asf's and mazuri 6f

Has anyone had any problems getting ASF's to eat Mazuri 6f? I am also feeding wild bird seed and carrots... they have had the 6f for about a week, and so far they just don't seem very interested in it (was previously using becky's rat mix)

I assume right now that they are just being picky... and once they get really hungry they will chow down on it...


Mike

I've read that they don't eat very much anyways. They may still be being selective about what they want to eat, prefer palatabilty over nutrition... Other than that many people have great success with 9F or harlan 2018.

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Originally Posted by mcavana

Has anyone had any problems getting ASF's to eat Mazuri 6f? I am also feeding wild bird seed and carrots... they have had the 6f for about a week, and so far they just don't seem very interested in it (was previously using becky's rat mix)

I assume right now that they are just being picky... and once they get really hungry they will chow down on it...


Mike

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We use Mazuri 6F exclusively for all of our rodents. We raise mice, rats and ASFRs and have had no problems relating to feed.

Thanks for the replies... so how long have you been breeding ASF's? You use 6f exclusively???? You don't have to feed the ASF's anything but 6F???!!!

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Originally Posted by mcavana

Thanks for the replies... so how long have you been breeding ASF's? You use 6f exclusively???? You don't have to feed the ASF's anything but 6F???!!!

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Mike, we have been breeding ASFRs for almost 2 years. I bought a couple of trios in late spring of '06 and we now maintain 10-12 trios in addition to our mice and rats.

They have been feed only Mazuri 6F, except for an occasional treat of sunflower seeds. I know that doesn't quite fit the definition of exclusive, but their diet is over 99% Mazuri 6F.

thanks for the reply louis!

If I could just feed 6f, that would make life much easier! sure I will still throw in another treat every now and then...

Do you have any problems with canabalism??? My local pet shop was having a problem with it, and they believed it was because they were only feeding 6f.

Also, one more question... i have a food dispencer made from hardware cloth... so it doesn't get wasted on the floor for the most part. when you do this, does the Mazuri go bad after a few days? if so, at what point should you toss out the old, and put new in?

I have never thrown out our food. My rats get enough for a week, but still... I have never thrown it out if they didn't consume it.

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Originally Posted by mcavana

thanks for the reply louis!

If I could just feed 6f, that would make life much easier! sure I will still throw in another treat every now and then...

Do you have any problems with canabalism??? My local pet shop was having a problem with it, and they believed it was because they were only feeding 6f.

Also, one more question... i have a food dispencer made from hardware cloth... so it doesn't get wasted on the floor for the most part. when you do this, does the Mazuri go bad after a few days? if so, at what point should you toss out the old, and put new in?

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We have had some problems when they are crowded. We keep ours in 1.2 or 1.3 groups. Once the babies are weaned, it's best to remove them from the breeding group.

They don't seem to take well to "strangers", so we use siblings to set up new breeding groups. Just seems to work better for us.

We've never had a spoilage problem with the 6F. We have food "hoppers" on our cages/racks that hold several days worth of food and we just top them off when needed. We never have to discard food.

I hope that helps you. Let me know if you have other questions. Good luck with yours.

I definately have a hard time getting my ASF's to eat the rat block. They tear up any seeds though. They especially like the millet that is in the seed mix. I put in a small handful of block 2 weeks ago and it is mostly still there, scattered in the bedding.

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Originally Posted by Louis Kirkland

We have had some problems when they are crowded. We keep ours in 1.2 or 1.3 groups. Once the babies are weaned, it's best to remove them from the breeding group.

They don't seem to take well to "strangers", so we use siblings to set up new breeding groups. Just seems to work better for us.

We've never had a spoilage problem with the 6F. We have food "hoppers" on our cages/racks that hold several days worth of food and we just top them off when needed. We never have to discard food.

I hope that helps you. Let me know if you have other questions. Good luck with yours.

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Very interesting. when you take out the babies once are they are weaned, do you just throw them together with same size babies from other breeding groups?

I am using 10 gallon tanks. what would you consider "overcrouded" for grow up tanks?

Last, but not least... So you never have to put new blood into the colony??? In other words, you never have to put a newbee in to mix up the gene pool a bit?

Thanks again for taking the time to answer all my questions!

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Originally Posted by mcavana

Very interesting. when you take out the babies once are they are weaned, do you just throw them together with same size babies from other breeding groups?

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When we remove a weaned litter, we put just that litter in a "grow out" tub, which is a large (18-1/2" x 15-1/4" x 5-1/4") cat litter pan. The ASFRs usually have a dozen or more babies in a litter so that's about as many as we want in one tub. Their negative reaction to overcrowding doesn't seem to develop until they reach adulthood and we normally feed them off by then.

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Originally Posted by mcavana

I am using 10 gallon tanks. what would you consider "overcrouded" for grow up tanks?

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If I were using 10 gallon tanks instead of the large litter pans (which I have done), I would stick with the same plan I described in the comments above. I prefer the litter pans over the aquariums for several reasons:

We keep extra litter pans on hand and just swap our rodents from the dirty pan to the clean one and then carry all the dirty pans outside and clean them at the same time. It really cuts down on cleaning time. Since the litter pans nest inside each other, a stack of them doesn't take up much room. Try stacking 10 gallons aquariums and see what happens! :rolleye2:

The litter pans are much cheaper to purchase, much lighter to handle, have no silicone for your rodents to chew and possibly ingest, are less fragile and are much easier to wash and dry than aquariums.

My only concern when I decided to put the ASFRs in litter pans, was that I had heard they were MAJOR LEAGUE CHEWERS and I thought they might chew through the plastic pans. After 2 years, we have not had the first problem with that.

Now that I've said that, I will probably go down to the rodent barn and find ASFRs running rampant throughout the building. :O

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Originally Posted by mcavana

Last, but not least... So you never have to put new blood into the colony??? In other words, you never have to put a newbee in to mix up the gene pool a bit?

Thanks again for taking the time to answer all my questions!

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We don't claim to be experts on any of this. I'm sure there are people on this forum that are much more qualified to answer some of these questions.

That said, we have had good results using siblings to establish new breeding groups and we have had some problems when using unrelated animals. If the unrelated animals were introduced at an early age, say right after weaning, and then raised together, I would think that your chance for success would greatly increase.

Keep in mind that all of our breeders were produced from the original 2 trios that we started with, so they're all "cousins", so to speak. ;)

I hope I have been of some help to you. Good luck!

Our second colony was established with siblings from the first colony. If we want fresh genetics, we'll just go buy a whole new young adult group from an ASF breeder since these rats really do NOT like to have their groups disturbed in anyway. I made the mistake a few months back of taking a particularily nice looking young female ASF from the feeder tank and placing her back into her original colony (1 male, 2 females). Even though she'd come from that colony the adult females (one of them her own mother) immediately went after her and within seconds had drawn blood. It was quite obvious they intended to kill her. There were no pinks in the enclosure at the time. We thought perhaps it was a safe time to introduce another female but no way I'll try that again!

first off we use kent 23% rodent diet. We have had sucess intruducing new females into new groups. We are careful to try and not buy from the same breeders every time because we found most breeders are breeding back constantly and noticed some who have done this alot have smaller soft furs. We intruduced a new female to a male and female combo when we made a new bin. We did make sure that the new one is slightly larger than the other 2.