Chapter 5.3.1. Post-Operative Care (2007)

LAREF [Laboratory Animal Refinement and Enrichment Forum]

Abstract

It is my experience with rhesus macaques that it is advisable to pair-house an animal after surgery as soon as possible with his or her compatible companion. We do this especially with pairs, after one of them had cranial implant surgery. It is the investigator's and my own impression that the animals recover better from the surgery stress when their familiar companion is with them than when they are alone.Close to 95 percent of our cyno population is pair-housed. The animals are subjected to a lot of orthopedic procedures. There have never been problems with the re-pairing of the animals after surgery. We partition the pairs cage with a transparent panel, which we remove after the treated companion has fully recovered from anesthetic effects (usually 24 hours). It has never happened that animals who had no surgery showed any negative behavioral reactions toward their temporarily probably weaker cage mates.