Fertility and twinning in Canadian reindeer
Abstract
This study was carried out from 1976 to 1981 on the Mackenzie Delta reindeer herd with the co-operation of the owners, Canadian Reindeer Ltd., Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories. The reproductive organs of 4050 female reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) were collected at slaughter. The pregnancy rates averaged 99.5% of the females examined. In the years 1978 and 1981, 24.7% (713) of the animals were carrying twins, as compared to a twinning rate of 0.4%) observed for the intervening years. Nineteen animals were not pregnant. Of these, 14 were emaciated with no gross pathology* of the reproductive tract. Five females had either a mummified fetus or uterine adhesions preventing a viable pregnancy. Estimated fawn survival rates from birth to June varied from 51.7 to 95.7%. Fawn survival from June to yearlings of June the next year varied from 51 to 86.4% as determined by count at roundup. Increment averaged 15.8% per year after a slaughter of 13.4% of the herd yearly.Authors retain copyright and grant Rangifer irrevocable and non-exclusive right of publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). This means, among other things, that anyone is free to copy and distribute the content, as long as they give proper credit to the author(s) and the journal. For further information, see Creative Commons website for human readable or lawyer readable versions.