My very first batch of baby ASFs!

[cchardwick]

I just bought seven African Soft Fur rats last month, two are an older mated pair and five are younger, one male and four females. The older mom just had her first litter! Looks like about 13 new babies. Here are some pics below. They were so crazy about running on the wheels that I had to get them two wheels to keep everyone happy LOLOL. I've been feeding them a mix of all kinds of different foods: Masuri, pig pellets @ 16% protein, scratch, a bird seed mix that is mostly a variety of nuts with a few black sunflower seeds in it, oranges, carrots, snow peas, broccoli, cauliflower... I keep the room temp at 75F and change the food every other day, full cage cleaning and disinfect once per week. Looks like it's paying off!

I'm also adding a few photos of my snake room setup. I have one ARS rack of 20 bins (a combo of an ARS-7030 and ARS-8018), have 14 snakes so far with one on order, so will have room for five more until my rack is full. I have one 40 gallon breeder critter cage with ASFs, one 40 gallon critter cage with regular rats, and a few more 20 gallon critter cages with mice. Not sure which ones I'm going to keep long term, just trying them all out.

I just discovered the baby ASFs today, the mom was pretty curious about my hand in the tank, I thought she might bite me so I petted the other ASFs first and moved them one by one to another cage, she seemed to want to bite me or at least check me out as I as petting and grabbing the other ASF. Was finally able to get her out without getting bit, she was really more curious than aggressive, never really tried to bite me. Then I moved all the babies and put them under the big cave in the clean tank, same spot as the old cage. I was also wearing rubber gloves too just in case.

Well it was a bitter sweet night, I just went down to take another photo and heard some squeaking... Apparently two of my adult mice decided to give birth for the first time and they were eating their young YUCK. I separated them into their own tanks, hopefully they won't eat them all... I may have to feed the cannibals to my snakes. Hopefully my ASFs will be better about raising their young.




















These are my young rats, too young to breed at the moment...