asf vs mice.

me and my husband are looking into breeding either mice or asf. im reading tons online and wondering what everyone opinions on here are. I cant have any other live rats as its illegal here in alberta and not taken lightly here. im pretty sure we have the housing down pat but now its just what to put in them. opinions and reasons why please. :)

They're exactly the same as mice, just a little less cuddly.
If you get them from a good source, they are perfectly handle-able and breed well, just don't necessarily expect to hold any of them. There are quite a few breeders now that peddle 'tame' ASFs, but there's still a finesse that comes with them. :P

Mine eat the same food (sow and piglet chow) and live on the same bedding, in the same amounts of space. They smell different, but still bad.
They can have larger litters, and the females are dominant over the males most of the time, so be careful adding new males to the groups. Though Males will sometimes fight other males, it is possible to keep more than one male in a group. With mice, you basically CANNOT keep more than one male in a group.


Hope that helps.
I like em!

thank you. it helps a ton. we have decided to go with the asf for our own collection and in a couple years when we breed will probably put the ones we want to sell on mice for the sake of the new owners. unless asf become more available to the general public. thank you again for the response :)

When I had ASF and mice, I preferred the ASF. They smelled "less bad" than mice. I think they grow a bit faster too, but I wasn't exactly weighing them and such, just my personal opinion.

Mice are cuter and can be nicer pets. They come in way more pretty colors too.

But if I were going to breed for food, I'd go with asf. I did not experience any issues with ball pythons eating asf and then refusing to eat rats or mice afterwards. They seemed content to eat whichever rodent showed up.

Personally, I raise rats and prefer those over either asf or mice vastly. But since you can't have live rats, yeah, asf probably.

Asf grow much slower then mice in my experience. but I have never had them eat their young like I had mice do off and on for pretty much no reason. they also like to use one corner as the bathroom corner. so there isn't a layer of pee on every inch of the cage and everything in it like with mice. they do still smell but not nearly as bad as mice. I ditched mice for asf a while ago and I very much prefer them to the mice.

That's weird that you can have asf's but not rats. I'm in Kentucky, and asf's are illegal here. There are many states here that have made asf's illegal due to being an "invasive species". I think it's mostly because asf's have more nipples so they think they reproduce faster.

I also agree that ASFs grow way slower than mice. my ASF males can grow up to 120 grams, and it can take them 6-8 months to get there. Where-as a mouse can get to full size in about 3-4 months maximum.

ASF's also get slightly large too I believe.

Correct! Females are about 2x the size of a large/jumbo mouse, and males are about 3 times as large. I can take some comparison photos if that helps anyone. I have several colonies of mixed ASF and house mice.

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Originally Posted by Mrs.GMC

asf vs mice.

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Asf would kick the mouse's butt!:gj:

I have all three, mice, rats, and ASFs. The mice stink so bad I'm considering feeding them all and getting rid of them. Rats not so bad, ASF have almost no smell at all!

Both are disgusting creatures imo

Well I'm starting to change my mind after breeding both mice and ASFs (my rats haven't had babies yet so I can't compare). The mice are super breeding machines! I bought a bunch of mice from Petco and WOW do they breed like crazy and grow so fast! So far I've only had one pair of ASF have babies and they are only half as big as the mice even though the mice are much younger. And the ASF ate most of their babies, only a few left. I had a problem with the mice eating babies too but I separated them into single female with baby cages and I've had no problem at all. In fact the babies are almost ready to breed. I've had another five ASFs that were way more mature than the mice and still haven't bred. So slow to breed and the babies are so slow to grow. I'm thinking of dumping the ASF for mice. Only the male mice really stink, I'm actually thinking of just keeping one male mouse as a breeder and feeding off all the male babies as soon as possible, that would nearly eliminate the mouse smell. I'm just starting to pair up the rats so we will see if mice or rats are better for my operation. I'm thinking that if you kept mice you would need far fewer adults compared to ASFs since they produce more babies much faster.