Abstract
At Burgers' Ocean 7 male and 3 female blue spotted stingrays,Dasyatis kuhliiwere born over a period of 4.5 years. This paper describes the experiences of the captive breeding results of this species. The first two young died within 2 days of birth. One of them had an internal yolk sac, which may feed the young in the first few days. The other eight animals started to feed after 4 to 9 days on a variety of food types. Birth size of the young increased with increasing age of the parents. Mating occurred directly after parturition, so no seasonality could be defined. Gestation length ranged between 138 and 169 days, with a mean of 144.9±9.0 days (N = 11). Litter size was one, possibly caused by only one active ovarium. Sexual maturity of the two parent animals is approximately 3.5 years. The average feeding rations for the adults ranged between 10.1% BW week−1(131 kcal kg BW−1week−1) and 11.3% BW week−1(172 kcal kg BW−1 week−1), with a feeding frequency of 4 times per week. The relationship between body weight (BW) and wingspan (WS) is given as BW = 3.6 × 10−5* WS2.940(R2 = 0.9645; N = 45).
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