ASF Rats

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Originally Posted by L.West

Ok, sounds good. I will pick one up at the reptile show this weekend and see what happens. If for some reason my snake refuses to eat the ASF and I am stuck keeping him - can I feed him the regular rat food that I buy when I keep regular rats sometimes.

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Yep. We feed ASFs the same thing Norway rats and all the other rats eat. Mazuri 6F (the one I use) is blended for breeding rat colonies - that's regular rats, fancy rats, ASF rats, etc.

Great, thanks for all your help.

I usually run between 40 and 50 treos of AFS depending on season. The only down side I see with them is that they grow slow (but during hatch time that is a good thing) and that some people won't buy a snake that eats them (because they believe that all ball pythons will get stuck on them - like crack). My colony of snakes eats ASFs, rats both live and f/t, depending upon what I have available. I have not experienced any problems switching back and forth.

Also, I first started with ASF's in 2007 and the ones I had were viscous and bite you to the bone. Decided to get out of them and after the smell of breeding rats, decided to go back to ASFs. The ones I have now are not bitey, even when they have babies. My wife was showing someone our ASF colony this week and pulled out a drawer and was petting the adults with a couple of litters in the drawer. One mother was even nursing, none of them even looked like they were going to bite.

Because some people will not buy snakes that eat ASFs, only my keepers are fed them. All snakes I sell, I convert over to f/t Norway rats. But, I find for my snakes, ASFs are great food. Good luck with your colony.