Refinement Database

Database on Refinement of Housing, Husbandry, Care, and Use of Animals in Research

This database, created in 2000, is updated every four months with newly published scientific articles, books, and other publications related to improving or safeguarding the welfare of animals used in research.

Tips for using the database:

  • This landing page displays all of the publications in the database.
  • Use the drop-down menus to filter these publications by Animal Type, Setting, and/or Topic.
  • Clicking on a parent category (e.g., Rodent) will include publications relating to all the items in that category (e.g., Chinchilla, Gerbil, Guinea Pig, etc.).
  • You may also add a keyword to further narrow your search.
  • Please note that at this time, only publications dated 2010 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Animal Type and Topic, and only publications dated 2020 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Setting. Most publications older than 2010 can only be searched by keyword. 

Though European rabbits are a social species, socially housing them can be challenging. Therefore, there must be a thorough understanding of behaviors and social structures of pair-housed laboratory rabbits. Here we present a protocol to...

Rabbits are usually singly housed in laboratories, but a new emphasis on providing social housing for social species has prompted exploration of alternative housing for this species. However, a paucity of literature on the social...

The 8th Edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals clarified its language regarding housing social species, specifying that, “Single housing of social species should be the exception…”. This is a...

The aim of this work was to study how the group size and the number of doorways in a pen may influence the aggressive interactions throughout the reproductive cycle among does kept in a part-time...

The aims of this study were to investigate the occurrence of stereotypic behaviours and the activity level in farmed mink when group housed in climbing cages and if group housing increase aggression by assessing the...

This book summarizes the basic features of living fish. It is introduced by a chapter on the diversity of a group which has over 30,000 species, the largest within the vertebrates, describing the classification systems...

This poster is based on welfare improvements gained from group housing rabbits in floor pens in the new Antibody Production Facility with a focus on development, behaviours and environmental enrichment in both male and female...

Group housing is becoming the standard for many farm animal species, as it is seen as a more welfare friendly way of keeping gregarious animals. Aggression between female breeding rabbits currently obstructs the implementation of...

The objective of the study was to investigate if environmental enrichment and the composition of the social group would affect the behavior and relative brain weight of growing rabbits. Rabbits (72 males and 72 females)...

Group housing is often assumed to improve the welfare of gregarious species. Whether this is actually the case depends on the advantages (e.g. more opportunity for social and locomotor behaviour) and disadvantages (e.g. increased fighting...

Breeding does are usually housed one doe per cage, but there is an increased interest in (semi-)group housing systems designed to improve welfare. However, there is a lack of information on how such systems actually...

The study of laboratory animal behavior has increased steadily over the last decade, with expanding emphasis on a variety of commonly used species. In the United States, this trend was initially focused on species for...

Fish are one of the most highly utilised vertebrate taxa by humans; they are harvested from wild stocks as part of global fishing industries, grown under intensive aquaculture conditions, are the most common pet and...

The most common housing system for reproduction rabbits, individual cage housing on a wire floor, is increasingly scrutinized because of its potential detrimental impact on animal welfare. We compared three types of housing: (1) individual...

The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals requires that all animals, without veterinary or study exemptions, be socially housed. Our current caging only allows enough floor space to house one large rabbit...

Group-housing of rabbit does may be preferred from welfare point of view. However, group-housing causes agonistic behaviour which may cause severe injuries. Severe injuries may be prevented by offering hiding places for attacked does. Providing...

Although rabbit does are generally single housed on rabbit farms worldwide, it has been suggested by some specialists and recommendation of organic rabbit production systems that group housing of does is more comfortable and similar...

This is the third volume of discussions that took place on the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum (LAREF). This forum is dedicated to the exchange of personal experiences of refining the conditions under which...

The eighth edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (the Guide) states that appropriate social interaction among members of the same species is essential for normal animal development and wellbeing...

Social enrichment is increasingly employed to improve the welfare of laboratory animals, including rabbits. However, the high levels of injurious aggression that can occur when unfamiliar adult rabbits are introduced to one another are a...

We analyzed our current enrichment protocols in order to develop and implement social experiences for our rabbit and guinea pig colonies. This article describes the development of an exercise pen for rabbits and a custom-made...

On Swiss rabbit breeding farms, group-housed does are usually kept singly for 12 days around parturition to avoid pseudogravidity, double litters and deleterious fighting for nests. After this isolation phase there is usually an integration...

Since we receive rabbits at 10-12 weeks of age and we only house them for about 3 to 4 weeks, we decided to give group housing a try. Change is hard for most people and...

This report describes what rabbits need in terms of social housing, enclosure size and type, and environmental enrichment. It also describes potential husbandry-related welfare problems and how to resolve them.

The Guide for the Care and Use of Animals and the USDA Animal Welfare Regulations (AWR) outline minimum space requirements for laboratory animals, including rabbits. These documents encourage housing of animals in enclosures that allow...