Rutgers University – Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences

Peter Rodriguez, BBA, LATG
Facility Manager, RAF

At this point in time I have expanded my use of the Animal Care Systems racks. First of course, the closed ventilation system works great. I go on the average of 10 days having 5 mice to a cage. If I have less I can go the full two weeks. That brings me to the next point, it is very labor friendly. Less changes per cage. Most over ventilated system allow you to change every seven days. Regardless of what the other companies may say, their cage sizes only really allows for weekly cage changes. Therefore I saved on the cost of changing cages, then washing the cages and finally on autoclaving cages.

With the various different size racks am able to be very space efficient with my animal rooms. One room, which housed only about 300 regular cages, now house 490 Animal Care Systems cages. This allowed me to house more mice and cages in my facility with out having to increase my physical space. This why I now use the Optimice cages in my conventional rooms as well.

It is much easier to view the mice with the ACS cages. That makes the technician’s job easier and faster. One important note, in my conventional side I had an outbreak of viruses. However, the conventional room that used the ACS ventilated system did not get affected with any of the viruses. The system really works to keep out viruses.

Overall, I was able to increase cage space while reducing labor at the same time. My per diem revenue increased to a point where the system paid for itself in a little over a year. And of course, health wise it protects the animals extremely well.

The ACS system is a win-win situation for all involved, budget manager, investigators, technicians and animals.