My new asf colony

[FlowRock]

Glad to see, some EXPERIENCED breeders share my concerns...
This stuff sounds that easy, at first but these rodents wont be full grown and sellable from on second to the next, no way. Calculate your costs for food and bedding alone, not to mention the time you NEED to invest and think it over again.
Seperate the maybe 50 gals from da 50 boys, feed them to your snakes and dont make yourself sorry for owning around 5000 asf pups, without a chance to get rid of them in a couple of month!

[greghall]

The only thing they have going for them is in some places they are unavalible.most do not know what they are or even care to know only the BP community knows their true value!!

[Don]

Not to mention if you go the F/T route, you have to make sure you have the proper equipment and supplies to ship and keep them frozen. Also, do you have the freezer capacity? F/T is not an easy answer to over population.

ASF's take a lot of time to raise up. That is a lot of food, bedding and care. If you can't get the price you want, you will lose your shirt. I wouldn't do this as a business unless you really know what you are doing. That goes for regular rats, mice or ASF's, as well.

[FlowRock]

He surely thought about it...
Seeling half thawed, half rotten feeders will give him a good name in the biz...
Sorry beer makes me sarcastic.

[MDB]

thank you FlowRock for your useful post

[hoax]

I was prepared to say a few nasty things but then I realized either you wont listen or you just don't care.

I was going to get a breeding group of 1.6 ASF's I was going to feed my BP's what I could and I was going to sell the rest to local pet shops and @ shows.

I realized that this was a foolish plan and I should just worry about what I got going. I am not going to make any money selling these little guys.

Please just slow down and breed what you can use and sell. If you are seeing a larger market then by all means please buy more. If you can make money at this great!!!! If you have time for this endeavor and your family then keep on trucking brother.

I wish you the best of luck in this! Please just think about the effects of what your doing.

[anatess]

Hi Matt,

I applaud you for trying to start up a business and having the determination to see it through. That is truly admirable. My father is a businessman and owns several businesses from bottle-washing to car rental. They all started from a "it would be really great if..." moment.

The only thing I really was hoping to see is your willingness to learn from the "been there, done that" guys. I can tell you FOR A FACT that Mike Cavanaugh has been in the ASF breeding business for a few years. I buy my ASFs from him and I will continue to do so. He is an excellent breeder with awesome customer service. There are several people on this forum that will vouch for him. And the great thing about Mike is, he TRULY, REALLY tries to help out as best he can. He helped me when I decided I want to breed a trio of ASFs. Think about this - if I breed my own, I will be one less customer from Mike... but guess what, he doesn't care about that. He just wants to give me a good start on my breeding project. So, he hooked me up with 1 male and 2 females - hand picked by Mike himself and sent me all kinds of information on enclosures, feed, substrate, and caresheets. That was on November 12... so, November 12, I had 3 virgin ASFs. Today, December 18, I have 22 little rats - 12 from 1 girl, 10 from another - who should be weaned in 2 weeks. And both females are pregnant again.

So, let me take that experience and apply it to your situation. You mentioned you have 75 rats plus 90 more coming... That's 165 rats total. So, let's say out of those, you have at least 100 females. Let's say each female drops 10 babies (they usually give more than that). 26 days from now, you will have 1,000 rats babies. Another 26 days from that, you will have 1,000 more and on and on. Realistically, you are probably going to have 1500 babies a month. Even counting the occasional breeding tub with bloody rat parts from Hannibal Lecter Rat Mommy. And, if you leave male/female weanlings together you will multiply this number like the compounding interest in your credit card...

Now, you said these are all for feeders. The people buying ASFs are ball python owners. Each ball python eats 1 ASF rat a week. So, you will need at least 250 ball pythons to service for your breeding colony. Look at your city and see how many ball pythons you think are within 100 miles from you. Don't count any ball pythons that are feeding from their own breeding colony. Then look at the number of commercial rat suppliers in your area to determine your market share. Okay, I'm sure you have done all this work. So, best of luck.

On the freezing. From my research, commercial breeders don't freeze rats and keep it frozen for months before selling. Usually, they get an order, they go to their rat rack, pick what they need, kill and freeze all within a day or two so that when it ships to the buyer, it is fresh and of good quality. People don't buy bulk frozen rats that have been sitting in the freezer for weeks when they will then have to keep it in their freezer for months more before they use it. So, that's not really a good solution to over-run. I'm thinking what will happen is, you will have to give away the rat to the pet store for free just to take it out of your hands.

So, this is why Mike Cavanaugh, et. al., adviced to start with a smaller group and see how it goes for a few months then after you have gauged the market and the rats are flying off the shelf like hot cakes, then buy 2,000 rats or whatever number you need to fill demand. Mike wouldn't dash your dreams just because he has nothing better to do than post stupid remarks on this forum.

Hope you read this super long post... I tend to run on and on and on...

[MDB]

Thank you I did read your whole post, yes the whole thing lol. I have decided to to put only a few trios together to start out with and seperate the rest of the males and females. After a month or two I will have more know how, and clientele. I thank all of you who have been kind and helped me. And for the ones who werent so nice, well use your imagination

[anatess]

Thank you I did read your whole post, yes the whole thing lol. I have decided to to put only a few trios together to start out with and seperate the rest of the males and females. After a month or two I will have more know how, and clientele. I thank all of you who have been kind and helped me. And for the ones who werent so nice, well use your imagination

THAT'S GREAT!!! Really neat idea. Sounds like you have it good now! If you're like me, you will end up opening that rack a lot just to see what they're up to every, uhm, 5 minutes or so. They can be really addicting...

[MDB]

thank you