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Try it first

Ten minutes on a practice rack: make a cage, add mice, record a litter, and watch the weaning date appear. Then throw it away.

Before you move a real colony in, it is worth seeing the whole loop once on records that do not matter. Everything below is made in your own lab and deleted at the end, so nothing you do here can spoil anything. If a step does not look like this page says, that is worth telling us — the guide is meant to match the app.

1. A practice rack

1. Open Mouse in the sidebar, then the Cages tab.
2. Rack grid → New rack. Call it Practice, 2 rows by 3 columns, and save.

An empty grid of six positions appears, labelled the way you chose — the same grid every rack in the lab uses.

2. A cage with mice in it

1. New cage. Put it in the Practice rack at the first position, and set Purpose to Breeding.
2. Open the cage and add two mice: one female, one male. Give them any genotype you like.

The cage shows 2 mice, and its card sits in the first square of the rack. The mice are yours: your name is on them.

3. A litter, and the dates that follow

1. On the cage, press Litter born and keep today's date.
2. Press Record the litter.

BioManager says Recorded a litter born today in cage … : weaning is due … — three weeks out. You did not work that date out, and neither will anyone else in the lab. Open Home and the calendar: the weaning is waiting there on the day it is due, in both places, because they are the same list.

4. Throw it away

1. Open Settings → History and Undo what you just made, newest first.
2. Anything left: delete the mice, then the cage, then the rack in Rack grid.

The colony is empty again and ready for your real records. Nothing was sent anywhere while you did this — see Your data and backups.

Next: Bring your lab in moves your real records across, and Coming from Excel explains what changes when a sheet becomes a database.