"Any rapid or rough movement is apt to alarm animals, in the management of which the first principle is that all movements should be carried out slowly, gently and with sudden jerks .. By far the commonest cause of being bitten is fear of the animals and handling them roughly. The fact that a mouse is lively does not mean that it will bite. A little while ago one of us gave some rather lively young mice away. We were informed that they were quite unmanageable and could not be held for injection; previously they had frequently been handled by a very junior technician who had been taught to hold them properly. Mice should be lifted by the tail; sometimes they will hang quite quietly, at other times they will curl round and crawl on to the hand. It is when the latter happens that a lot of people think they are going to be bitten and consequently are bitten. The mouse should be allowed to crawl in the palm of the hand; the only trouble that is likely to occur is that it may be reluctant to leave it"
UFAW (1947, pp. 158–9)

The_Box_Back_1

"A design of cage which has proved of great value in controlled feeding experiments is illustrated, with part of the lid removed ... The mouse feeds from the cup after advancing along the horizontal cylinder extending from the cage. This extension is not sufficiently wide to enable the mouse to turn round. Hence contamination of the food through faeces is avoided, while scattering also is overcome."

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Oldest cages were not standardised and adapted ad hoc, and in some facilities – especially those on a tight budget – unusual solutions were used into the postwar years, such as wooden boxes or even biscuit tins. Wooden boxes provided a softer environment for the mice and people working with them, but could not be easily washed or sterilised, and mice could gnaw through them. Even as cages became standardised and commercially produced, local solutions still had to be found for special experimental designs, keeping new mice in quarantine, or shipping them across sites.

The_Box_Front_1

Most of our mouse colony ... was in biscuit tins, and we fed them mash, you know, it was those days. And come to [pharmaceutical company], you see plastic cages, that could be autoclaved, that could be cleaned, you didn’t have to dip them in a Lysol tank and risk losing the skin on your fingers and things like that. So it was more sophisticated. The care was there but as I say it was… there was more time per animal per person

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From the outset, animal carers recognised trade-offs in how the cage environment shaped mouse behaviour vs. needs for disease control vs. scientific requirements:
"The animals' need for light or darkness is important. for example, mice are better housed in boxes... particularly when breeding ... Ventilation should provide no difficulty, but deep boxes in which air can become stagnant and condensation of moisture occurs are to be avoided. Draughts should never be tolerated, these and other serious fluctuations of temperature from other causes, may give rise to much trouble, even precipitating an outbreak of infection. In the matter of hygiene the instinctive habits of the animal have a bearing on cage design. So have the diseases which are especially likely to be encouraged by bad hygiene. [Mice] urinate and defecate indiscriminately, keeping clean only the nest."

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"Mice are small animals and very many can be kept in a small space - a condition that is particularly conducive to the outbreak of epidemic disease, so that it is advisable to break the colony up into a number of small units, which are housed in separate small rooms. These rooms should be more or less self contained, and organised so that, should an outbreak occur, that room can be effectively isolated from the rest."
UFAW (1957), p. 244

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"The caging of laboratory animals is a subject upon which every working in this field feels qualified to hold an opinion of practical value, for in no other way is it possible to explain the extraordinary - and to a large extent most unprofitable - variety of cages in use today. Too many laboratories have developed and had constructed cages of their own design, without reference to others doing comparable work ... Often an imperfect appreciation of the principles involved has resulted in an inefficient and unnecessarily expensive cage."
"Mouse cage designs are numerous, ever-changing, and more or less unstandardized. Every colony is likely to use its own standard design and to consider it just as good as any other."
UFAW (1957), pp. 26, 245.

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"As soon as a litter is born the date with the number of young is entered on the mother's record. At the time of weaning the sexes are determined and each mouse is given an identity number and receives a distinguishing ear mark. The identity number of each individual mouse is entered on the records, is written on the box label, and accompanies the mouse throughout life... Each box is inspected daily when the food is given, and any sick mice are reported"
 UFAW (1947), p. 158

The Box

Can improvisation lead to standardisation?

Mice in biscuit tins