Our objectives are to maintain high quality in the University's Animal Resource program and promote biomedical research. To meet these objectives we propose fourteen improvement in the Animal Resource. 1. Replace substandard lighting fixtures in animal housing rooms with fixtures that meet the standards in the """"""""Guide"""""""". 2. Renovate animal roof floors and ceiling to provide surfaces that are smooth, moisture proof, nonabsorbent and easily sanitizable. 3. Seal animal room windows in order to obtain better control of the animal room environment. 4. Replace deteriorating animal room sinks. 5. Renovate animal room drains in order to provide functional drains that can be adequately sanitized. 6. Provide adequate ventilation and temperature control in the Biocontainment Facility in the animal Research Facility. 7. House primates, rabbits and mice in cages that meet the cage size criteria in the """"""""Guide"""""""". Small cages will be replaced with cages that meet these criteria. 8. Provide individual wire floored mouse housing cages for studies that require individual housing but without exposing the animals to bedding material. 9. Provide elevated livestock feeders that will permit sheep to be fed off the floor. 10. Provide a tunnel cage washer for the central cage washing area in Medical Science Building II. 11. Replace an inefficient and ineffective cage rack washer in the cage washing area in Medical Science Building II. 12. Replace nonfunctional portable high pressure washers used to clean animal housing rooms. 13. Replace a nonfunctional large animal scale and provide large animal scales in new animal facilities where large animal use is heavy. 14. Provide biological safety cabinets for housing animals in a shared biocontainment facility. These improvements will benefit animal research projects totalling about $53 million, and will add to the substantial improvements the University already has made to upgrade the Animal Resource, and which have cost more than $2.042 million over the past 10 years.
