What tests should a Boerboel breeder actually run?
Four screenings carry almost all the weight: hips, elbows, heart, and eyes. Hips and elbows are graded off X-rays (through OFA, PennHIP, or the UK's BVA scheme). The heart is checked by a vet listening for a murmur and, on a thorough workup, an echocardiogram read by a cardiologist. The eyes get an exam from a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist. Notice what none of those four is: a DNA test.
That distinction is the thing to fix in your head before any breeder waves a cheek-swab certificate at you. The problems that actually cripple a giant dog (bad hips, bad elbows, a failing heart) are screened by radiograph, ultrasound, and a specialist's eyes, not by a saliva kit. No validated DNA test predicts hip or elbow dysplasia in any breed, the Boerboel included. Dysplasia is polygenic and pushed around by growth rate and body weight, so there is no single gene to read off a swab. A DNA kit confirms the dog is a Boerboel and flags a couple of specific recessive diseases. It cannot tell you the hips are sound.
The four-test panel at a glance
| Test | Method | What it screens for | Who certifies | DNA or X-ray? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hips | X-ray, usually sedated | Hip dysplasia | OFA, PennHIP, BVA, FCI | X-ray |
| Elbows | X-ray | Elbow dysplasia | OFA, FCI | X-ray |
| Heart | Auscultation + echocardiogram | Structural and inherited heart disease | Cardiologist, OFA | Clinical + ultrasound |
| Eyes | Ophthalmologist exam | Inherited eye disease | ACVO, OFA (CAER) | Clinical exam |
Everything in that table is a picture or an exam. DNA screening is a separate, shorter list, and it pays to know exactly what it does and does not cover.
Why can't a DNA test tell you the hips are sound?
Because hip and elbow dysplasia are not one-gene conditions. They are polygenic, meaning dozens of genes each nudge the odds, and then diet, growth speed, and weight decide how the joint actually forms. You screen for that by looking at the joint. OFA reads a hip X-ray and grades it Excellent, Good, or Fair (all passing), then Borderline, then three failing grades: Mild, Moderate, and Severe. OFA issues its final, permanent certification at 24 months. PennHIP takes a different route, measuring joint laxity as a distraction index, and it can be done well before that 24-month mark, which is useful for a breeder who wants an early read on a young prospect.
If the parents are SABBS-registered breeding stock, there are concrete thresholds you can hold them to: certified hips graded 0:0 to 1:1 (FCI A1 to C2), elbows 1:1 at most, plus an eyelid check. Those are numbers on a page, not vibes. What no scheme anywhere offers is a swab that clears the hips, because that swab does not exist.
What are the real Boerboel DNA tests?
Two, plus one that is offered but not proven in the breed. The one that genuinely belongs to the Boerboel is CMR1 (canine multifocal retinopathy type 1). It is a recessive disease caused by a stop mutation in the BEST1 gene, and the first documented Boerboel case was published in 2014. Affected dogs develop retinal lesions by roughly three to four months of age; vision is usually preserved, which is part of why it slips by without an exam or a test. Because it is a simple recessive with a known mutation, it is DNA-testable: a swab tells you whether a dog is clear, a carrier, or affected, and a breeder can pair dogs so no puppy is ever affected.
The second is HUU (hyperuricosuria), which predisposes a dog to urate bladder and kidney stones. It traces to a recessive variant in SLC2A9, identified in 2008. It is testable, but be honest about the evidence base in this breed: the Boerboel carrier data rests on just nine dogs. A real test for a real condition, not a marketing number.
A third, the SOD1 variant linked to degenerative myelopathy, is offered on most panels, but the validation study covering 222 breeds did not include the Boerboel, so a result should read as "offered, not breed-proven."
One point trips up buyers constantly: the SABBS DNA profile is not a health test. It is a parentage and identity check, an anti-fraud tool that confirms a puppy's parents are who the paperwork says they are. Useful, but it says nothing about hips, hearts, or eyes. If a breeder answers "yes, the dogs are DNA tested" and means the SABBS profile, that is not disease screening.
Where did "65% of Boerboels have hip dysplasia" come from?
You will see it everywhere: 65% hip dysplasia, 25% elbow, sometimes "48.2%, one of the five worst breeds, per OFA, December 2016." Both numbers fall apart the moment you chase the source.
