Quote Originally Posted by frankykeno View Post
I know my mature ASF male isn't all that much heftier than the females. Not nearly the size difference I see in my regular rats when you compare the big males to the females.

Perhaps when we breed more of these we'll switch more snakes over. For now they really are just for certain of our snakes, because I'm concerned about possibilities of prey imprinting as well as the ASF's taking a long time to hit mature size for our larger snakes. One of our bigger BP rescues can easily take 4 or 5 weanling ASF's at a feeding and that knocks down a litter of them pretty fast.

Other than that they aren't as easy to manage when it comes to cage cleaning. I really don't like having to handle them due to the tendency to bite first and think afterwards LOL. I'm so used to my mild mannered regular rats that when I have to move ASF's to do a full enclosure clean, I go get Mike to do it. They are also, for me anyways, WAY harder to sex at a young age and I'm finding I make a lot of mistakes trying to seperate them by gender to grow out enclosures.

At this point we have all the ASF's in glass but I'd love to hear people's experience keeping them in plastic bins in racks. I'm concerned about chewing out and escapes. We had one get away on us, we did manage to catch her 2 days later but I lived in dread of a feral colony of ASF's infesting this massive, old house.
I was wondering the same thing....mine climb up the water bottle and chew the plastic rim of the tank.....I have three cats and a terrier that THINKS he's a better mouser than the cats, but I too would like to switch if possible....

even though I keep little wooden chews, hay, corn cobs and even corn "licks" (usually for birds, like a salt lick but made out of corn...they love 'em)...they still chew on anything....including me...LOL