If you got 5 Pinkies out of each female right now then 1 of three things i can think of.Originally Posted by Cornfed_Constrictors
That helps, thank you.
How many pups do you typically notice from your first time females? I have 10 babies right now in my "DeKalb" colony, both females are supposed to be first time mothers and each had a 5 pup litter at what appears to be about a week apart judging by your photos.
My colonies are in trios right now. You are saying your best results have been from 1.2. From my first generation of babies I was planning on growing out 2 females for a 1.4 within the "DeKalb" colony. Then I was going to take the other brothers and sisters and grow them out separate as a new colony at 1.4 but sound like maybe I should start the new colony as a trio? The rest I plan to grow out as feeders.
How does my plan sound, would you do anything different? My goal is to have 4 breeder colonies and one grow out for males and one for females in my current rack system.
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1) they arent the first litter as that happens after 4 litters. Then count drops and you have to replace the female.
2) The food conditions or stress caused them to eat the other 5-10 of them when they were born.
3) Or Its a bad line of ASF's.
I have a feeling (as most people dont like to sell their ASF's to someone that wants to breed because they are already hard to get) that your mothers are the guys EX Breeders so he sold them to you as he was done with them after 3-4 litters... If you have litters of 5 those females are no good OR they ate all the other babies. I think you better keep pups and start a brand new colony to see.
I get a minimum of 15-24 in each litter of my good breeders. My all white ASF's (bad line) have 8-12 pinkies for the first 3 litters.
After the first 3 litters 2 of three things start to happen. They start killing or eating babies or the litter size drops to 5/8.
You cant afford to have litters of under 10 or you will never get anywhere and you're actually feeding and cleaning which will cost you 10 times as much as it would've if you bought feeders at a pet store. So you have to get a good line of ASF's and your Husbandry has to be spot on with these guys. There just nothing like any other rodent. I've had times where months go by and I practically lost all my colonies when things went bad so I had to almost start over. Only keep a Pup that you want to turn into a breeder from a female that has huge litters (15-24) otherwise you will end up with a breeder that has bad genes and small litters.
I cant stress enough the privacy and food they need or all hell breaks loose.
As far as the size, my best luck is 2.1. Even doing 3.1 i had the 3rd females loos 1/2 the pinkies. They dont feed their pups separately. They all share the same Nesting spot so a 2 week old pup will smoosh a 1 week old pup within a day. I always ended up pulling 12-15 dead babies out. Thats a Pain in the butt. You dont want to keep going into these enclosures as they stress easy when they are feeding their pinkies.
I go in once a week to refresh water and food and i have 40 pups a enclosure every 3.5 weeks.
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