My first ASF litter :))

well one of my girls finally had her litter last night. im guessing shes fairly old, because she only had 4. the funny thing is, i thought my other female was the one expecting, but maybe she is too. anyway, heres some pics. oh and when i go in and check on them should i usually see the mom on them? cuz most of the time i dont., but she will run over and get on them if i get to close.

the mom is the gray and white one, the other females the black and white one, and the little albino is a soon to be dad.

http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/9...ly11908xu2.jpg http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/a...pg/1/w1920.png

http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/1...es11908aj3.jpg http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/a...pg/1/w1920.png

*In best Napoleon Dynamite voice* LUCKY!

I had ASFs for a while and they apparently thought that reproducing was a dumb idea :weirdface lol. I wound up just feeding them off but now my rats are producing on a pretty regular schedule so we don't really need ASFs anymore.

BTW don't they just have the ugliest looking babies? :rolleye2:

Nice job!! I just checked my first trio of ASFs and it looks like one of my females is pregnant! So hopefully soon I'll be joining you in having a first litter of babes!

I wouldnt say shes old, I had a female who gave me a litter of four a month ago, walked in yesterday and she had a litter of 19 under her

Yeah I wouldn't say she's old either. Two of mine have had very small first litters and then gone on to have 15+ litters. Also, I have seen a couple of mine eat some of their first litter....so there may have been more at first. I've only really seen baby eating with the first litters though, so I wouldn't worry too much!

anendeloflorien-All of my breeding groups were thee to four months old before they started producing, so maybe you didn't wait long enough.

oh alright thats good to know.

how old should my male before hes ready to breed??

just a little update..

well they will be exactly a month old right now practically to the hour :). and are already almost half the size of my current adults. im lame and keept up with their weights just cuz i think its interesting on how fast they grow, and they have doubled their weight in a week, its ridiculous lol.

i actually ended up loosing one of them a few days after they were born. guessing he was eatin, but i didnt find any blood or anything at all ;p.

i sexed them and ive got two males and a female. so now ive got 3.3.

im goin to start makin a rat rack tomorrow that will house 6 tubs.

the first tub will have my current 1.2 adults and the weanling female so ill have a 1.3 colony.

so then ill have the two weanling males to raise up as my two other male breeders. i want to get 6 more females to pair with them and have two more 1.3 tub colonies. so i guess i should keep the two young males in with the colony until the new females that come along are weaned and the males already know them so once i put them in with their new 1.3 groupings they wont fight.

then for two more of the tubs i plan on using one for weaned males, and one for weaned females. all to be raised up for feeders.

then the 6th tub ill use to put each colony in when im cleaning the rack.



so you guys think this sounds like a good plan? if not, for the set up i plan on using, how many tubs should i have??

Sounds good man! My ASF babies are 2 and a half weeks now, and my second female dropped her first litter yesterday! The older ones just started opening their eyes tonight. What did you feed your weanlings to make them grow so quickly? Mine are walking around on their own but they're so small! I need to get them bigger!

ive just been feeding them the lab block that the adults eat. some people say its to big for weanlings and say feeding them mixed bird seed and such is a good idea, but my guys haven't had a problem with it.

and just wait, they will color up and grow like crazy in the next few weeks. mine were just like that too. i actually got a little discouraged because i figured if they were growing so slow it was goin to take forever for me to get a good feeding colony goin and then i didnt check on them at all for about a weekk.. and then bam! they were huge lol

oh and how do you guys know when your females are preggo? i know its kind of a stupid question, but the litter i had a moth ago came from a female that was already pregnant when i got her. and she didnt seem to be much different than the other one. seeing that she only had a little of 4 probably had something to do with it too though.

so do they really swell up about 15 or so day in or what?

and should they gain some noticeable weight? cuz like i said im lame and keep up with there weights since i only have a few right now ;p