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Diet: Irradiated Rat and Mouse Cubes

A fixed formulation diet for Laboratory Rats and Mice fortified with vitamins and minerals to meet the requirements of breeding animals.

  • This diet has identical specifications to our autoclavable standard Rat and Mouse ration.
  • The diet is vacuum packed in three layers of packaging, the first layer being a paper liner followed by two separate layers of low oxygen permeability plastic. The bags are packed in an outer cardboard box then irradiated at 25KGy. The irradiation operation has an extensive quality control process to ensure each carton has received the required dose.
  • Spot samples of cartons are routinely checked to ascertain sterility.
  • All nutritional parameters of this diet meet or exceed the NRC guidelines for Rats and Mice.
  • The diet has been designed as a general ration for breeding and early growth in all rat and mouse strains. The total fat content has been deliberately kept low at around 5%, to maximize the long term breeding performance of most strains.
  • The formulation is designed to be fed ad-lib to rodents of all ages. There is some indication that growth performance in a minority of strains can be improved by increasing dietary energy (fat content). BalbC mice, DA rats and some of the modified strains appear to be most susceptible to this problem. Please contact us if you are concerned about this issue.
  • Mammalian meals have been excluded from the diet, however the diet does contain fish meal. We have formulated totally vegetarian diets, and maintained colonies for some time on these diets. Please contact us if you require such a diet.
  • The feed is manufactured in a cylindrical form with a diameter of around 12 mm, length is variable from 10 mm to 30 mm. We have found that this form is ideal for overhead hopper feeding, maximizing the ease of handling whilst minimizing fines formation and the risk of bridging in the feed hopper. Pellet strength has been kept lower than conventional pelletised diets. While this leads to a slight increase in transit and storage damage to the diet (fines generation), we have found that juvenile mice often have a lower feed intake on harder pellets.

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