Overview presentation

A dozen or so animals can be administered by hand, but a minimum viable population of ~500 animals not. And if the studbook is transferred to an other studbookkeeper, or coupled to another studbook, proper administration is essential.

For keeping a population viable in the long term, at the starting point, a minimum of 50 unrelated breedable animals are needed [Princée]. By careful interbreeding of the successive generations the genetic variation can be kept to a maximum. Programs that use Sparks data as source, like GENES can help to plan the best breeding strategy.

It is expected that the ESF will be offered more confiscated animals in the future. A studbook can help adminstration these animals, as they stay ESF property, but are loaned for breeding purposes to animal keepers.

In the future keeping exotic animals could be further restricted to registered animal keepers.

The goverment wants to implement these guidelines, usually from Brusselles, properly, but with a minimum of costs. A private body like the ESF can be part of this plan if a proper administration is kept. (This might be a future).

As much information as possible. At the short term the goal should be registration of all animals of the species in captivity that will take part in the breeding program. This includes all known relations. Based on this information the most optimal breeding groups can be created. For breeding of successive generations, a MAI (Maximum Avoidance of Interbreeding) can be applied.

Origin (wild caught / captive bread)

Birth date and location

Decent (for parent animals)

Past (where and when was the animal, prior breeding results)

Identification (photos, chips, descriptions, names)

Data participants (name, address, place)

Sparks is originally written with zoos and comparable institutes on mind. All locations expected to house animals has a registration with ISIS, and already is in the Location List, created, maintained and distributed by ISIS.

Most participants of ESF studbooks are unlikely to have such a registration (costs ~250 euro each year). Because certain versions of Sparks have trouble adding locations to the complete ISIS list, an empty list is included in the installation. So studbook keepers have to create their own 'Institutions' or locations for the participants of the studbook.

This are the names and adresses of the studbook participants, the keepers or breeders of the animals. The 'Location Code' has to be filled in properly, and is never used. The 'Mnemonic' is used in all the 'Location' fields.

The 'Location Code's from Isis all consist of nine numbers. To prevent confusion, the proposed ESF location codes contain letters.

The proposed scheme is to use the first seven characters of the participants name and the first two of the zip code. If the result is shorter than nine characters, supplement it with zeros. Shorter 'Location Codes' can give problems while creating reports.

This is for entry new animals but also for modifying data of existing data. This explains the option to search on various parameters.

'Last number edited' is the studbooknumber last modified.

'Last studbook number accessioned' is the highest used number in the studbook.

This contains the following list of data:

- date of birth

- sex

- decendancy (studbook numbers parents)

- rearing type

- date of death (optional)

The data in this record is fairly static, and chnges seldom after initial entry.

Sparks offers the option to choose between a studbook number or a combination of Location and Local Id for Dam and Sire, effectively a studbook number is essential.

Birth date/Hatch date:

As precise as possible. For example, somewhere in 2000; enter 1 July 2000, EST 'Y'. For species with a well known breeding season, this more accurate data can be used. The date estimate can be specified per day (D), month (M), several months (M#), year (Y), several years (R#) and unknown.

Sex:

Usually MALE, FEMALE or UNKNOWN. For the statistics UNKNOWN is considered 50% MALE and 50% FEMALE.

Decendancy, SIRE / DAM studbook number:

If the parent animals of a captive bread animal are unknown, for example because they are part of a breeding group, the simplest solution is to enter 'UNK', or unknown. Parent animals known to be from the wild can be specified as 'WILD'. For captive bread animals from a known breeding group, there is a better solution: 'MULT'. In the Specials record the list of SIRE or DAM studbook numbers can be specified. If later genetic research is done, it can be restricted to these animals.

For several animals with a known common decendancy a variation can be used:

'UNK1', 'WILD2', 'MULT1', 'MULT2', enz. There is however a important distinction with respect to analysis software: animals with UNK, WILD and MULT as parents are considered unrelated, but all animals with UNK1 as parent are related. So use UNK#, WILD# and MULT# with care.

In summary, sorted in ascending order of parental knowledge:

UNK, UNK#, WILD, WILD#, MULT, MULT#, studbook number.

Rearing type:

The default here is UNKNOWN, alternatives are PARENT and HAND.

While entering a new animal's Master record SPARKS will automatically present a Transfer screen for filling in a first event.

SPARKS asserts that an animal that isn't born (in the wild or captivity) or captured (usually from the wild), doesn't belong in a studbook.

This part of SPARKS contains the history of the animal.

