Chocolate Crispies for FED3!

[Chantelle Leigh Murrell]

Hi all, 

We have been trying to find pellets that; induce weight gain in mice, are preferred in a preference test and mice will still work for when on High fat diet. Many high fat solutions do not work because they are too crumbly for the FED3 or the mice do not prefer the pellets over the chow. 

We have however found that these chocolate crispies work great in the FED3 device! (These chocolate crispies are however not a complete diet we have seen mice tend to drop weight after a week if this is their only food source. So we recommend using them for short durations or with chow for longer durations) 

We performed a test to determine preference of the chocolate pellets when the cost is equal to chow and when the cost is greater than chow. To do this we used 2 FEDs one with chow at FR1 the entire time and one with chocolate firstly at FR1 for 2 days then on FR5 for 4 days.  Mice prefer the chocolate when it is at the same cost as chow (FR1) and when it is more expensive than chow (FR5). 

We will also be testing weight gain on these pellets in the future!