Per Diem Budget Calculator

Every day an animal is housed in a research vivarium, the institution incurs real costs: labor for husbandry technicians, bedding and feed, facility utilities, cage washing, veterinary oversight, and compliance overhead. To recover these expenses, core vivarium facilities charge a per diem rate — a flat daily fee applied to each occupied cage or each individual animal, depending on the billing model.

Per diem charges can represent the largest single line item in a preclinical study budget, yet they are often underestimated in grant applications because researchers forget to account for acclimation periods, breeding cages that run for most of the year, or cohorts that finish later than planned. A transparent, cohort-by-cohort estimate produced before submission avoids costly budget revisions or no-cost extensions.

Many institutions also apply animal acquisition costs — one-time purchase, shipping, and quarantine fees charged when animals first arrive. This calculator lets you add an acquisition cost per animal so your grand total reflects the true first-year outlay. When you are billing per cage, you can specify how many animals are in each cage to compute acquisition costs accurately.