Commonly Used Terms
Care Days – Is the number of care days CCM provided during the month which is equal to the number of cages times the number of days in the month. For example, if you were charged 30 care days in September, it could mean one of the following:
a) You had 1 cage during the entire 30 days in September; or
b) You had 30 cages for only 1 day each in September; or
c) You had different numbers of cages at various times during September that totaled 30 care days; (e.g., 5 cages for 3 days each + 1 cage for 5 days + another 1 cage for 10 days).
Export Fee - Found on the Special Services section of your bill, this fee is for administrative and animal health technician time spent to process your export. You will also see a separate charge for the actual shipping costs of your export in the Special Services section. Similar to animal vendor delivery charges for animal orders, CCM charges you whatever the vendor charges to ship your export.
Holding Protocol Charges - When animals are in an inactive or expired protocol with no renewal protocol or other current protocol to which they could be transferred, and the animals await transfer to a valid protocol, they are kept in CCM’s "holding protocol". During this period, no research can be performed on the animals; only standard care and separation, can occur.
Using grant funds to pay for these charges would be a violation of regulatory funding requirements. CCM can only charge a non-grant account; i.e., a departmental account, gift account or endowment account.
Housing Rates – Please refer to Per Diem and Special Service rates for a full list of the various housing rates.
Select examples that you may find on the protocol bill are:
- "Mouse, Containment" - If a mouse cage is housed in a containment room, the "Mouse, Containment" rate is charged.
- "Mouse, Diabetic" - If a mouse cage contains diabetic mice which require additional husbandry upkeep such as more frequent cage changes, the “Mouse, Diabetic” rate is charged.
- Satellite with PI Care - CCM provides caging, feed and bedding. The PI/lab is responsible for keeping the rooms clean, changing the cages/bedding, performing daily checks, and monitoring general room conditions such as maintaining proper temperature and humidity. As a fee for service CCM can deliver and remove caging and equipment as requested.
- Decentralized with CCM Care Rate - CCM provides both husbandry supplies and service. In short, CCM provides husbandry care for the animals as if they were in the vivarium.
Quarantine Fee - A one-time fee after your imported animals are released from quarantine. The fee covers cost of the sentinel mice, 6-8 weeks of per diem on the sentinel mice, standard pinworm and mite treatments on imported mice, cost to ship the sentinel mice out for testing, actual testing costs, and the veterinary, animal health technician and administrative time it took to complete the quarantine process.
Separation Charge - Charge applied for each cage generated when CCM Animal Care Technicians perform separations or weanings due to unresolved overcrowding. For definitions of overcrowding and the process for identifying and resolving overcrowded mouse cages, see.
- IACUC - Mouse Breeding and Housing Density Policy
- CCM SOP - Managing Overcrowded Mouse Cages
Surcharge (procurement fee) – Service fee charged by CCM to place your animal order. This column will always show $0 for per diem charges as it only applies to animal orders and special services.
Surgery Billing Fee - Fee is for each use of the surgery suite whether you perform one surgery on one animal or separate surgery on multiple animals.