Cage and Mouse
Cage- and mouse-related page are among our most used. Expect
to be able to use LIMS for all of your colony data management.
Also, some common workflow processes now have automated pages,
simplifying your day and freeing time for other concerns.
Features You Know and Love
Click on image for a more detailed view.
View Cage
In LIMS, we really want you to be able to track all the
mouse information you need, instead of just cage information. Of
course, if mouse data is going to be useful, we need to track
mice throughout their lives in the facility rather than just
having a snapshot of their current location. This means that we
also need to have a way of easily entering that information,
since most LIMS users are dealing with a very large number of
mice on a regular day.
The View Cage page puts all the important data in one,
easily editable place.
Where to Find this Feature: View Cage
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Drag 'n' Drop Mouse Movement
As much as possible, we've automated common tasks, like
moving mice from cage to cage. In order to ensure that people
have time to do things other than entering data on LIMS, we've
created an easy, extremely fast mouse movement page. From any
cage page, just click the Move Mouse button. From there, you can
scan another cage to move the mice into, drag the mouse into the
"New Cage" area to create a new cage, or drag them into the
"Sacrifice" area to mark them as terminated. You can even drag a
whole cage (using the barcode bar) into another cage or area to
move all of the selected mice. Any cages which are emptied of
mice using this page can easily be terminated directly from this
page. The Drag 'n' Drop page is fantastic for quickly separating
or combining cages of mice.
Note that no changes are saved until the Save button is
pressed. To cancel any movements or terminations, simply press
the Cancel button.
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Breeding Cage Setup
Setting up breeding cages is now a breeze, using the page
designed for exactly that process. Instead of a multi-step
effort, the whole process has now been streamlined into a single
automatic page. Simply scan the cages which you're going to pull
mice from, select the mice to be bred, adjust any of the
automatically entered information, and press the Save button.
Instant breeding cage! Setting up additional cages from the same
source cages is even easier: just select more mice and Save
again. You can even terminate any emptied cages directly from
this page. When you're finished, view and print all the PDFs
generated, including the new breeding cages and any updated
cages.
By using this new breeding setup page, we can also
automatically track and display the mating status and success
rates for any of your animals. This can be invaluable when
trying to maintain an efficient breeding colony. Look for these
statistics on any new breeding cage. Not only are you spending
less time entering data, you're also getting more useful
information at your fingertips.
Wean Cages
The
weaning page
has been redesigned to give users a smoother interface to work
with and more flexible options in allocating and numbering mice.
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Mouse Log Entries
Since we now have the ability to track mice throughout
their life, we can store a lot more information about that mouse
and events that affected it. For issues affecting mice that are
more specific, or that simply need more notes associated with
them, users can use mouse log entries to record specific
information that will be permanently attached to the record for
that particular mouse. This is a great replacement for
cumbersome paper notes or cage annotations, and can be
especially useful for labs who might be sending mice for
pathology. If they are in the habit of recording information
using LIMS, that will be automatically available to any
technicians working with those mice. This ensures accuracy,
reduces forgotten or misplaced information, and increases
efficiency. Using these entries also ensures that the
information is available to anyone in the lab and to TCP staff,
facilitating collaboration.
To enter a mouse log entry, simply go to the view page for
any mouse and create a new entry.
Mouse logs are also added automatically when mouse
welfares, remedial actions, and health alerts are added or
updated.
Where to Find this Feature: View Mouse > Mouse Logs and View Cage > Mouse Logs
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Mouse Welfare
Many of the issues encountered by a mouse colony are
easily categorized into a small set of terms. In order to
standardize the vocabulary for the more common afflictions that
a mouse might have, we have a set of Welfare Terms that can be
easily applied to any individual mouse. Labs which get into the
habit of using these terms consistently will be able to generate
useful reports on the percentage of mice being affected in a
given mouseline and will have permanent, easily accessible
records of what happened to any given mouse.
Mouse welfares that are added through health alerts (by TCP
staff) will show up in the mouse welfares lists with a health
alert indicator .
Although these welfares are not editable by lab users they give
details on the welfares reported and treatments used.
