animal database / management system

[gringer]

I've been asked to investigate an animal inventory system / database for our lab, and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions around this. To start with, this system would be used for tracking animal inventories and answering queries (e.g. what cages have adult animals in them that are currently flagged for use in the eggshell exposure experiment). It would be nice if the system could be adapted to encompass more of the everyday lab information (e.g. equipment registers), avoiding the need for multiple bits of software that do the same sort of things.

One system that seems interesting to me (and might fit these needs) is Bika. Does anyone have any experience with it, or warnings about it?

http://www.bikalabs.com/

[dpryan]

Our institute has been using Mausoleum for the past ~4 years. That's nice in that it allows for multiple groups and caretakers not in the same geographic location to have different amounts of access on different subsets of mice. It can also incorporate things like animal usage permit numbers so you can track all of that more easily. It's written in Java, so it runs on anyone's computer. It has some clunky parts, but it seems to work very well overall.

I should note that it wouldn't work for tracking other equipment. Frankly, tracking mice (and other animals) can get complicated enough across multiple sites.