Holiday Preparation Checklist

The Animal Resource Office Holiday Hours are:

Martin Luther King Day

Memorial Day 

Juneteenth 

Fourth of July 

Labor Day 

Thanksgiving - Thursday and Friday

Christmas 

Holiday Preparation Checklist

As we approach the upcoming holidays, please remember to trouble shoot problems in order to avoid complications that could adversely affect your animals, your research associates and/or your research.

• Breeding Colonies: Carefully check all breeder cages and separate any weanable (age appropriate) litters so that they will not require attention during the holiday.          

• UCAR Endpoints: As always, monitor experimental animals for protocol endpoints and try to anticipate when the endpoints will be reached in order to avoid notification from DCM requesting euthanasia during the holiday.
• PI Husbandry Provision: If you are responsible for providing diets and/or water to your animals, please monitor cages regularly for sufficient amounts of these items, replenish as needed and document this in the PI husbandry log. Cage changes done by your staff must also be documented in the log.       
• Experimental Diets and/or Water:  if you have made arrangements for the Vivarium to provide these items, please make sure the animal care staff has an adequate supply

      We understand that even with the best plans in place, someone in the research lab may not be able to or remember to provide experimentally treated or medicated food and water to an animal. In the situation where there is no food or water, the on-call veterinary staff will call the lab emergency contact person. If we cannot make contact, we will offer Vivarium water or commercial diet to the animals in question.

• Special Requests: Review all written requests in animal housing rooms which describe the provision of nonroutine husbandry services to your animals to verify that they are still in effect and that the contact information is current. Please discard your outdated requests.
• Lab Contact Information: Please make sure that DCM has current contact information for lab members who are able make decisions about animal treatments.  The phone number is 275-2651; e-mail address: dlamtechs@urmc.rochester.edu
• Emergencies:  As always, a DCM veterinarian and Vivarium supervisor are available by pager for animal health and/or facility emergencies respectively.  Please call the Animal Resource office (275-2651) to hear the voice mail message which contains current pager information.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the Animal Resource office staff by e-mail (animal_resource@urmc.rochester.edu) or phone (275-2651).

Have a wonderful and safe holiday season!