Holley, A., Drayer, J., Rammling, M. et al. 2014. A simplified method to identify and reduce flooded rodent caging. Charles River, Orlando, FL.

The number of flooded cages per cage change cycle (14 days) was tracked and it was identified that leaks and flooding often times occurred shortly after cage changing. To reduce the occurrence of flooded caging, we developed a pre-screening process which involves water bottles/pouches to be added to the cage during cage assembly in the clean side cage wash, instead of during cage change. This simple modification in the equipment assembly process allows us to store the weekly produced cage supplies over the weekend and identify flooded caging prior to cage change. We reduced the occurrence of cage flooding per cage change cycle by approximately 44% for bottles and 88% for pouches. By simply relocating existing cage assembly tasks to the clean side cage wash, a pre-screening method can be established to identify malfunctioning water bottles/pouches and significantly reduce the occurrence of flooded caging, decrease animal health occurrences related to hypothermia, reduce the risk of contamination and reduce overall labor [cage assembly on clean side took 13 min more per 100 cages, but cage changing took 37 min less per 100 cages].