I know....I know...Catchers won't be available if there is not enough room in your stables, this includes all pregnant beasts.

Curently I can hire exactly ONE mammal catcher and I am at 20 out of 50 spots.  Even if every single one of my beasts were pregnant I would still have room.  To confuse the matter more I currently own 12 licenses as well.

Reptile and Bird are both grayed out for me, how does that even make sense?  Even if it was a space OR license issue, why should it matter what one I can select?

baffled

You should be able to hire any number of catchers at any moment. There are no limits for hired catchers except your silver balance. Could you please describe in details what happens when you click "Hire one for 200" link? Nothing happens; page reloads but catcher isn't hired; page reloads and throws an error (in this case please copy the error here) etc. Also please tell your browser and OS version.