Which is less gross to breed?

I have never fed or bred ASFs and don't intend to, because I don't think too many people would want to buy a snake that only wanted to eat those. I have bred both rats and mice, and I guess I am the oddball here who is going to tell you that mice are actually easier and nicer to keep than rats. I actually got out of the rat breeding thing, because my family was complaining about how bad the rats smelled and how much time I was always spending on feeding and cleaning up after them, as well as the large amount of space their cages were taking up in the garage. I finally realized that I didn't actually need the rats, though, because both the ball pythons and colubrids I breed start feeding better on mice anyway. And most ball pythons can be switched to frozen / thawed (which I prefer feeding) or will be sold off by the time they are big enough that they really need to be switched to food that is bigger than adult mice.

With the way I am keeping my mice currently, there really isn't any bad smell at all. First of all, I only keep one adult male mouse. Males are known to have stinky urine, and I think that having only one big male is why my mice don't smell bad. My one big male mouse lives in the main big cage with all of the females that don't currently have babies. Obviously pregnant females get moved to their own breeder rack cages, where they stay until their babies are all fed off or to weanling size. In the big main cage I always place a dish full of substrate (I use aspen shavings) in the corner of the cage, and the mice will use that dish to urinate in, like a litter box. It's super easy to just replace the "toilet dish" when the substrate inside is getting pretty saturated with urine, and then I don't have to clean the cage any more than every two weeks.

When I used to keep rats, I tried setting up dishes with substrate to be litter boxes, and they wouldn't use them at all. They just peed everywhere, and it got stinky fast, even if I only had one big male. No more live rats for me! Buying rats frozen is so much nicer!

Rats by far! I've bred all three and prefer rats over them all. ASFs just suck. They chew like crazy and waste food. I think they stink because they waste so much food and pee all over it. Mice are terrible creatures, but I unfortunately breed a couple tanks of those because I need the babies for the sand boas and I have one mouse feeder BP. Just having 5-6 mice makes the entire room stink.

I can't stand mice or their smell. If I run out of feeders or need to buy some, I go to the pet store and feed them off that day/hour/minute, depending; if I thought they'd eat, I'd bring my snakes with me to keep from having to transport the mice any further than what I had to from the store to my car! Like I said, I can't stand them for smell.

I've raised Norway rats for a few years now and don't mind them in the least. They're fairly fun to interact with, aside from some of my females and while I have been bitten and had blood drawn by a nursing female, for the most part they're fairly mellow in terms of temperament. I run 1.4 in my tubs, with two breeder males who are switched out on opposite weeks, so they are only breeding twice a month with a week span in between. My rats aren't bad for maintenance but they do eat quite a bit for food, especially a nursing female. I recently purchased a starter colony of ASF's of 1.4 but I've only had them for a week or so now so I can't really say as far as how they rate for upkeep. Thus far they aren't bad as far as odor or chewing, knock on wood! The one drawback I can see to them thus far is their dietary requirements and how they need additional food items/higher fat content/etc. than what do other rodents. Not a big deal but something to keep in mind. My Norways eat lab block and occasionally plain yogurt and/or hard-boiled or scrambled eggs for the nursing females, so they're fairly straightforward in terms of food. On a side note, anyone have any tips on what to feed ASF's to keep them healthy and producing? I've read that kale and other green leafy veggies are good for reducing tumors and that bird seed blends with millet along with kitten dry food for fat are both recommended...anything I should add to that list?

I have both rats and ASFs. The rats after start to smell horrible after a few days once you start getting them in higher numbers, when I first started with 4 rats it was bad, now that I'm close to a hundred its really bad. The key with them is keeping the numbers down. I also bought this Odor remover thats thats just a bag filled with bamboo charcoal that is supposed to absorb orders from the air and is supposed to be reusable for up to too years. I cleaned the rats friday, bought it sunday while xmas shopping, and the rats smell like I just cleaned them and its been almost a week! For $9 I'm thinking of getting another one.

The ASFs take several weeks to start to produce any smell. They have a hide that I put in for them to have babies in but instead they use it as a litter box which is awesome as far as cleaning goes! Mine have never shown any sign of aggression and I can go in and do whatever I want even which the pinkies. On the other hand I have been bite several times by the rats. The one this that I dont like though however is that even though they produce way more babies they seem to pick off the babies after they reach a certain age so I don't get the numbers I think I should, I'll go in the basement to find half eaten ASFs carcasses and I can't figure out while. The babies they do pick off though seem to be sick so i guess they are just weeding out the week animals but I can't figure out why the babies get sick in the first place. Their most recent litters though don't seem to be having these problems so maybe they are fixing out the problem on their own? Survival of the fittest I guess.

I don't even bother with mice...they are the smelliest things I have EVER kept.

Well have never had ASF's but would pick Rats over smellier Mice any day of the week, As The Little Poop makers are a mess!:D

I breed what I need to breed to get my snakes to eat. I recently got rid of most of my rodents because of time constraints which isn't a big problem since most of my adults take frozen without any problems, but I still keep a few tubs for the hatchlings. Yes the mice are stinkier and meaner, but I've rarely had a hatchling refuse a live hopper mouse but many will not accept rat pups at first. These days I start all of my hatchlings on hoppers until I can get them switched to frozen. I know a lot of people will claim differently but for some reason I've never had a big problem getting my snakes switched over from mice to rats.

I don't have any experience with ASF's. I like the idea that they stay smaller for the ball pythons but then again I also have Burms so it's not a problem figuring out what to do with retired breeders.

ASF. The line I've been breeding doesn't seem to be aggressive at all, unlike the ones I was breeding when I lived on the east coast. However, the tradeoff is that they've been lousy parents. Go figure.

Can't stand the smell of rats. I've tried a few times to breed them, just can't stand the smell of their poop. Mice aren't too bad. A bit musky, and as long as I don't clean their furniture and give them plenty of room it takes a couple weeks for them to start with any noticeable smell.

I also breed rabbits, and the snakes get a few of the extras.