That's it, I'm done with African Soft Fur Rats!

[cchardwick]

I've been breeding rats, mice and ASF for quite a few months now and the ASF don't have babies very often and the growth of the babies is super slow! I have baby mice growing 4x faster than the baby ASF. And my rat babies grow even faster! I finally got my mouse breeding down pretty good, I'm keeping one male and one female per 5 gallon or 10 gallon glass critter cage. They pop out babies every 3-4 weeks, as soon as the babies are weaned they have another batch in about a week or so.

Still trying to figure out my rats, I tried keeping females separate but when I put them back with males and females there's quite a bit of fighting. And then there's the delay in pregnancy when I separate and it's about two months between batches of babies. Now I'm going to try group breeding with one male and several females in a glass 40 gallon breeder critter cage, not sure how that will work but rats seem to get along better when paired permanently.

Mice are even worse, you can't really put a new mouse with an established single or group, they fight really bad. It's best to keep mated pairs together all the time and mix batches of babies when they are very young before they mature, and it's best to pick out breeding pairs as soon as the babies mature since they have been with each other growing up. Once the male mice mature they start fighting and it's time to either separate the males and females or feed them off.

The ASF never really fight no matter if you put in new males or females in the group, but the breeding is just way toooooo slow. With my 20 snakes and feeding most twice a week I'm going through about 80 rodents a month so I need to keep up production!!

[StillBP]

I feel you there. I use about 60 rats a month most are med to large rats too. Makes it hard to keep up breeding. I can only produce about 25% of my oun feeders. I never did asf cause i cant find any. Tho i have a asf eater. Makes it a pain

My rats i do 1 to 4 and never take them out unless there is a issue

[wolfy-hound]

I do harem style with the rats. I got rid of the ASF because I never found them to have enormous litters, they still had smell(not like mice though) and they did not grow all that fast. I prefer the rats for sure.

You can always make female bins and rotate a male through. If you have 3 friendly boys to choose from, you can always have two boys together(single rats get lonely) and one in the female bins. I just have a male in each female bin and it works out well. Yes, the females wear out faster without breaks, but I just replace them a little more often than I would with the rest/breed/rest cycle.

[voodoolamb]

Luckily for me I only have 1 who needs ASFs regularly. I want to use her as a breeder, she was bought as a mouser and will only take a live mouse about 1/2 the time - and only 1 per feeding! She won't touch rats live or pre killed and will not take ANY f/t. Not sure HOW her previous owner got her up to 1500g to be honest.

She will take a pre killed ASF every single time though. She was looking pretty thin when I got her but has been filling out well on the ASFs. The fact that BPs love them so much makes it worth it to me to have a small colony going. Might come in handy if I get another picky eater someday.

My Norwegians are mostly pets. They all have names and free range time. Very sociable and love human contact. I have show line stock and some fun genetics to play with. They are a hobby all in themselves aside from the snakes. I keep them in those big double critter nations. When it's time to pair I pick my boy and girl and put them in the honey moon suite - a bin cage. I usually put them back with their cage mates once or twice a day too so reintroductions are easier. After 10 days the pair are seperated and put back with their cage mates until the momma is ready to burst. Then she goes to another bin cage. She goes to visit her cage mates several times when she takes breaks from nursing her litter too.

I socialize my rat kits as if they are all going to pet homes. anyone in the litter who don't go as pets end up snake food once they reach the proper size. Often the entire litter sells as pets and I use the money from their sale to buy feeders. I usually even have enough left over after feeding the snakes to take my boyfriend and I out for dinner and a movie lmao.

Yeah. I'm not good at this whole breeding my own feeder thing. That's another plus for the ASFS for me. They are flesh ripping devil rodents and definitely not pets in my book. Makes it easier for a wuss like me to feed them off.