Includes refinements to diet, bedding or flooring, cage changing, lighting, temperature, noise levels, etc.
At Pfizer’s Pearl River site, rabbits are socially housed in pairs or triples in dog runs that have been converted into rabbit pens. The daily husbandry and maintenance of these pens, however, proved to be...
At the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Department of Comparative Medicine, we have a large captive colony of Olive Baboons (Papio anubis). Environmental enhancement is an integral part of the Comparative Medicine Baboon Research...
This article describes a creative solution to enable poor nest building mice to use compressed cotton squares: putting the squares in a blender for 5 seconds. This results in a billowy, completely shredded fluff that...
Enrichment devices made of materials such as nylon and wood are common gnawing devices used in animal facilities. In most institutions, these devices are used for a limited period and then discarded. At Pfizer, enrichment...
Marmota monax is a valuable laboratory animal species used in studies of Hepatitis B virus (HBV), food intake, obesity, hibernation, and circannual cycles. This article describes the woodchuck’s (also known as groundhog) natural behavior and...
Husbandry of these unusual and complicated creatures requires creativity and attention to species-specific needs. Authors from the Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), SUNY Downstate, and McMaster University formed a collaboration aimed at optimizing the health...
The University of California, Berkeley, houses a variety of unique species, each requiring their own specific husbandry protocols, as well as additional enrichment and safety protocols. While housing of bats in zoological parks is common...
At Colorado State University we have an investigator who requested care for 2 different species of pythons, the green tree python (Morelia viridis) and the ball python (Python reguis), to study the pathology of an...
While clinical reptile medicine as a science is in its ascendancy among veterinary surgeons and other interested groups, familiarity with the often related issue of reptilian behavioural and psychological health appears less common. Behavioural change...
Rabbits are known to be finicky about food and will reject it based upon several factors: odor, texture, form, or method of presentation. It can be an even greater challenge to get rabbits to eat...