Records for Husbandry
Anybody who provides animal care must demonstrate appropriate levels of care and sanitation by keeping records. Remember: If it isn't recorded, it wasn't done.
General record requirements for husbandry/sanitation/observation
- Must be kept on site (in the facility or lab)
- Must be available for attending veterinarian or designee
- Must be available for any regulatory visitors
- Must be legible
- Must be signed or initialed and dated
Record daily
- Animal health (including animal deaths)
- Room temperature (ambient temp for outside enclosures)
- Room humidity (for indoor facilities)
- Feeding
- Watering (or checking watering devices)
- Cage cleaning (dogs, cats, nonhuman primates)
- Manure scraping (if applicable)
- Provision of environmental enrichment (if applicable)
- Sweeping/mopping as required
- Animal exercise (if applicable)
- Unusual animal enclosure conditions, e.g.,
- * cage or room floods
- * escaped animals
- * evidence of room temperatures outside of normal limits
- * power outage
Record weekly (minimum)*
- Rodent cage changes
- Wire-bottomed cage pan changes
- Rabbit pan changes
- Watering device changes/flushes (more often if needed)
- Sweeping/mopping if needed
Record every two weeks (minimum)*
- Cage sanitation (dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, rabbits)
- Rodent rack changes (if applicable)
- Rodent wire-bottomed cages
- Check or change of room ventilation filters (if applicable)
Record whenever done
- Drain/sink cleaning
- Food barrels sanitization
- Bedding replacement for large animals
- Room sanitization (washing walls, etc.)
- Sanitization of corridors, cagewash rooms, storerooms, etc.
- Vermin control
- Validation of sanitization procedures (e.g., checking cagewash temps, biological monitoring of cage wash efficacy)
*May be done more often. Record as done.