Creating a New Cage
To create a new cage, click on the New Cage button. The following form will popup.
It is recommended that the Cage name used is unique and corresponds to the value which staff will find written or printed on your cage cards.
The Capacity field is optional and is not validated, but can be used to set the maximum number of animals permitted in the cage.
Capturing a Barcode for a Cage
A barcode scanner (device connected to your PC) can be used to capture and populate the Barcode field by scanning the cage cards. This is not a searchable field and is for information capture only.
Important:
SensaLab Connector does not search for Cages using the Barcode field. To use SensaLab Connector to find a cage via a Barcode, capture the Barcode value in the Cage Name field instead of using the Barcode field.
Adding Animals to a Cage
Once you have created a cage, you can then add animals to the cage from the Animal records list.
Click on the Add animal icon to display a list of animals, as shown below.
You can use the columns to filter the animals you are looking for to assign to your cage and narrow the list of animals displayed.
To select animals click on the row to highlight them, as shown above. The press the Add button to place them in the cage and return to the cage view, where the animals will now be listed.
Moving a new cage to a rack
When you have assigned animals to a cage, you can move the cage to your required rack. First, you must expand the organisation structure to reveal the rack in the correct room.
To add the cage to a rack, click on the cage name or number (the number 1 shown in the example above) and hold your mouse down to drag the number across to the left so your cursor hovers over the rack name.
Release your mouse button to “drop” the cage onto that rack. It should now appear listed beneath that rack.
Moving a cage to the Workbench
To move a cage from a rack onto the Workbench – the space to the right of the organisation structure, navigate to the cage, move your cursor over the cage – which highlights it in grey with a right pointing arrow.
Click on the arrow and the cage with appear on the right hand side of the screen – on your work bench.
This will automatically display the animals housed within that cage.
You can move multiple cages to the Workbench to view them.
View Animals in a Cage
When a cage is moved to the Workbench, you can view a summary of information about the animals, as shown in the example below.
Move Animals between cages
To move animals from one cage to another (for example, as part of a post randomisation re-allocation of animals to new cages), move both the current cage to the Workbench and the cage to which the animals will be moved.
If the cage to which the animals will be moved is new, use the New cage button to create a new, empty cage.
Click on the Move animal icon and hold your mouse cursor down, then drag the animal record to the other cage number (for example the number 11 in the example above) and then release your mouse click to “drop” the record into the new cage.
Removing a cage from a rack
To move a cage from one rack to another, simply drag the cage to the new Rack name (which needs to be open in your hierarchy.
Marking Animals Dead in a Cage
The record that an animal has died or has been culled, move the cage to the Workbench, select the animal record to highlight it and then click on the Mark as culled icon. This will display the following popup form to record the reason for the death or cull.
To save the animal status, press the Update button.
This will automatically update the Animal Summary information in both the Study and Protocol records to which the animal belongs.
Important:
Tasks of an animal recorded as Dead are removed from the Planned Tasks, while tasks which were Overdue are retained in the task list.