You have no idea how much it costs to keep a mouse colony fed, taken care of, given veterinary care, etc... and then there's the breeding and genotyping, and tr

You have no idea how much it costs to keep a mouse colony fed, taken care of, given veterinary care, etc... and then there's the breeding and genotyping, and treatments. And if they die, you need a pathology report. Mice get expensive fast. These are usually very well engineered mice strains that cost a lot of money just to develop in and of themselves. And that doesn't even cover their plans for world domination. Here's a link to Ohio State's per diem fee for mice: http://ular.osu.edu/rates-and-fees/ http://ular.osu.edu/rates-and-fees/ (It's around $1/day per cage there) I think you can house up to 5 mice in a cage, and it wouldn't be uncommon for a reasonably sized lab to have a colony of around 200-300 mice. So you'd have maybe 75-100 cages (males you house at a lower rate). So your daily rate at OSU is on the order of $75-100. At other institutions, it can cost as much as $1 per mouse. And this is just for housing them. You start getting to real money, real fast.