Lab Bites">Lab Bites

When animals get bored they can go slightly loopy and aggressive, and end up fighting each other.  To keep mice and rats from getting bored, save the cardboard cores of paper towels or toilet paper rolls, and cut them into chunks for the animals to entertain themselves... by tearing them up or running through them!

For subcutaneous injections, use a pair of blunt forceps to lift the skin fold up and insert the needle at the base of the fold where the skin can be felt to be free from the musculature of the animal.  This will ensure that no accidental intramuscular injections happen, which causes pain.

For intraperitoneal injections, don't hold the animal belly-up where it's easy to miss the spot of injection.  While the animal is upright, lift it by it's tail base by about 45 degrees.  This way the organs all drop downwards.

Because of this, and when you use the hindlegs as a guide, you're more likely to inject the needle at the right spot each time.

To reduce pain for the animal and therefore make it calmer for you, rub EMLA cream on the injection site, which numbs and reduces pain.  It's a topical anesthetic for babies; a certified vet will be able to obtain this.

Don't snip tail ends to withdraw blood - it hurts the animals and increases risk of infection.

 

 

 

Try this instead...

Standard marker pens don't last long on animals, and clipping their ears to differentiate them can be confusing.

 

Try using a hand-held tatooing machine with non-allergenic ink to mark animals.  It will last the length of their life.

Why use fancy equipment to keep your animal warmed up?

Fill a tissue culture flask with warm/hot water, cover it with an absorbent sheet, and then put your animal onto it.  It makes a nice raised platform for surgery too.