How many breeders

Did say i would be asking questions, here's the first of many .....
How many breeders did people contact and/or visit before they found one they liked or did you just see kittens that were available? I would like to ask people if they can recommend any in the South West but not sure if that is PC........

There are some breeders on this forum wouldn't it be great if one of them was near to you.
I would say go along to as many as you can & see what enviorment they are being brought up in,are they happy & outgoing, good breeders are pleased to show you all of their set up not just a room that happens to have the baby in that they hope you are going to buy,they also build up a good rapport with you as a potential buyer, good breeders also make sure the babes are fully vaccinated before they leave them so you are looking at the baby being about 13 weeks before you get it,don't fall for ones that are advertised at half the price you would expect to pay or are allowed to go at an early age.
Cat shows are also good places to go & have a chat to either breeders or other maine coon owners.We show with the FB & our silver boy would lay in a chair outside his pen all day, we always used to call him the MC sales assistant,he would have cuddles with anyone who wanted one & convinced a lot of people that the MC was the breed for them so you could be lucky....
Will keep an eye for a posting that you have found the special one for you....

We don't have a huge amount of breeders in Ireland but I contacted 2 before choosing one.

South West of what country??

We don't have any local breeders (none closer than about 2 hours drive), so looked on Internet as a starting point, then have emailed, and called. There are many MC breeders in the USA, and most will ship their cats, though we have preferred to find a breeder within driving distance. You can get a good sense of how serious and knowledgeable breeders are from their websites and talking to them. If they for example list the cats as having been tested for HCM, etc. that is a good sign as compared with no mention of health testing or even the potential of health issues. You may also begin to notice that certain breeder's cats are being used by other breeders, which is also obviously a good sign. Certainly the look of a breeder's lines played a role with us. There are some MC looks that we prefer, and we have looked at sites where we just didn't find the cats terribly attractive. Cost is another factor. The well known breeders tend to charge the most, casual breeders much less. In the USA, serious MC breeders are probably charging in the $700-$900 range, but you can find people charging $1200, $1500, and even more! Of course availability can ultimately be the deciding factor. If you like a breeder but they say it is going to be 6mos or a year, etc. before you might be able to get a cat, well that may not be acceptable. Males MCs tend to be in more demand, and particular colors can be easier or harder to find at certain points.

In the end, our choices also partly came down to timing and even luck. A couple of our cats were "replacements" for cats that had died, so we did not want to wait months and months. For one girl, we happened onto a breeder relatively close, who turned out to be a really great person, and she happened to have one girl that she had just decided to sell after all (4mos old). One of our males was being purchased after my beloved red MC mix had died of HCM, and I was determined to get another red male. We were not finding many choices nearby, and my wife was very taken with the cats of a well known breeder in Pennsylvania, so she called her even though it was unlikely we would drive that far (and she does not ship). Amazingly, she had a red male kitten placed fairly nearby with a repeat customer of hers, and the woman was not happy with the kitten (or the kitten was not happy with the situation of multiple cats). She encouraged us to go see him and it was definitely love at first sight (and he was clearly much happier in our environment than the one he was in, so everyone ended up happy).

We were different. there's still not a lot of breeders in australia, especially western australia.
We came across the breeder at a show, and her boy was very friendly and we got on well with her. We went to see her in perth and she was happy to ship, so that's how we ended up with our boy.
We're very very happy with him too...

You could look on here Home Page :smile:

We are south west of Bristol, and although we found a breeder in Bristol, we ended up driving to Anglesey to get our two coonies as we wanted 2 from the same breeder.

We live in Oxfordshire and went onto the site that Louis Louis mentioned and found breeders near us. We went to one fairly close that we liked but she didn't have the colour we wanted - we ended up going to Hampshire to get Simba.

We are in Bristol and had to travel to Essex to get Harry. I had in mind what I wanted (a red tabby boy) and he needed to come from a reputable breeder, so I think it was inevitable that we (like a lot of us on here) would have to travel some distance to get what we wanted

We live right over by the coast in Norfolk,we reckon it always takes us an hour { & that is if the going is good } to leave our county & feel that we have really started our journey.
Our first adopted adult MC came from Derbyshire another two came from near Brighton but from these breeders my friend started off her own breeding line,when we had Merl from her we had to go two minutes round the corner but by the time we had the last two babes she had moved & we had to travel all of 5 minutes away,not good...! If my friend stopped breeding & we wanted another MC I wouldn't worry how far I traveled to get the right one for us.
There is a forum called Shagcatpics,musn't say that too quick,it is all MC photos & I have been surprised how many different breeders you can find through that & they are from different parts of the world as well as here so anyone looking might find someone from off of that.I have very often fallen for a kitty & when I have looked up the breeder they have been foreign to us,good job sometimes or I think we would have to move to house the cats.....
Really looking forward to hearing & seeing the outcome of this thread,will be going all broody again.