Custom Home Cage Monitoring System

When rodent subjects are examined outside the comfort of their home cage, caution has to be taken that results and data concerning behavior and characteristics are accurate and reproducible. Multiple studies have found that assessing rodent behavior outside the subject’s home cage results in difficulties in replicating results (Rudeck et al., 2020) in part due to not representing the complexity of the subject’s behavior outside of the subject’s regular surroundings and creating additional behaviors such as anxiety and stress (Clement and Brockley, 1989). Other factors such as changes in light levels have been found to affect behaviors related to activity and food consumption (Acosta et al., 2020; Manouze et al., 2019). Our automated home cage was designed to combat this, allowing researchers to observe a subject’s natural behaviours in the comfort of their regular surroundings.

The Maze Engineers automated home cage system is customized with your specific research needs in mind while creating a safe and comfortable living space for your animal model. Our automated home cage adheres to USA  rodent enclosure regulations, see our article here for more information.

The Automated Home Cage system is easy to assemble and de-assemble for easy cleaning. We recommend using gentle cleansers to clean the Home Cage such as unscented soap and water, 70% ethanol, or hydrochlorus water.

Composed of an easy-to-clean acrylic cage with an acrylic or mesh lid, water bottle, and feeder, the cage’s dimensions can be modified to ensure the number of rodents per cage are given enough space for comfortable living and interaction. A number of tagging methods are also available to identify each individual animal (see customizations below).

A single ventilation system of air inlets and outlets on each cage ensures clean fresh air is pumped into each cage while stagnant air is removed. Customizable independent lighting adjustments (white light and infrared light) are available for circadian rhythm analysis.

Each cage is monitored for temperature, food and water levels, and gaseous by-products ammonia, carbon monoxide, methane and sulfur dioxide.

Multiple cage systems can be set up on our rack system (maximum 72 cages per rack) with each rack having a video tracking system and two video tracking controllers. A video camera moves to each cage with round Rubin method to capture and analyze the animal activities and generate animal health alerts. Timing on each cage is configurable.

Additional accessories are available for our cage system include enrichment apparatus such as activity wheels, sleep/wake analysis systems, racks, and tagging systems.

Infrared photo arrays can be installed into each home cage to monitor the following parameters:

• Create customisable, per-cage, protocols and schedules based on individual rodent behaviours
• Motor and motion detection including location, locomotion, rodent identification, spatial preference, position distribution, zone entries and trajectory

Specifications:

• Two layers of beams, 5cm distance for mouse cages, 9cm distance for rat cages
• 3cm density for mouse cages, 5cm density for rat cages

Customizable to your research needs, our Conductor software integrates with video tracking packages to allow for the following:

• Create customisable, per-cage, protocols and schedules based on individual rodent behaviours
• Monitoring of rodent  functionalities and health alerts of each cage
• Web-based visualization of the monitoring information
• Automatic tracking of animals and analysis of animals’ behavior
•  Detect the animal health alerts and activities for Conduct Home Cage Software to display
• Web-based visualization of the monitoring information

Allowing the user to track the following:

• Motor and motion detection including location, locomotion, spatial preference, rodent identification, position distribution, zone entries and trajectory
• Fine motor and motion including grooming and facial expressions
• Analysis of behaviors including circadian rhythm, anxiety, depression, socialization, sniffing, burrowing, climbing, nestbuilding, birth etc.

The following research fields  can be observed using the Automated Home Cage:

• Longitudinal behavioral and phenotype assessment
• External appearance-related parameters
• Drug discovery/efficacy
• Metabolic disease
• Endocrine conditions and diseases
• Nutritional conditions and diseases
• Circadian rhythms behaviors

• Neurodevelopmental conditions and diseases
• Neurological conditions and diseases
• Other disease models
• Reproductive behaviors
• Psychological
  • Depression/anxiety, activity
  • Social group behavior

Please request additional accessories when requesting a quote

The Automated Home Cage system allows for the following:

• Precise control: The Automated Rodent Home Cages allows researchers to have precise control over the environment in which the rodents are kept. This can help to eliminate confounding variables and produce more reliable and accurate experimental results.
• Increased efficiency: The Automated Home Cage system can monitor and collect data on rodent behavior and physiological parameters continuously and non-invasively, allowing researchers to efficiently collect large amounts of data without disturbing the animals.
• Improved animal welfare: The Automated Home Cage can provide animals with a more natural and stimulating environment, which can lead to improved animal welfare compared to traditional cages. They can also help to reduce stress caused by handling and other environmental disruptions.
• Reduced human error: The Automated Home Cage can minimize human error in data collection and analysis, ensuring more consistent and accurate results.

Rudeck J, Vogl S, Banneke S, Schönfelder G, Lewejohann L. Repeatability analysis improves the reliability of behavioral data. PLoS One. 2020;15: e0230900. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230900.

Clement JG, Mills P, Brockway B. Use of telemetry to record body temperature and activity in mice. Journal of Pharmacological Methods. 1989;21: 129–40. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-5402(89)90031-4

Acosta J, Bussi IL, Esquivel M, Höcht C, Golombek DA, Agostino PV. Circadian modulation of motivation in mice. Behav Brain Res. 2020;382: 112471. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112471

Manouze H, Ghestem A, Poillerat V, Bennis M, Ba-M’hamed S, Benoliel JJ, et al. Effects of single cage housing on stress, cognitive, and seizure parameters in the rat and mouse pilocarpine models of epilepsy. eNeuro. 2019;6. doi: 10.1523/eneuro.0179-18.2019