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Which is less gross to breed?
In terms of gross habits, level of upkeep, 'rodenty-ness', the frequency you get bit... which is least gross/high maintainence to breed?
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ASFs are by far the least smelly to breed. Followed by rats then mice being the most smelly. For the most part you can do a weekly to bi-weekly substrate change to them, more or less if you think the smell is unbearable.
You can check the general feeders section and read the feeders FAQ for further information.
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I refuse to breed mice. I've met people who do and been to facilities where they are bred and they stink, stank, stunk! Rats smell better than mice, but ASF's I can breed in my home without worrying about the strong odor. Contrary to what some people experience, my ASFs rarely bite. I've raised rats before and prefer the smaller size of the ASFs (they don't out grow ball pythons) and the lower odor levels.
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I am not familiar with ASF (never seen them here, they may be illegal for this state...), but between rats and mice, rats are far less stinky and gross. I used to breed (pet) rats, and as long as their cages were of sufficient sized and cleaned at least once a week (maybe with spot cleaning in between - some were even litter trained!), you wouldn't even know they were in the house. I have never personally bred mice, but I used to work in a pet store and my job was taking care of their feeder mouse colony. They needed to be cleaned out daily and still stank.
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Rats all the way, unless you have a super-picky eater (then ASFs are pretty cool if you can find them). I've got a 4-tub rack maybe 4 yards from my bed and I only ever smell them if I've been slacking on cleaning. I've never been bit by the rats I've bred, although they are a bit skittish since I don't spend a ton of time handling them.
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1) ASFs have little to no odor. Because they are a desert species, they don't urinate as much as mice and rats in order to conserve water.
They also have a designated 'potty corner', where they only defecate in that one corner. It makes spot cleaning very easy. They have huge litters, but grow very slow. Can get aggressive or nippy when pups are around.
2) Norway Rats themselves don't smell much. And while they are very clean animals, they do urinate and defecate fairly often, which is what builds up. They need weekly or bi-weekly cleaning. Have moderately sized litters, but grow very fast. Rats have the best temperaments.
3) Mice have a very strong odor. They urinate and defecate very very often. This is the main reason they smell so awful. Male mice mark A LOT. Have moderately sized litters, but grows fast.
I cannot keep mice. They smell terrible. 2 mice can smell worse than my entire rack of rats.
A mouse cage will smell just hours after changing bedding compared to days with rats. It takes about 5 days for my rats to start to smell after a bedding change. Keeping uncrowded cages will help with the odor as well.
ASFs are still by far the best in regard to maintenance and odor.
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I have had all three. My vote would go to rats for which to go with for breeding. Mice just flat stink. Asf's are nice in that they have "toilet" area, instead of all over. So easier to clean. But they can be bitey, and the babies take a lot longer to grow out. Rats are friendly and cute, and babies grow fast. More cleaning and food than Asf's though.
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Re: Which is less gross to breed?
I've been breeding all 3 for a while now, and as long as you have a well ventilated space and clean in accordance to odor levels, none are gross to keep at all, and are all pretty fascinating.
P.s.- ASF's are not desert dwelling animals.
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I find ASFs and Rats to be nearly neck-in-neck. The only reason ASFs come out as number one for least gross is because they pee in one corner which makes spot cleaning possible.
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Great insight so far, thanks so much!
I think I'll focus more of my research on norway rats. ASFs sound great but I'm not a rodent person and they strike me as faster and nippier. Then again, if I'm not gonna handle them as pets I can just get some diesel leather gloves for working with them. Undecided again...
Do the ASFs jump higher and run around faster? I have a fear of them getting loose while I'm working with them.
If all of my snakes are on frozen and I am basically breeding solely to feed hatchlings and gas my own frozen, does this make a difference? If the ASFs grow slower, will I need less breeding pairs to ensure that I almost always have 15-25 gram rats to feed off?
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ASFs habitat crosses into desert scrublands and the southern portion of the Saharan desert.
And deserts doesn't always specifically mean sand dunes....
Yes, they also have other habitats as well, but urinating not as often is a biological adaptation to the desert. (think Hamsters as another example).
(referenced from Anita M. Oberbauer, B.S. Zoology, Ph.D. Animal Physiology.)
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Asf's are like popcorn... Or ping pong balls... They jump like crazy.
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At first, I was frustrated with ASFs because they grow so slow. However, if you are breeding and have lots of baby ball pythons around, that slow growth rate ensures you have plenty of food for those babies. Really, the only down side I experienced with ASFs is the slow growth rate. I can't remember the last time I was bitten and because they are smaller, they require less room. Here is my setup with 40 breeding treos and four grow out tubs:
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...79313904_n.jpg
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Rats are awesome. I've never bred them but my friend does. His are no where near as healthy as my mice, but that's just cause he doesn't clean them out as much. I love them though. Mice are to small and skiddish and yes they smell bad. Everybody else has pretty much said why they are easy to breed, but I think the animals personality traits will matter quite a bit in the long run.
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I have been actively breeding both Norways and ASF. ASF are much cleaner. Although I have to admit the Norways are more fun to work with. You can interact with them and their babies are adorable. I breed both, as different snakes are on different diets.
1. Litter size: In my experience ASF have much bigger litters. The smallest litter I have ever had has been 7 and the largest has been 21! Where as Norways give me usually between 6 - 12, with my largest being 13.
2. Cleaning: I end up cleaning out my Norways every 5-7 days, depending on whether or not there are pups in the bin. Where ASF's get cleaned out usually every 2 weeks, right now I have a colony with 35 babies, and they only need to be cleaned out on a weekly basis. Huge savings on time, and bedding.
3. Food: Norways are big, and eat MUCH more in my experience. I have to fill my Norway Hoppers, where there are 3 females, every 2-3 days. Where most ASF colonies without young make the hoppers last about 7 days.
4. Growth: Norways reach "large sizing" within 3-4 month which is the same as ASF. However a Large Norway rat is substantially bigger than a large ASF.
5. Breeding: Norways usually spit out a healthy litter every 2-3 months if given appropriate rest in between. Where as most of my ASF females will give me a litter every 1.5 - 2 months. ASF's are colony animals and don't need to be given time to recover from pregnancy.
6. Prey: ASF will usually get a better feeding response from your ball python - however, for a big female like my 2300gram spider, you end up feeding 4-5 adult ASF a week, where Norways will be able to grow to the size that is appropriate for a single prey item.
I personally like breeding ASF. It's much cheaper than buying them, where as Norway is readily available for cheap prices.
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Rats are the best in the long run to me. Everyone has pretty much given you all the reasons why. ASFs jump like crazy, and chews everything in site!
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The only thing that matters to me is what the buyers say when I post a snake for sale.
Putting asf eater on a snake means you might as well keep it, they are a very tough sell if they are eating asf's.
No asf's shall touch my snakes tubs again...
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My rat project is just starting with my first litter and more males then females an all that but I find them to be fun the males I have are mostly nice one of them comes to be pet if my hands in his cage and my only female will walk on to my hands to come see me but right now she has her first litter so I've been outta their cage since. Smell isn't bad I've had the males in there and the one girl for two months I change the bedding weekly.
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I voted for rats, because you also asked for which is least high-maintenance.
I found that I simply didn't have much luck with ASFs. I tried everything. Food, temps, new colonies with fresh bloodlines, but it just wasn't working out for me.
I found they take WAYYYYYYYYY too long to hit sexual maturity. It's usually at least 3-4 months before they will breed and have babies (females, anyways). Then it seemed they would breed well for awhile, and then all of a sudden just come to a grinding halt. POOF. One day, nobody was pregnant, nobody was having babies. I fed them all off and breed regular rats now and their production is INSANE compared to the ASFs.
Perhaps if I had more space to stock pile grow ups, I could have rotated my breeder ASFs every few months and had better production, but I didn't so I quit breeding them.
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Re: Which is less gross to breed?
Quote:
Originally Posted by snakesRkewl
The only thing that matters to me is what the buyers say when I post a snake for sale.
Putting asf eater on a snake means you might as well keep it, they are a very tough sell if they are eating asf's.
No asf's shall touch my snakes tubs again...
I've had no problems selling snakes that were started on ASFs. I get them going on ASF hoppers, then switch them over to f/t rats. All of my snakes switch back and forth with no problems. I don't think getting stuck on ASFs is as common as people think. I see it no different than starting snakes on hopper mice, then switching them over.
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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!
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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
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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.
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Re: Which is less gross to breed?
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.
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