The Desert Woodrat: A Laboratory Colony

The success of laboratory or simulated epizoological studies and related research involving native mammals may be dependent upon an assured supply of the species being studied. If the research is purely bacteriological in nature, then it is often required that the animals be reared under standard conditions and have a known pedigree—preferably at least second or third generation laboratory-reared stock. After two years of study (1953–55), a breeding colony of desert woodrats, Neotoma lepida lepida Thomas, was established in the Faunal Colony of Ecological Research, University of Utah, at Dugway, Utah. Testing the practicability of this species as a laboratory animal was part of a program designed to examine the mass rearing possibilities in the laboratory of several rodents native to the western Utah desert. Bushy-tailed woodrats, Neotoma cinerea acraia (Elliot), also were reared but on a much smaller scale. This paper reports methods used to produce more than 200...