University lab animals remain healthy, well-fed despite budget cuts

By: DALLAS DUNCAN

Posted: 4/8/09

Research budgets are tightening with increasing competition for grants, but the University is keeping its lab animals healthy and well-fed.

The budget cuts "haven't really affected" the University's research animals - which consist of 90 percent mice and rats, said Christopher King, assistant vice president for research. He said rising competition for funding has made the last few years "flat" for research.

For the University's poultry science department, however, "more [research] is going on now than in recent years," said Michael Lacy, department head.

"Obviously, the decrease in budgets has affected all animals," Lacy said in a phone interview. "We have one of the very best poultry research units in the country, but it does take money for maintenance and renovation."

Lacy said one of the biggest effects on his department's research was the rising cost of corn and soybean meal, which are typical ingredients in poultry diets. The price "went out of sight in late 2008, early 2009," Lacy said.

Keith Bertrand, animal and dairy science department head, said his department's "farm managers and the feed mill operator have been doing a great job of making sure our animals are well-fed and content" despite the economy.

Ashley Rich-Robertson, a marine sciences lab assistant, said she does not think "funding is affecting the well-being of [the] research." Rich-Robertson works with a variety of worms, snails and nematodes in the lab on "manipulation plot" projects funded by the Environmental Protection Agency.

She said her lab was "very fortunate" because the marine invertebrates she works with do not need to be fed and are "perfectly happy to live in the dirt we collect them in."

The grant for the marine science lab's research was "secured before the economy went downhill," she said in a phone interview Sunday.

Dorothy Fragaszy, professor of psychology, works with capuchin monkeys outside the lab. Beside undergoing tests and projects related to behavior, cognitive function and social interaction, these "21st century monkeys" are teaching tools, participating "in classrooms through a video link," Fragaszy said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Fragaszy said budget cuts "would never affect our ability to feed the animals" due to the University's standards.

"If I could give [the animals] a natural environment, I would," she said. Fragaszy had not heard of any changes in her lab, but "we don't know what's going to happen in the next fiscal year," she said.

King said despite the financial crisis, things could finally be looking up on the research front with the new, "more research-friendly" presidential administration.

Bertrand said the animal and dairy science faculty "have also come forward and helped with some of the expenses at the farm by providing some grant funds to help the department through these tough times."