Individual ventilated cages (IVC) have recently been increasing in popularity. Based on the high rates of ventilation with IVCs, we developed 3 hypotheses: first, mice housed in IVCs experience significantly more cold-stress than mice housed...
Individual ventilated cages (IVC) are increasing in popularity. Although mice avoid IVC in preference testing, they show no aversion when provided additional nesting material or the cage is not ventilated. Given the high ventilation rate...
Clinical Laboratory Animal Medicine: An Introduction, Fourth Edition offers a user-friendly guide to the unique anatomy and physiology, care, common diseases, and treatment of small mammals and nonhuman primates. Carefully designed for ease of use...
Environmental enrichment has become an important aspect of animal care in research facilities over the years. It is easy to come up with enrichment for mice, rats, and other mammals; however, what do you get...
Goat enrichment can be incredibly rewarding, not only for the goat, but for personnel as well. In our facility, we often refer to goatenrichment tasks as technician (or vet!) enrichment. Somewhere in the evolutionary development...
Xenopus laevis is a commonly used research animal for which well accepted enrichment strategies have not been established. Our overall objective was to identify enrichment strategies that are most beneficial to Xenopus as a step...
The overall benefits of an enrichment and exercise program for research canines has been well documented and is a required element, by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), of any institution’s Animal Care and...
In the eighth edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, the recommended rabbit cage height was changed from 14 to 16 in. In contrast, the majority of our rabbit cages...
Enrichment devices and strategies, as currently endorsed by the Guide, are used to improve laboratory animal health and wellbeing. Many conclusions supporting this premise, however, are based primarily on observational studies with minimal consideration for...
Captive rhesus macaques sometimes exhibit undesirable abnormal behaviors, such as motor stereotypic behavior (MSB) and self-abuse. Many risk factors for these behaviors have been identified but the list is far from comprehensive, and large individual...