More About Breeding Colony Management

Management of nonhuman primate (NHP) breeding colonies is an exceptionally complex task. Even with skilled personnel and prudent management practices, a precise balance between supply and demand is extremely difficult to attain. Active colony management is an implicit element of operating all institutions that maintain NHP breeding colonies. The reality of imprecise matches between demand and availability, and the need to actively manage colonies is an ordinary and necessary part of providing NHP resources to NIH supported investigators.

Each ORIP supported NHP breeding program maintains an ongoing commitment towards providing the necessary resources to meet NIH research goals. Although precise prediction of future demands is not possible, each ORIP supported NHP breeding colony manages its resources to meet anticipated demand and to allow relatively rapid adaptation to new NIH priorities. Working as a consortium, Breeding Colony Management Consortium (BCMC) members work with ORIP program staff to meet the NHP needs of the biomedical research community and to ensure that these invaluable resources are used efficiently and effectively in support of the NIH mission.

The BCMC was established in early 2008 to strengthen existing communication between individual NHP breeding colony management teams in order to collectively improve processes and maximize use of system-wide resources. The BCMC is comprised of colony managers from each of the seven National Primate Research Centers and the Caribbean Primate Research Center, the directors of the OAR/ORIP supported national macaque SPF breeding programs, and representatives from ORIP. Members include veterinarians, colony managers, administrators, technology professionals and epidemiologists. The BCMC has conducted monthly web-meetings since its inception.

Areas of focus:
•    Virtual aggregation of content from colony records systems across all participating BCMC institutions.
•    Selective species breeding at specific centers to provide animals to other centers not breeding a particular species.
•    Development of an approach for sharing information between BCMC members and interested individuals outside the BCMC.
•    Sharing of standard operating procedures for colony management and development of best practices
•    Sharing design and construction plans for breeding facilities
•    Sharing of methodology- ie viral testing/reagents for SPF colony development and maintenance
•    Sharing disaster management plans related to animal care
•    Identification of factors that impact supply, demand and cost of nonhuman primates