Our advanced home cage system is meticulously designed to observe natural and realistic behaviors, offering a safe and controlled environment tailored for behavioral research.
Whether for short-term, intermittent, or extended studies, this system ensures comfort and optimal conditions to achieve reliable and reproducible results. Each cage is equipped with a sophisticated ventilation system and continuous monitoring of gaseous by-products, as well as food and water levels and temperature, ensuring a comprehensive approach to animal welfare. Our system provides flexibility with options for manual tracking, photo-array, or 24/7 video surveillance, and can be scaled from a single unit to a larger multi-cage setup. Designed for convenience, each cage is simple to assemble and disassemble, facilitating easy cleaning and maintenance. Additional accessories are available to enhance the Home Cage system. Please specify the number of cages required when requesting a quote.
Director of Science · ConductScience
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| Mouse |
| Default acrylic cage dimensions: 20 x 25 x 20 cm (Length x Width x Height) with acrylic or mesh lid |
| Customizable dimensions available |
| Includes water bottle (plastic and stainless steel spout) and feeder |
| Ventilation system with 50 air changes per hour |
| Environmental sensors for temperature (sensitivity 0.1°C); humidity (±5% RH at 20°C); gaseous by-products ammonia; carbon monoxide; methane and sulfur dioxide (minimum sensitivity of 2 ppm) |
| Camera mount |
| Optional: Photo array tracking |
| Optional: Camera and video tracking software and hardware for 24/7 monitoring |
| Easy assembly/de-assembly for cleaning |
| Rat |
| Cage dimensions: 32 x 40 x 32 cm(Length x Width x Height) with acrylic or mesh lid |
| Customizable dimensions available |
| Includes water bottle (plastic and stainless steel spout) and feeder |
| Ventilation system with 50 air changes per hour |
| Environmental sensors for temperature (sensitivity 0.1°C); humidity (±5% RH at 20°C); gaseous by-products ammonia; carbon monoxide; methane and sulfur dioxide (minimum sensitivity of 2 ppm) |
| Camera mount |
| Optional: Photo array tracking |
| Optional: Camera and video tracking software and hardware for 24/7 monitoring |
| Easy assembly/de-assembly for cleaning |
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| Measurement | Mouse | Rat |
|---|---|---|
| Size | Default acrylic cage dimensions: 30 x 30 x 30 cm (Length x Width x Height) | Default acrylic cage dimensions: 40 x 40 x 40 cm (Length x Width x Height) |
| Model | Size | SKU | Listed price | Status | Shipping box |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mouse | Default acrylic cage dimensions: 30 x 30 x 30 cm (Length x Width x Height) | CS-958366 | $4,999.00 | Available | 65.0 x 36.0 x 27.0 cm |
| Rat | Default acrylic cage dimensions: 40 x 40 x 40 cm (Length x Width x Height) | CS-958366 | $9,900.00 | Available | 65.0 x 36.0 x 27.0 cm |
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 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 can be monitored for temperature, food and water levels, O2, and carbon monoxide.
Multiple cage systems can be set up on our rack system (maximum 72 cages per rack). Each cage can include a video camera and mount to monitor each cache 24/7 capture and/ or analyze the animal activities and generate animal health alerts.
Additional accessories are available for our cage system include enrichment apparatus such as activity wheels.
Infrared photo arrays can be installed into each home cage to monitor the following parameters:
Specifications:
Customizable to your research needs, our ConductVision software tracks and analyzes multiple subjects at once for a wide range of behaviors without the need to tag or mark.
Allowing the user to track the following:
Option 1: Direct Access to Server
▪ The user can login to a lab computer and view 24/7 monitoring
▪ Users can also access the computer remotely (from home for example) via a VPN.
Option 2: Browser-Based Access
▪ Results are streamed to a cloud-based server (Eg. AWS), where the user can visualize results
Option 3: Cloud-Based Access
▪ If the user would like to use a Cloud-hosted computer, the protocols and results can be shipped
from the local server to the cloud-server.
▪ The software can be deployed on the cloud-hosted server and the user can view the results on
the cloud computer
▪ It is also possible that a direct connectivity between the cages and a cloud-hosted server allows
for direct integration without intermediary systems
The following research fields can be observed using the Automated Home Cage:
Please request additional accessories when requesting a quote
The Automated Home Cage system allows for the following:
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
Learn how your lab can tech transfer this and similar devices from your lab to industry.
From the Maze Engineers documentation for this apparatus.
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ConductVision is our video-tracking software. Record your sessions on video, and it reports the measures listed below.
Needs the Advanced Rodent Module.
Seizure Detection: How it scores this testThe Advanced Rodent Module is an add-on to the ConductVision license.
A 5-year license is $3,990 in total.
The Advanced Rodent Module runs on this license. On its own, the license scores standard tests such as the open field, the elevated plus maze, the Y-maze and the Morris water maze. Results export as CSV files.
A 5-year module license is $3,990 in total, the same as the 5-year base license.
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