Rodent Models Breeding Core

The ACS breeding service saves you time, money, and covers all aspects of managing your mouse or rat colonies. We can breed, maintain, and transfer your experimental models anywhere on campus to you as needed (transfers from the breeding colony to an on-campus location are included at no cost). No project is too small or simple; no project is too large or complex.

Key Benefits

• ACS breeding managers have 25+ years of combined experience in rodent colony management.
• Each colony manager is assigned to a specific lab which works with lab staff to effectively and efficiently handle all of your colonies experimental needs and timelines.
• Experienced with many genetic configurations such as Wild, heterozygous, homozygous, have developed/crossed strains with up to 6 genes of interest, Cre/flox, X and Y linked genes, fixing lines when het vs. hom cannot be determined.
• Restricted access area with dedicated ACS personnel only, which reduces traffic in the area and helps with successfully breeding more difficult and fragile strains and further helps prevent the introduction of pathogens.
• Access to our online rodent database which assigns every mouse or rat a unique ID number for easy identification and tracking, also shows current live and all past inventory, current and past weaning and mating records, all genotyping results submitted for each colony, new litters born, mating pair history, the ability to track lineage, the ability to easily transfer your experimental models to other areas, and the ability to export information to excel for each individual rodent colony.
• Access to our in-house breeding colony of The Jackson Laboratories C57BL/6J mice (Stock Number: 000664; https://jaxmice.jax.org/strain/000664.html). Breeding stock is replenished at least every 5th generation with new mice from JAX. Save on shipping costs from JAX!
• Free on-campus transfers of your colonies when ordered 48 hours in advance.
• Two locations are available for PCR samples/snips pick-up; the Cancer and Genetics Building or at the ACS Diagnostic Lab at Communicore.
• Voluntary enrollment in our quality control program to periodically verify genotypes of homozygous colonies at no cost.

Services Offered

• Breeding
• Weaning
• Timed pregnancy
• Blood collection
• Weigh litters
• Euthanasia
• Diabetic testing
• Special water and feed administering
• Tail biopsy with online submission forms so you can easily maintain records
• Ear notching, ear tagging, and tattooing methods for identification
• Sperm cryopreservation collected from two of your genetically engineered male mice. Session fee includes one quality control, which includes thawing frozen sperm and observing for viability and motility. If any quality control fails (majority of sperm non-viable or non-motile) for a given session, one new session is performed at no extra charge.
• Remove Helicobacter and Norovirus from mouse colonies to be able to move them to a higher health status room.

For Breeding Colony Services contact ACS-Breeding@acs.ufl.edu