Feeding Experimentation Device

Aug 8, 2016

Feeding Experimentation Device (FED) is a home cage-compatible feeding system that measures food intake with high accuracy and temporal resolution. FED offers a low-cost alternative (~$350) to commercial feeders, with the convenience of use in tradition colony rack caging.

In their 2016 paper, “Feeding Experimentation Device (FED): A flexible open-source device for measuring feeding behavior,” Katrina P. Nguyen, Timothy J. O’Neal, Olurotimi A. Bolonduro, Elecia White, and Alexxai V. Kravitz validate the reliability of food delivery and precise measurement of feeding behavior provided by FED, as well as, demonstrate the application of FED in an experiment examining light and dark-cycle feeding trends, and another measuring optogenetically-evoked feeding.

FED Wiki (via Github)

Find build instructions and power considerations on the FED Wiki page

Read the paper

Feeding Experimentation Device (FED): A flexible open-source device for measuring feeding behavior

Github

KravitzLab has shared the Arduino scripts for controlling FED, as well as, the python code used to analyze the feeding data collected by FED on the KravitzLab Github.