About us
Black Crown Rottweilers — eleven acres, two people, and a kitchen that has raised thirty-one litters since 2009.
How we got here
We are Marta and Dell Ferreira. In 2007 we bought a Rottweiler from a man who met us in a car park, handed over a puppy at six weeks old, and could not name either parent. She was called Bruna, she was the best dog either of us has had, and she was dead of cardiomyopathy at five.
Nothing about that was her fault or ours. It was the predictable outcome of buying a dog from someone who did not test for it. We spent the next two years learning what we should have known beforehand, and in 2009 we bred our first litter from a bitch whose parents we had met and whose paperwork we had read.
Thirty-one litters later the process has barely changed. We run two a year. We keep back what we need for the programme and place the rest. We health-test everything and publish it, including the results that lost us a buyer — in 2023 a stud we had just imported came back Fair on hips and we retired him at eighteen months, which was expensive and was not a difficult decision.
We are not a large kennel and we do not want to be. Two litters is what two people can raise in a house without any puppy becoming a number.
What we test for
Every result below is on the puppy's page before you apply, and the certificates go home in the folder.
Hips and elbows
OFA evaluated at two years or later, never on preliminary films alone. We do not breed a dog rated below Good.
Cardiac
Advanced cardiac examination by a board-certified veterinary cardiologist, repeated rather than done once and forgotten.
Eyes
Annual CAER examination by a veterinary ophthalmologist for every dog in our breeding programme.
JLPP
DNA tested. We will breed a carrier to a clear dog, which cannot produce an affected puppy, and we will tell you if we have.
How we raise them
Puppies are born in our bedroom and weaned in the kitchen. None of ours has lived in a run.
From three weeks they meet the ordinary noise of a house: the vacuum, the doorbell, a television, the dishwasher, children on the stairs. From five weeks they are outside on grass, gravel and concrete, and meeting visitors we invite specifically to handle them.
They are crate-introduced before they leave, started on potty training, handled daily from birth, and temperament-tested at seven weeks by someone who does not live here and has no stake in the result.
We then match the puppy to the household. This is the part people push back on — you will not simply pick the one you liked in the photograph. If your application suits a different puppy better we will tell you why, and you are free to disagree and walk away.
What we will not do
Six commitments we have never broken, and the reason some people go elsewhere.
- Two litters a year, never more, whatever the waiting list looks like.
- Puppies stay until eight weeks — no exceptions, however far you have driven.
- Every health result published, including the ones that cost us a sale.
- Placement decided on suitability, not on position in the queue.
- Any dog we bred comes back to us at any age, for any reason.
- No cargo shipping, ever.