Making use of the stress buffering influence of a companion: Post-operative care (2007)
LAREF [Laboratory Animal Refinement and Enrichment Forum]
Abstract
We have mice who are recovering from telemetry-implantation while being housed either alone or in pairs. With several years of experience with this surgery, we now are pretty sure that socially housed mice feel better than individually housed mice.I can add here an observation of a colleague, who performs spinal cord surgery in rats. He lost about 20 percent of the animals when these were individually caged after surgery. Defying tradition, he tried keeping the rats in compatible pairs after surgery. This caused no complications. He then implemented pair-housing for all his post-operative rats. This had the effect that he no longer lost any of his animals.
Published
2007
Citation
LAREF [Laboratory Animal Refinement and Enrichment Forum] 2007. Making use of the stress buffering influence of a companion: Post-operative care. In: Making Lives Easier for Animals in Research Labs: Discussions by the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum. Baumans, V., Coke, C., Green, J., Moreau, E., Morton, D., Patterson-Kane, E., Reinhardt, A., Reinhardt, V., Van Loo, P. (eds), 101. Animal Welfare Institute, Washington, DC.
Full Article
No link assigned.