Well we had an interesting experience with one of the ASF breeding colonies that I thought I'd share.

One of my established groups (1 male, 3 large females, 2 younger females - daughters of the colony) had to have the male removed. He became ill with multiple small tumor-like growths and stopped breeding his females. I was concerned because normally introducing a male into a colony like this an instant death sentence for the new male. Since none of the females are pregnant they are both a non-producing colony and there was no chance to raise a son of that group up to replace his sire.

What I did was this. I removed the ill male and picked a large, healthy sexually mature male from my feeder group. He is not a small male but one I was raising in a group of large males for feeding my largest BP's. I put the new male into a small kritter keeper with a good supply of used bedding from this colony's tank, specifically from the toilet corner. I left him to run around on that bedding while I cleaned the enclosure completely. Once the enclosure was clean and new bedding put down, also new food and a new, clean hide I put the new male in first and gave him a chance to check out the enclosure and lay down some of his own scent. Hopefully after his time on the used bedding he was now carrying some of this colony's unique smell on his own fur.

Once he'd had some time to get oriented I introduced the females back into their home. The dominant female of this group did challenge him a bit but showed no really strong aggression. He was smart enough to submit to her checking him out thoroughly (dropped his ears down and so forth). The other females followed her lead, checked him out, boxed a bit with him and then accepted him. Within a few hours he was allowed into their nesting box and I also saw him doing typical male guarding behaviours so it all seems to be going quite well.

It's been well over 36 hours now since he was introduced, he has no bite wounds and the colony is acting normally - eating, sleeping, using their wheel - so I think I can safely call this a successful introduction. I'm quite pleased since it would have been a real waste to have had to feed off these 5 healthy, producing females due to the loss of their male.