Central Animal Care Services

The levels employ different husbandry practices, type of feed, supplies and entry/exit procedures to create a range inclusion and exclusion environments. Options range from conventional housing and husbandry practices in the standard level to full exclusion and inclusion practices in the quarantine level. Pricing varies by the level of biosecurity required for each situation.

Standard housing includes:

• Conventional shoebox plastic caging and Individually Vented Cages (IVC)
• Standard feed, water and care
• All IVC cages are changed/manipulated only under a cage change station
• No special entry or husbandry practices are employed

Modified housing includes additions to the standard housing:

• Metabolic and "clean" housing
• Irradiated food and/or treated water
• Presence of a chemical or radioactive hazard
• Caging is autoclaved

This type of housing is often dictated by the nature of the experiment or the need to protect particularly valuable breeding colonies, but can also be requested to maintain animals at a higher level of protection.

Enhanced housing includes additional practices above modified housing type:

• Sterile housing
• Irradiated food
• Aseptic husbandry practices are employed for cage handling and manipulation and between cages
• Cages and animals are manipulated only under biosafety cabinet or cage change station
• All supplies are autoclaved
• Special room entry

Enhanced housing represents either inclusion practices or exclusion practices. This is used  either when immune deficient animals, such as nude or SCID mice, are housed requiring protection from the environment or for biohazardous work in which personnel and the environment must be protected from pathogenic exposure.

Quarantine housing represents the highest level of care we offer. This type of housing is required for quarantine evaluation periods for new animal models before they can be released into barrier or general housing. It is also employed in situations where immune compromised animals are inoculated with or may potentially be infected with a biological hazard. A nude mouse contaminated with a biohazardous organism would be an example. This type of housing has the most input costs in which both isolation and exclusion are required to protect both the animal under study and personnel and the environment.

These are colonies that are held at CACS by researchers for their own use.

Colony information is available through the Breeding App in My Research Tools (MRT).

Access MRT

Established colonies are available at Central Animal Care Services for purchase by eligible investigators.

We work with several approved commercial vendors that we purchase animals from on a regular basis, including:

• Jackson Laboratory
• Charles River
• Sunnyside Farms
• Taconic

Please note that orders from Jackson Laboratory must include stock numbers. We cannot place  the order without it.

If you require surgical modifications by the vendor, surcharges will apply.

Orders from external suppliers are sent as soon as we receive them, but delivery dates are dependent on the vendor’s ability to supply.