Basic Mouse Care and Maintenance

Mice (Mus musculus) are small rodents that breed and sexually mature quickly, making them perfectly suited to generating large animal colonies for biological research. As compared to other mammalian species, mice are simple and inexpensive to maintain in the laboratory. Nevertheless, mouse colonies do have specific husbandry needs that are critical to preserving animal health and safety as well as experimental reproducibility.

This video demonstrates standard practices that ensure mice are treated as humanely as possible within the laboratory animal facility, or vivarium. The discussion begins by reviewing a typical mouse housing setup, consisting of a plastic cage equipped with a layer of soft bedding and nesting material. The preformulated food pellets (also known as chow) that comprise the typical mouse diet are also introduced. In order to facilitate experiments performed on mice, safe animal handling practices are demonstrated, including common restraint techniques like “scruffing,” and the strategies used by researchers to keep track of individual mice within the facility. Finally, experimental manipulations of mouse housing and diet are discussed, in addition to one of the most common applications of the scruffing technique — performing injections.