before travel — check the current requirement for the specific route rather than assuming last year's rule still holds.

• Every dose given so far, with dates, products and lot numbers, plus the deworming entries.
• The doses still outstanding, with the date each is due — written down, not explained verbally at the door.
• Who books and pays for the remaining doses. Put it in the sales contract; the wording of any health guarantee is a matter for your own contract and local law, and this is not legal advice.
• Microchip number and the registration details, so the record can be matched to the cat by anyone.
• The clinic's name and number, so a new owner's veterinarian can confirm the history directly.

Keeping a whole cattery on schedule

Once you are past a handful of cats, the job stops being medical and becomes logistical: the right entry attached to the right cat, and something that tells you a dose is due before it is late. A shared spreadsheet works until it does not — because it never reminds you, and because the version on your laptop stops matching the one on your phone.

That is the gap breeding software fills. FanMeowy Cattery Manager keeps vaccination and deworming entries on each cat's own profile, carries the next due date forward, and reminds you when it comes up, so litters that overlap do not quietly slip; core record keeping is free and it is on the App Store. Whatever tool you choose, judge it on three things: can an entry be tied to one specific cat, does it chase you when something is due, and can you hand a clean record to a buyer without retyping it.