ASF Care, Breed, Size?

[frankykeno]

Cool, thanks a lot. I may try to get over to the Taylor show next month. I heard that there is a guy that breeds them for the Kalamazoo show, maybe it is the same one. I emailed somone about the breeder to get his info, if you happen to know the name or number of the breeder you got yours from, could you send me a pm?

Thanks a lot

PM sent.

I bought a trio of full grown adults ready to breed at $20. Btw, I have taken my male out and re-introduced him twice now and he hasnt been mauled or killed. I pulled him out right before the females had babies because I was afraid he would eat them like my male rats did a couple times before I started pulling them out too. I am not saying it will always work out nicely, just that it is possible.

I agree that there's no reason to remove the male due to worry he'd hurt his own offspring. These are very strong colony animals where every adult cares for all babies. Even the half-grown older babies will pitch in and care for the younger ones.

Ack, maybe, but I really need to find a solution to this. I am really hoping she will switch to f/t easily, that will save me a lot of money, either locally or from a big supplier.

If you are looking at space issues and your mom not wanting rodents in the house in the first place and you're only feeding one snake, I'd probably just try to get the snake over to f/t feeding. You can find some great online suppliers for frozen rodents once you know the snake will regularily take f/t. When you figure out the costs per prey item, it's pretty reasonable and you can order 6 months to a year of her food at a time (or various sizes to cover her growth potention).

[JoMo]

Good info on ASF: http://www.jirds.cwc.net/rag/profiles/nmmr.htm

[FIREball]

Ive been tossing around the idea of breeding my own feeders for a while now and ASFs look like the way to go. My rodent guy is cheap ($1 pups and $1.5 smalls) but with the price of gas the 60mile round trip commute every week isnt worth it.

QUESTIONS

1. I will be building a rack using the small cement tubs Home Depot sells, how many females can I put with a male?

2. I currently have 12 BPs, how many total breeding groups would you reccomend?

3. I see the male never needs to be taken from the colony, is there risks like rats with the mom getting prego immediately after giving birth?

4. I see everyone reccomends the glass water bottles. I wont be using a gravity fed system in the rack just placing a bottle on top of each tub, will I still need a glass bottle?

Thanks for any info

[Mike Cavanaugh]

1,) you have to just experiment and see what works for you. people do anywhere from 1 female to 10 or more. what works best for me is 1 male, 3 females.

2.) It depends on number one, and your snakes.

3.) Assuming you are talking about ASF's, the mom will repregnate the day the babies are born. she is pretty much pregnant 100% of the time. Unlike mice and rats, this back to back breeding does not appear to have any negative effects on the females or the the babies.

4.) If the actual bottle is inside of the enclosure, then glass is a must. If only the metal stem is in the enclosure, then anything will work.


I have 10 snakes. only been breeding for 6 months. So far 3 groups of 1.3 breeders is what works for me. but keep in mind, i feed multiple younger asf's. to each snake. if i were letting them get full grown and feeding only one per snake, i would need probably half as many breeders.

[FIREball]

Would a 26x20x6 cememnt tub be too big for ASFs? Too deep for them to get to the water? Also what group size would fit comfortably in this size tub?

The rack has 6 tubs so if I holdback some will keeping all the males in one tub and females in another until I want to start a new breeding group be ok?

[Mike Cavanaugh]

These are tuff questions. a 6" high tub with a traditional water bottle stem stuck in the top mesh would be fine fine for adults, but would be useless for babies up to at least 10 weeks (chime in time line guys)..... as they would not be able to reach it.

I love tubs. but keep in mind, with the number of snakes you are talking about, you could also use 4 ten gallon gallon tanks. inclucing the tops, water bottles, hopper ingredients, you would be under 100 bucks. that would be two tanks for the 1.3 or 1.4 breeders, and two tanks for the grow ups.