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Breeding at the Oregon Zoo
The Oregon Zoo has one of the most successful breeding programs for captive elephants in the world. Twenty-seven Asian elephants have been born here over the past five decades, which amounts to 17 percent of all elephants born in North America during that period. When Packy was born at the Oregon Zoo in 1962, he was the first elephant to be born in the Western Hemisphere in 44 years. The Oregon Zoo was the first zoo to achieve second-generation breeding by producing elephant calves from elephants born in Portland.
The zoo has pioneered Asian elephant breeding, with important discoveries such as the length of the elephant gestation period and how to monitor the estrous cycle of female elephants to know when they are capable of breeding.
The Oregon Zoo’s elephant facility is one of the major reasons its breeding program has been so successful. The zoo can house adult bull elephants, allowing for normal behavior during musth, when they can be extremely aggressive. At the same time, the facility is also large enough to house normal social groups of female elephants, creating a healthy breeding population.
The zoo is currently monitoring Rose-Tu, due to give birth in September 2008. Rose-Tu was impregnated by Tusko, who arrived at the Oregon Zoo in 2005 on breeding loan from a California elephant facility. The zoo acquired Tusko to restart its breeding program because its other two bulls, Rama and Packy, are overrepresented in the gene pool and related to Rose-Tu, making them poor candidates for breeding. Rose-Tu was the last elephant born at the Oregon Zoo on Aug. 31, 1994.
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