Relation âge-fécondité dans les populations de chats domestiques, Felis catus

Abstract

The fertility of female cats was studied by age classes using data based on samples of two different origins. Some parameters which chracterize fertility, such as the average number of litters per year and the average number of kittens per year, differ according to the sample. However, the fertility variations with age of female cats follows the same pattern in the two populations under study. The changes are characterized by an increase in the number of litters per year following the first year of life, and then by progressive increase in the number of kittens per year, and finally by the inverse tendency after the age of seven years.Resume. -La fecondite des chattes a ete etudiee par classe d'äge sur des donnees provenant d'echantillons de deux origines differentes. Certains parametres caracterisant la fecondite, comme ie nombre moyen de portees et le nombre moyen de chatons par an, different entre les deux echantillons. Toutefois les variations de productivite des chattes avec Tage sont du meme ordre dans les deux populations etudiees ; cette evolution est caracterisee par une augmentation du nombre de portees par an apres la premiere annee, puis par une augmentation progressive du nombre de chatons par an, la tendance s'inversant apres 7 ans.

Modelling the Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) in Natural Populations of Cats (Felis catus)

“…The main characteristics of the populations are given in Table I. Annual birth and death rates have been estimated from the Saint-Just Chaleyssin population (Legay and Pontier, 1985;Pontier, 1993). As the population size, sex ratio, and age structure remain stable, mean fecundity and mortality rates were averaged over individuals of all ages and were estimated at 2.4 and 0.6 per year, respectively (Pontier, unpublished).…”