ASFs in an apartment

[mainbutter]

So I currently live in a 2 BR apartment and am wondering about how practical it would be to start up a duo or trio of ASFs to feed no more than 3 snakes.

A couple questions:

How many seperate cages will I need to house the breeders and resulting offspring(assuming that I let all the offspring grow to adult size before PK and freezing)? since I don't want any "unauthorized" breeding I will have to seperate males and females, and introducing new offspring to an older batch is a bad idea, I assume most people have quite a few seperate cages right? I'm thinking if you need two new cages(male and female seperation) every time a female has a litter I could be looking at quite a few cages needed.

Smell. I have 3 choices of where to keep ASFs. In the living room, in the office/snake room, or in my bedroom. If I kept them in the snake room, would it cause any behavior changes in my snakes(being able to smell food all the time)? Does anyone here keep ASFs in their apartment, and if so does the smell cause issues for yourself or guests?

I'm probably going to wait until january or february to look into a duo or trio, but before I get more serious about it I need answers to these questions to decide if ASFs are good or bad for my current living situation.

[JasonG]

I'd throw a trio in a 10 gallon and let er rip! keep them in the snake room. I have a full rack of asfs in mine. No changes on the snake's behavior...

As for smell, if you clean weekly the smell will be minimal...

I'd say go for it!

[Argentra]

I live in a 2bdrm apartment and have 15 snakes, a pet rabbit, and a sizable mouse colony. It's certainly possible and doesn't stink at all if you stay on top of the cleaning.

To conserve space, I keep my rodents in tubs set up on plastic shelf units. That makes most of the space used up rather than out.
I'll be starting rat breeding soon, and have wire cages that hang from the ceiling for them to further save space.

[ThyTempest]

We live in a 1 bedroom apt and we have a trio of ASF's and 4 breeding female rats, with another 10 or so potential holdbacks on the way. The rat smell is definitely there, but you get used to it quickly. However, the ASF's are practically no smell. We have a trio in a lab tank, and we have 1 empty lab tank, and one more soon to be empty lab tank ready for overflow/grow out. Our very first litter is about a week old now, and the other litter of the trio was born today. We plan on holding back some, and letting most of them grow up for our picky bp, but further litters will be baby corn food.

If you are able/willing to freeze, I wouldnt worry too much about space, since you can always control overpopulating by putting down as much as you need and freezing them. If your snakes take f/t this works out perfectly, if not, try to find someone to sell to otherwise you will be throwing away rodents just for freezer space in a few months.

We keep ours in our living room above the TV with no smelly affects, like I said, most of the smell is coming from our pretty sizeable rat colony considering the size of our apartment.

Hope this helps.

[OhBalls]

I breed mine in an apartment with no problems. I am very picky about keeping them clean so I do it twice weekly and have zero smell.

If you seperate, you can not re-introduce into the colony. I have been breeding them for two years and never had a good turnout when reintroducing a seperated ASF. Happens with both male and female. They are extremely territorial. Some people may say different but this has been my personal experience.

Good luck, they're a lot of fun

[Mike Cavanaugh]

I keep mine in the garage, and clean them every 2 weeks. The garage STINKS!!!!...

of course I do have about 400 in there at any given moment...

[hobbyist]

I live in a 1br apt, and am going to start breeding them in January for my 3 bp snakes.
I've had many of the same questions you have, and I have been talking to tons of people and breeders about it, so if it helps, here's what i've found out, which goes along with what's already been said.
ASF is the best choice for zero to little smell when in a small place, some people wait two or three weeks to clean cages and don't have much of a smell at all (with the right substrate).
I've gotten two of the three on f/t, so i'm going to freeze the excess until there becomes more than I can handle, and my local pet store is already eager to start selling them- so I would ask if I were you.
Colonies that are separated, if the male is re-introduced, he usually receives the death penalty, though some (few) people have not had a problem with pulling and switching rats.
I've set up a small bookshelf with cheap plastic tubs and rigged some wire netting on top for cages- I am going to be using two trios because I want results quickly (could take two months to get them going regularly), and plan on having a tub for each trio, and one grow-out tub for the excess. You can always pull rats as you need them, and freeze/ sell the extra- but I wouldn't recommend separating the male- if you want to chance his banishment.
Or... if all else fails- get another snake or two! I'm saving my frozen for hatchlings
hope that helps in some way or another

[Bruce Whitehead]

One enclosure for your breeding group, then one grow out tub for sub adults, and two enclosures for your larger adults (that you are going freeze).

I find that as long as they aren't breeding, and if you are always adding new inhabitants then you do not see the aggression to each other that you would see with established colonies.

If there are new ones coming in all the time the colonies are exactly established.

I lived in a loft with other 100 rodents and 40 snakes... it is doable in a smaller space.

Bruce

[TheShortBus]

live in an 4br apt and have over 13 reptiles :p..

ive bred asf and mice. the smell of the mice got really bad, so we fed them all off to our snakes and monitors.

but the smell of asf isnt bad at all to me. we actually have them in our laundry room that is directly connected to the kitchen, and we have never had a guest who didnt no they were there notice the smell or anything.

thats pretty much of feeder room. we have roaches, crickets and stick bugs all breeding in there as well the the crickets smell worse then anything really.

we just keep the door shut and have a small fan running 24/7 and its not noticeable.

and yeah i would keep them in your snake room. ive herd its good to do so if you have any picky eaters. ive also herd of some people "presenting" their snake rooms, so this way it would already be done :p

[RandyRemington]

I breed mine in an apartment with no problems. I am very picky about keeping them clean so I do it twice weekly and have zero smell.

I think this is the key. With your small number of snakes and hence the size of colony you will need I bet you can keep up with those twice a week cleanings. I have a bigger colony but have them where I can wait to do once a week but at that schedule and size of colony that would be a problem with my wife if they were where she could smell them. If you have a big colony like the follow-up poster they are a dry enough animal that once every two weeks with a good sized cage is still probably fine for the animals but you would definitely have a smell problem in your living area. Also I'm sure a ventilation system helps in all cases but with an apartment there might not be much you can do in that area and if you have the time to clean twice a week I wouldn’t think it would be needed for a small colony.