COLONY MANAGEMENT

VIVARIUM

Social housing supports the behavioural needs of mice in research settings, offering benefits such as social enrichment and buffering. While housing mice in family groups to mimic their wild counterparts is often impractical, keeping them in same-sex groups is a common alternative.

SCALABLE COLONY MANAGEMENT

Biotest Facility offers a highly scalable colony management service for mice and rats. Our service is ideal for maintaining a small-scale backup population of animal strains, or for enabling the continuous production and delivery of research animals. We can help you with both. Biotest Facility has several separated mice and rat laboratories, allowing us to offer a very flexible colony management solution. Using a cost-effective set-up, Biotest Facility can either maintain a small backup population or provide you with animals that meet your requirements for age, weight, health, or disease stage.

HOUSING CONDITIONS

Mice housed at our facility are kept in individual ventilated cages, while rats are kept in ventilated cabinets. The air ventilation in the housing units is set to an exchange rate of approximately 12 air changes per hour. Our standard set-up runs a 12-hour day-night cycle, with an option to reverse the cycle. We provide standard enrichments for the animals, such as bedding materials, chewing sticks, and diet, but offer customisation if requested. The animal caretakers have a solid experience in the field, including topics such as study conduct, safety issues, and animal welfare.

ASSOCIATED ANIMAL RESEARCH SERVICES

Along with housing rodent colonies we can offer several associated services. Monitoring of specific parameters, such as animal growth, consumption of chow and drinking water, clinical observations, biomarker levels, etc.  Special set-ups involving surgical procedures, induction of specific medical conditions, or establishment of a particular microbial status for defined research purposes can be arranged. Transport of the research models to the sponsor’s facility can be arranged. Alternatively, a separate laboratory section can be offered for the sponsor’s use at Biotest Facility.