Control Group FED ad libitum?

[Winston Li]

Hello,

I am trying to save the lab some money and was thinking that between my two groups of mice, Time Restricted Feeding vs ad libitum feeding, that I could just 3D print the FED3 shell and not add any electronics/moving parts to it. These shells would serve as the food hopper given to the mice in ad libitum feeding regimens, with the shape of the FED3 and way of mouse feeding then being equalized across mice cages.

Has anyone had success with using this method, or forseen any issues that may arise from this? Or does everyone use additional fully functioning FED3 units programmed still for their control groups?

- WL

[Lex]

Hi Winston,

I love the idea of saving money by 3D printing dummy FED3s!  Do you expect the dummy FEDs to still dispense pellets?  If so you'll need to include a battery, stepper motor, microcontroller, and also a sensor for the pellets.  It could be done but you'd be halfway to re-creating FED3.  If you just want to modify the FED3 print to store regular food pellets inside you can do that - it was designed in TinkerCAD and the editable files are here.  

For Time restricted feeding, my lab designed a different device called "TumbleFeeder" that holds normal chow pellets in a tumbler that can open/close to grant access.  We used it in this paper and I know other groups are using it for time restricted feeding. I actually think it's a better solution than FED3 for this application, especially if you plan to run a study that lasts weeks or months.  Feel free to reach out to me offline at my wustl email if you want to learn more about this.  

Have fun! 

-Lex

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