Around 2010, I wrote Critter4Us, an animal reservation system for the Agricultural Animal Care and Use Program located at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. I did this to please my wife, who was in charge of that program at the time. It was a somewhat amateurish system - it was my first ever web application - but it continued to be used through 2019. Toward the end of that year, I decided to write a better system, intending to open it up to other universities. Like the original, it would be free, because (1) my wife has been a professor of veterinary medicine for many years, so I feel affection for vet schools, (2) I'm (mostly) retired and everyone needs a hobby, right?

This is that better system.

Since I started, new management at the University of Illinois has decided they prefer an internally-developed system that will "link with several other programs and security features that the university already has in place." As a result, I'm slowing development on this version until I see if any other vet school is interested.

Features

• The system lets professors or administrators reserve teaching animals - much as they would reserve a meeting room.
• The system can prevent reservations that would violate animal care guidelines.
• It also provides audit reports that show guidelines have been followed. They can be used during, for example, USDA inspections.
• The specific guidelines enforced are how often a particular procedure can be demonstrated on a particular animal. In the original Critter4Us, for example, paravertebral anesthesia could be demonstrated on a bovine only once every two weeks.
• The new system is being defined to be flexible. For example, sometimes professors use animals and only mention that after the fact. (Professors not following the rules? Who would have thought it!) So reservations can be created retroactively.
• The original system didn't have the notion of who gets billed for particular uses of particular animals. The new one doesn't either, but I expect I'll add it.
• Many reports, like "all the IV injections that were performed last month" or "all the procedures performed on a given animal last month", are easy to add on demand.

Sample pages

I've tried to make the new version have the features of modern web apps (like scaling down nicely to fit on a phone screen).

Here's a form you'd use to mark an animal as out of service: