Recently, I was doing a food intake study. I single-caged mice and measured food consuming each day. Some mice grind food into powder, which causes an inaccurate meaurement. I put a wooden block in each cage, it seem better but mice still grind food. Anybody has some simple solutions?
Did you consider using different types of feeding troughs to find the one with minimal spillage/grinding?
I have had similar issues when doing diet studies with ground squirrels. To eliminate the problem, we soak a weighed amount of rodent chow in water and place this into a bowl in the cage. The animals really like the soft chow (typically eat it all) and none is lost to the grinding. If any is left in the bowl it can be accounted for by drying it down and weighing the remainder.
Good Luck!
Loren
Hard to do this accurately but you can buy/make dishes which have small holes in which allows the animal to stick its nose to gain access to the food. If you sit this in a dish it is possible but I would try soaking it as above, my mice love the soft mash. Good luck
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