It is of the greatest importance to enter as much known data of the animal, as any not recorded piece of information has the habit of getting lost.

- events / transfers / transactions / moves:

These are the types of events. The most important ones are Birth, Capture, Transfer and Death. One of the first two are filled in with first entry of the animal.

The 'Mgmt Plan' and 'Social' types are for breeding programs and are currently not used.

- Location:

As birth/capture location in ascending accuracy: UNK, WILD, continent, region, country, district and location.

All but UNK and WILD must be predefined in the Institution List.

An alternative to ‘WILD’ for wild-caught animals is creating and using originating locations, like ‘AFRICA’ or ‘ALGERIA’. A disadvantage is that Sparks dosn’t recognize these as special location (like WILD).

- Local ID:

A short identification string, unique for this location. 6 characters maximum. Proper identification should be entered in the Specials records.

- Tran date:

Date of the transaction. The same estimates are possible as for the birth date in the master record.

- Removal:

As a rule this field is not used. It can be used to specify that a transfer from one location to another cannot be considered instantaneous, like a quarantaine. It should not be used for removal of animals from the studbook. Use the option 'Lost-to-followup' with the last known location for removal.

- Death:

Obviously only to be filled in when the animal dies. For critical studbooks it is useful to enter all animals, even those that die before producing offspring. At a later date the productivity of a certain bloodline can be analysed.

The most important aspect of the Specials record is identification of animals. Chip codes, tatoos, names, descriptions (like notch id), etc. can be filled in. Everything that can help identify an animal now or at a later date should be entered. A lot of types are predefined. The Special data type for possible parent animal list (when 'MULT' is specified for the parent animals) is '17- Parent assumptions'.

There is no minimum set for specials, but it should contain at least a form of identification: '1- House name', '2- Tatoo', '9- Notching mark', 'ID- Identification' (for example chip code). (Use 'V' for more options.)

But most important - the more data, the better. Everything not recorded can get lost. If Photo's are available, number these and store the number as a Special.

, 'ID- Identification' can be used here too. (The Sebag studbook has a buildin option for storing scanned photo's).

These fields are useful for more elaborate population administration than just studbook use. Thay can be ignored for basic studbook use, but they offer more ways of storing data than the Specials records (limited to ~55 characters).

For complex studbooks containing several sub-species it is possible to specify these using User defined fields. The analysis software allows to use the contents of this field to select a part of the complete studbook. An easier option is creating a studbook per sub-species.

Within the Analysis menu are a load of options for data analysis. But I leave that to a presentation on advanced Sparks usage.

Sparks offers the option make a backup of the data, or to be exact, the program starts making comments if making a backup is postponed too long. We all know how important it is to make backups, but usually making one is done after things went wrong. Computers are now more reliable than some years back, but they can never be trusted upon.

The options Sparks offers are per studbook: Full Backup and Basic Backup. Both make a zipped file to be written to floppy disk. Alas both forget the file with addresses of the participants. For standard ISIS usage of Sparks, this file is not modified, and will not fit on a floppy disk anyway.

So I created a small batch file that writes the address file and the Basic set of all studbooks to a file. This batch file will be available from the ESF web site.

If storage space is plentiful, like a CD-Writer, the simplest way to backup is writing the complete Sparks folder to CDR.

SPARKS is a DOS program, that can operate on modern PCs using all Windows variants, but isn't as 'user friendly' as most Windows programs. One of the greater disadvantages is that printing reports directly from Sparks is not possible (unless your printer is an antique one). Several solutions for this are in the making.

Internationally plans are made to create a successor to many Isis programs like Arks, MedArks, Sparks and RegAsp. Currently this is in the design phase. Whether the end result wil be useable and available to the ESF, is not clear. In any case it will not be finished before 2005.

This program developed by me makes an overview of all animals in all studbooks per location, and writes it to a MS Word readable file. Editing and printing can be done from Word.

This recent development is initiated by a German studbook keeper. The greatest advantage of Studbook is that it uses the same data set as Sparks, and both programs can be used to maintain the same data, without conversion.

It offers a more modern user interface and a simpler way of creating and printing population overviews.

A disadvantage of the current (Beta) version is that it doesn't help keeping the data consistent. For example: Sparks will accept an animal only if it is located at a predefined Location. This a bit of a nuisance, but guarantees each animal is at a exising location. Studbook lacks this check, and this allows you to 'loose' animals.

Studbook has few mandatory fields and records.

Hopefully future versions will offer more 'guidance' (without compromising user-friendlyness). I consider the current version not suitable for data entry, reporting however is already a great improvement compared with Sparks.