Includes structural, behavioral, food, and auditory enrichment.
In laboratories, mice are housed at ambient temperatures between 20 to 24 °C, which is below their lower critical temperature of 30 °C, but comfortable for human workers. Thus, mice are thermally stressed, which can...
Historically, we have added approximately half a cup of shredded aspen bedding for nest making into each littering cage. This procedure was continued as we looked into additional environmental enrichment. There are many types of...
In the animal facility, a range of different sounds are present. On the one hand, rats and humans will regard sound and noise differently even within the audible range, but on the other hand mice...
In the last issue of The Enrichment Record, Emily Patterson-Kane and I reported on the work (Cao, Liu et al.) in which investigators demonstrated that even short-term exposure to environmental enrichment (EE) improved resistance to...
In this review, swine behavior and various methods of enrichment are discussed. The review is based on both published journal articles and anecdotal successful enrichment methods that were shared recently on CompMed Listserve.
Improving the home cages of laboratory mice by environmental enrichment has been widely used to reduce cage stereotypies and anxiety-related behaviour in behavioural tests. However, enrichment studies differ substantially in type, complexity and variation of...
The goal of this study was to evaluate the effects of environmental enrichment on the performance of C57BL/6 mice kept in conventional animal facilities (open cage; OC) and individually ventilated caging system (IVC). We analyzed...
The tubes provide shelter and nesting material to the rats, allowing them to exhibit species-specific behaviors. The change in the animals' behavior has been overwhelming. The rats are much less aggressive; in one year, fight...
Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) represents small, random deviations from symmetry in bilaterally symmetrical anatomic characteristics, is highly correlated with the amount of stress during development, and thus, is considered as a potential welfare indicator. In the...
Weaning of piglets in commercial husbandry systems is earlier and more abrupt than would happen under natural conditions, resulting in low feed intakes and health and welfare problems in the immediate postweaning period. Piglets in...