Department of Comparative Medicine

ANIMAL CARE

• Provision of animal food, water, and regularly scheduled cage changes
• Cage cards are provided and available from the DCM Office for accounting purposes
• Daily observation for and recording of births, deaths, or illnesses on an observation card
• Placement of notice of overcrowding
• Special bar code stickers
• Altered cage changing schedule to accommodate need to change litters at special time

The following services are available on request. Please fill out a Service Request Form.

These services may be charged based on technician time to perform:

• Special husbandry as requested such as special food, food on cage floor, special water, etc.
• Special housing, such as metabolic cages or cages with running wheels
• Sampling of tails for PCR testing
• Identification of pups
• Euthanasia of undesired offspring or breeders
• Separation of animals at weaning age into same sex groups with bar code stickers
• Weighing
• Blood collection

Please contact the Associate Director or Facility Supervisor directly with requests and specify which services you need. In addition, you may call the DCM Office, 988-5211 to set up an appointment.

Note: Litters from breeding cages must be separated from home cage after pups reach 21 days of age. A notification tag will be placed on cages indicating the date by which the pups should be weaned and beyond which the cage will be considered overcrowded due to pups greater than 21 days of age. The investigative staff will have 48 hours from the date indicated to separate the weanlings from the home cage. After that time the separation will automatically be done by the husbandry staff and the appropriate charge based on technical time will be applied.