Reproduction in Domestic Animals

Captive Breeding of Cheetahs in South Africa 67Fig. 1. Layout of the camps at thede Wildt Cheetah and WildlifeCentre. C = quarantine; D =walkway ⁄ service road; E =camps for weaned cubs; G =camps for subadults; F = breedingcamps for females; M =maternity section within eachbreeding camp. Insert shows anexample of a maternity sectionwith den for cubs and triangularfeeding area with crush for catchingand restraining cheetahs andperforming minor procedures suchas collection of blood samplesAnnual selection of breeding animalsSelection based on pedigree and genetic markersEvery year, prior to the main breeding period (November–June),potential males and females are selectedaccording to pedigree and, from 2007 onwards, based onarea of origin and an unique breeding value calledWEDS (Oliehoek et al. 2006) that maximizes diversity.In addition, microsatellite genetic marker-based analysisof the de Wildt population has allowed us to select malesand females that represent the major breeding lines andclarify origin and relatedness between selected breeders.This has been done based on cluster analysis (Pritchardet al. 2000) and genetic marker-based relatedness(Lynch and Ritland 1999; Wang 2002) thus minimizinginbreeding levels as much as possible.Selection of males on the basis of their fertilityThe males that have been selected as described above arethen submitted to a breeding soundness examination. Acomplete spermiogram is performed using phase contrastmicroscopy (Meltzer et al. 1998). In addition tothis, the animal’s behaviour towards females is established.Males showing aggressive behaviour towardsfemales are not suitable. During the last 12 years, asimplified classification for the selection of breedingmales has been used at de Wildt. Males are classifiedinto ‘good’ (‡70% normal), ‘fair’ (40–70% normal) and‘poor’ (