The "65% / 25%" figure comes from a single study of 20 Boerboels at a Nigerian clinic, dogs that were brought in for screening in the first place. That is textbook selection bias. You cannot measure a breed's dysplasia rate from a sample of dogs presented because something already looked wrong. The same research group's larger samples give different numbers again (about 58% hips, 44% elbows), and when a group's own figures swing that far, they are telling you there is no stable rate to quote.
The "48.2%, fifth-worst, OFA" line is worse. It does not come from OFA at all. It traces to a table republished on Ortocanis, a commercial orthopedics retailer, and the article it is credited to never mentions the Boerboel. The breed was even left out of a 60-breed dysplasia study because it lacked the roughly 1,000 hip records the analysis needed.
So the honest answer is that no reliable breed-wide hip or elbow dysplasia rate exists for the Boerboel. That is not an argument against screening. It is the argument for it. A breeder who X-rays both parents and shows you the results is stacking the odds the only way the evidence supports, one litter at a time. Our guide to common Boerboel health issues goes deeper on the giant-breed risks that are real by size even where no Boerboel-specific number exists.
Heart and eyes: what is documented, and what is not
Heart screening is legitimate and worth doing, but be careful which condition a breeder names. Subaortic stenosis (SAS) gets cited as "the" Boerboel cardiac problem. The evidence does not support that. In the literature SAS shows up as a single Boerboel histopathology specimen, and the breed sits on no standard list of dogs predisposed to dilated cardiomyopathy either. The right way to screen a heart is a vet listening for a murmur and, ideally, an echocardiogram, not a hunt for one named disease the breed is not actually known for.
Eyes are the same story. Generic articles list entropion and ectropion as "common in the breed," but there is no documented Boerboel-specific rate for eyelid disorders. Those are conformational problems general to heavy, loose-skinned mastiff types, not a measured Boerboel trait. The one eye condition the literature does tie specifically to the Boerboel is CMR1, the DNA-testable retinopathy above. An annual ophthalmologist exam still earns its place, but the breed's documented eye finding is the one you can also swab for.
What does a CHIC number actually mean?
A CHIC number means a dog completed the health tests its breed's parent club recommends and the results were made public. That is all it certifies. It does not mean the dog passed every test, and it does not mean the results were good. "Health tested" and "healthy" are not the same claim. A responsible breeder shows you the actual grades, hips, elbows, heart, and eyes, for both the sire and the dam, not a certificate number standing in for them. If you are learning to tell a real breeder from a good-looking website, our guide to choosing a Boerboel breeder and the breeders to avoid list cover the rest of the vetting.
The one health signal that is actually documented
If you want the single best-evidenced Boerboel health fact, it is not a dysplasia percentage. It is this: in a Swedish study of more than 600,000 insured dogs, the Boerboel had the highest relative risk of cranial cruciate ligament rupture of all 181 breeds examined, a relative risk of 11.0. Two cautions come with it. That is a relative risk, not a prevalence, and the confidence interval is wide because the breed contributed few cases. And there is no pre-breeding DNA test or X-ray that screens for it. Cruciate rupture is caught clinically and managed by keeping the dog lean and structurally sound. The most real thing we know about Boerboel health is something you manage, not something you swab.
What you cannot test for yet
In 2026 researchers identified a recessive FAS variant causing an autoimmune disease (ALPS) in a single Boerboel family, the only disease-causing gene ever pinned specifically to this breed. It sounds like it belongs on a screening list. It does not, yet. It has turned up in one family, is absent from thousands of other dogs, and has no public DNA test. It is a discovery, not a screening tool, and a breeder claiming to test for it is ahead of the science.
The one line to say to a breeder
"Show me both parents' hip, elbow, and heart results." That request does more work than any DNA certificate. It forces the breeder to produce dated, dog-specific paperwork you can match to the sire and dam of your actual litter, and it separates the people who screen from the people who just say "our lines are healthy." For the DNA layer, ask specifically about CMR1 and HUU, and do not accept a parentage profile as a stand-in for disease testing. You can cross-check public OFA results yourself on our health testing records page, and confirm a breeder's registry claims through our registries explainer before any money changes hands.