Where to Find this Feature: View Mouse > Welfare and View Cage > Welfare
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Cage/Mouse Hold Section
While using LIMS, it's common to be working with multiple
cages during a session. For instance, you might be requesting a
service of several cages or the mice in them, or you might be
checking on a number of cages and then going back to certain
ones. For these situations, and many more, you can use the new
Hold feature to save cages for later use. Simply click the Hold
button while viewing a cage or mouse. The cage or mouse will
then be available in the Holding area in the menu bar. You can
click on the area to show the cages currently being held. Even
more useful, you can quickly import any of the cages currently
being held into any service request which concerns cages. Simply
press the "Import Cages / Mice from Holding Area" on the request
form and the cages will be instantly available. Much easier than
typing them in manually! You can also send a notification for
all the cages being held by clicking the Send Notification
button on the Held Cages panel.
Where to Find this Feature: All Pages (Top right, beside the Logout link)
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Mouse Pedigrees
Many labs have a colony of mice which go back numerous
generations. Tracking the relationships back past immediate
parents can be time-consuming and cumbersome. With the automatic
breeding page in LIMS, we can now track parent and litter
relationships back until the original animal entered the
facility. This feature will be available on all animals from
litters created after the launch of LIMS. From the mouse's view
page, click on the "Full Pedigree" link to see the parents,
grandparents, and great-grandparents of the current mouse. You
can even see the litters for the current mouse, if there are
any. To go further back in the tree, just click on the Pedigree
link for any of the displayed ancestors, and repeat!
Note: inbred colonies will display multiple copies of
ancestors, as if it was a non-inbred relationship. That is,
there will continue to be a full branching tree.
Where to Find this Feature: View Mouse > Full Pedigree
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Cage Notifications
With multiple people working on a project, it can often be
the case that you need to point someone towards a particular
cage. Or, perhaps a facility technician needs to bring a cage to
the attention of the contact person for that cage. Whenever the
need to notify someone about a specific cage arises, you can now
use the Notifications system to quickly generate a note which
will be displayed on that user's homepage. Simply click the
"Send Notification" button on any cage. By default, this will
use the contact person, but that can be changed to anyone, or to
multiple people. Enter a title, a description, even a date for
the notification to appear, and press save. The recipient can
easily get to exactly the cage you were pointing out using the
link included in the notification.
Where to Find this Feature: View Cage > Send Notification and View Cage > Related Entities > Notifications
Click on image for a more detailed view.
One-click Mouse Termination
Rather than deleting mice and losing all the information
associated with them, you can now quickly mark a mouse as dead
by pressing the Terminate button located either on their cage or
on the mouse view page. This retains all information that was
related to the mouse while it was alive, such as their welfare
and log entries, but will no longer show the mouse in the cage.
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Cage Census
One of the tasks that the TCP staff conduct regularly is a
cage census. This time consuming task involves scanning the
barcodes of all the cage cards in a room to find terminated and
moved cages. Any cages that are not scanned within 45 days are
automatically terminated.
The Census Cage Scanning page contains 3 areas of information:
- Scan History : This section lists all the cages that
have been scanned and are being processed and the last 10
scanned barcodes. In the past, users had to pause between
scans to avoid losing data. This is no longer the case, so
scan as fast as you like.
- Scan Statistics : This section displays the current
room and rack being scanned, the total number of scans, as
well as the numbers of successful, unsuccessful, and invalid
scans, and moved cages.
- Scan Details : This section lists the last 10 scanned
barcodes, all unsuccessful scans (those that require
additional attention such as terminated cages), all invalid
scans (such as incomplete barcodes or cages not found in
LIMS), and moved cages.
Where to Find this Feature: Cage > Cage Actions > Cage Census Scanning
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Room Usage
For TCP staff, everything you need to know about a room in
one place. This page shows lists of recently modified cages,
empty cages, unhealthy cages, welfare issues, and recent mouse
logs as well as a list of AUPs and Mouselines in the room.
Where to Find this Feature: Cage > Reports > Room Usage
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Project List Administration
Some investigators are working on several lines of
research simultaneously under a single AUP. To help group cages,
the cage can be assigned to a project.
Where to Find this Feature: Cage > Project List
Click on image for a more detailed view.
Manage Welfare Terms
If your mouse colony encounters issues that do not fit in
with the current set of terms, new terms can be added by the
colony administrators. Remember, the point of using a set of
welfare terms is to encourage standardization so we will need
agreement from the larger LIMS population to add new welfare
terms.
Where to Find this Feature: Cage > Admin > Manage Welfare Terms
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