Cage Density Metrics

How to Measure your Room Cage Density

Published November 2005 Normalize metrics for rooms with different rack heights.

To normalize cage density metrics for rooms with different heights of racks, consider using the metric of "cages/shelf/room square foot" (developed by Jack Hessler and used for an NCI facility analysis) for your measure of room cage-density. This metric normalizes the standard cages per square foot for different rack heights in rooms. Thus, a density of 2.0 cages per square foot in a room containing 8-high racks, would be .25 cages/shelf/sq-ft (2.0/8), and a density of 2.0 cages per square foot in a room containing 10-high racks would be .2 cages/shelf/sq-ft.

- From Tradeline's Animal Research Facilities 2005 Conference