lots of death..

I have been breeding ASF's for a few months now very successfully. Today I went to check on them and 2 adults are dead and all the weanlings were torn to shreds. The only thing that has changed was I haven't been checking them every day as usual however they have a constant supply of food and water. They were not even overcrowded.

Any ideas? Is there a chance of some sort of sickness?

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Originally Posted by Somed00d

I have been breeding ASF's for a few months now very successfully. Today I went to check on them and 2 adults are dead and all the weanlings were torn to shreds. The only thing that has changed was I haven't been checking them every day as usual however they have a constant supply of food and water. They were not even overcrowded.

Any ideas? Is there a chance of some sort of sickness?

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I had this happen some time ago. I had a group of about 8 adult breeders in the same tank. Two litters on the ground and another two were about to deliver. I am assuming that the pregnant females killed the weanlings because they were the only females left and the other females were dead. I also assume it was the pregnant females because normally, I find when a baby is killed, it's usually culled by the mom who consumes it completely.
I thinned out my colonies and never had it happen again. I only keep 2 breeder females and 1 male together. Once babies are weaned, I remove them. I am not saying this happens all the time, but this is from my own personal experience.
I can only imagine it was from overcrowding but I could be wrong.

had this happen in my weaner bin,don't know why it happened but who knows.I guess they go crazy sometimes just like humans.

temperature drop?

I had this happen all the time. I finally got fed up with feeding all the weaners and the adults for weeks only to lose them....I fed off all of my ASF's..I'm talking around 100 of them......I have about 4 left waiting to be fed off.......I'm done with them.

woah, do mice and normal rats do this as well?

I cull any females that seem to be trying to take the "Alpha" position (yeah, I know they are supposed to be there, but they usually disrupt the colony if they aren't good Alphas).

Then I add fat to the diet of all the breeding females. *I am a meat eater, so I just give them the scraps and the fat on top of their regular Mazuri..etc.

I haven't had any "eating" in my established colony...but I had to feed them off when it appeared that they were coming down with something (flu)...I am starting a new colony now and going through the same process.

In fact, I caught one female eating a kit directly from her womb..no it was not afterbirth, and promptly fed her off, did not even wait for the rest of the kits to be born lest she do it again. Following my process, I now have a nice colony and some fresh kits that are thriving and I keep all the breeders supplied with fat (fresh fat..real fat).

I had this happen when my water bottle stopped working. If the ball doesn't drop all the way down then they may not be getting water.