IAT Congress 2025 -- The 3Rs principles include reducing the number of animals used in research, replacing animals with valid scientific alternatives, and refining research and testing methods to improve animal welfare. Over recent years, food consumption patterns in laboratory beagle dogs have seen a transformation by which dogs have become food grazers, this being the consequence of ad-libitum provision of food at breeding establishments.​ Whilst ad-libitum feeding regimes suit breeding establishment routines, they are not always practical at research establishments, due to study requirements of feeding at specific time points in relation to dosing times​. Due to the above-mentioned feeding regime differences at breeding vs. research establishments, dogs may need long acclimatisation times to adjust to timed feeding when transferred from breeding to research premises. In this context, there seems to be a directly proportional relation between acclimatisation duration and dogs’ age at time of transferring.​ Longer acclimatisation times might lead to study start delays in cases of low food intake and subsequent loss of body weight and body condition. Group feeding has the potential to improve welfare, meet nutritional needs and address behavioural issues due to reduced separation times, when compared to single feeding regimes.

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