Biologically Appropriate Enrichment & Utilization :

< When deciding on the enrichment to reflect natural nesting and hiding behaviors we decided on these plastic red huts. These huts give the mice multiple opportunities to nest in the lower levels or just simply use it as a way to climb and interact on. We hoped that cages with higher mice densities (n=5) would simply have a way to escape the barberer.

< Wood Blocks were selected to reflect gnawing behaviors mice naturally exhibit. We know that rodent teeth never quit growing and were curious to see if giving them something to naturally chew on would limit their barbering behavior. 

< Irradiated Sunflower Seeds are distributed in a cage. This enrichment was selected to reflect foraging behaviors that mice naturally exhibit. This novel activity was presented to them once every 2 weeks and we hoped the activity would limit their barbering behavior. 

< While not a direct enrichment, we were interested as a program to switch to a paper/cellulose based bedding (Biofresh Performance Bedding) for other benefits like higher absorbency and ammonia control. We decided to see if our study could capture any differences from our control group in our barber occurrences, as this was an environmental change. 

< Our control group received corn cob bedding and a nestlet only. For this group while the purpose was our control it was interesting to see whether occurrence would go up or down throughout the study. 

Barbering was up to ~25% in our colony prior to study start (n=796).

< An example of barbering behavior observed in our NSG colony. 

Questions? Wanna reach out? Shoot us an email at the mail link➡️
Catherine Paul or Kerry Heath!