Thinking about starting a small colony

[Egapal]

you're lucky then. mine have been terribly slow reproducers and the biggest litter iv had was 5, they do from what i can tell smell less though, and they drink/eat less which is good, but when you have 50 something snakes they arent really an option. who knows, maybe i just suck with gerbils and do awesome with rats lol

Oh I 100% agree that with 50 snakes you would be crazy to breed gerbils. You can't do a 3 to 1 colony, its strictly pairs. I would say you have had some bad luck with gerbils. I have had 15 or so litters so I don't exactly have enough experience to claim any authority but I can say that I have only had 3 litters under 5 and I retired my female after the 2nd consecutive litter under 5 after a good long run. definitely not saying that gerbils are the way to go if you are comfortable having a bigger rodent project than your snake project (I am) then they are great. I have 5 tubs, of which 4 are always full. One for my breeders, 1 for my male grow up, 1 for my female grow up, and one for my next breeding pair. I find that my pairs sometimes need a month or two together before they will start breeding. I am able to support my snake and a friend of mines. My friend gets a gerbil a week and throws me a few bags of food a month. My snake comes first. Works out well for us. Just so everyone knows I told him all about the evils of gerbils, directed him here for further research and in the end he wanted in. I would never recommend gerbils to anyone. If your circumstances are just right its an option though.

[adamjeffery]

if your planning on breeding your snakes and selling babies, then i would suggest you stick with mice or normal rats. the last thing you want to do is get a baby stuck on african soft furs or gerbils, then have a customer who doesnt have access to the same food source. they can normally be switched over but its an inconvenience to the customer to have to worry about.
i wont even bother purchasing or even looking at snakes on soft furs. the whole reason asf's got so popular is they work great for getting wc or ch animals eating. with the cb animals its really easy to get them started on mice or rats. ive never had a hatchling i couldnt get to eat. ive had ones that were slow starters or even the few that needed assist fed a few times but imho its still better than soft furs.
adam jeffery

[BAMReptiles]

iv got a trio of gerbils set up and im on my ~6th litter from them. they all 3 get along well ( been together since weaned ). ill stick with my 600-700 rats though lol

[anatess]

if your planning on breeding your snakes and selling babies, then i would suggest you stick with mice or normal rats. the last thing you want to do is get a baby stuck on african soft furs or gerbils, then have a customer who doesnt have access to the same food source. they can normally be switched over but its an inconvenience to the customer to have to worry about.
i wont even bother purchasing or even looking at snakes on soft furs. the whole reason asf's got so popular is they work great for getting wc or ch animals eating. with the cb animals its really easy to get them started on mice or rats. ive never had a hatchling i couldnt get to eat. ive had ones that were slow starters or even the few that needed assist fed a few times but imho its still better than soft furs.
adam jeffery

I heard this from a lot of people, but I have to say, my experience doesn't support this. All my snakes are on ASFs. I had my first clutch this year and I have a hatchling that was hatched on 7/31 and UNTIL TODAY is still being assist fed. He struck and coiled an ASF on his own on the first week of November but hasn't done it ever since.

So, that theory about ASF providing better feeding response... meh. Not true in my case. My bp's are eating like everybody else's bp's. Sometimes they eat, sometimes they don't.

And I sold my extra hatchling just fine too.

And I bought 2 hatchlings that were eating regular rats, switched over to ASFs without a problem.

So yeah, I have a different take on this.

Facts are:

• OP has 4 snakes - babies from what I understand.

• Getting a mice colony is not going to last him for the long term - they will eventually need to get on rats before a year is up (unless he decides to feed mutliple mice when the snakes get to be adults).

• Starting a rat colony is not going to be very good for 4 small snakes - they'll outgrow the snakes easily. So, unless you plan on freezing the rats when they get to a certain size, this is going to be difficult to cycle.

• ASFs are the better solution - they grow slow and they won't outgrow the snakes.

Worry about breeding later. If you need to switch them to rats to sell, you can do so then.

[suzuki4life]

Oh I 100% agree that with 50 snakes you would be crazy to breed gerbils. You can't do a 3 to 1 colony, its strictly pairs. I would say you have had some bad luck with gerbils. I have had 15 or so litters so I don't exactly have enough experience to claim any authority but I can say that I have only had 3 litters under 5 and I retired my female after the 2nd consecutive litter under 5 after a good long run. definitely not saying that gerbils are the way to go if you are comfortable having a bigger rodent project than your snake project (I am) then they are great. I have 5 tubs, of which 4 are always full. One for my breeders, 1 for my male grow up, 1 for my female grow up, and one for my next breeding pair. I find that my pairs sometimes need a month or two together before they will start breeding. I am able to support my snake and a friend of mines. My friend gets a gerbil a week and throws me a few bags of food a month. My snake comes first. Works out well for us. Just so everyone knows I told him all about the evils of gerbils, directed him here for further research and in the end he wanted in. I would never recommend gerbils to anyone. If your circumstances are just right its an option though.

I ran 1.2 and 1.3 without issues for years. You can't throw gerbils together like you can rats. They must be raised up together in most cases.

[anatess]

I ran 1.2 and 1.3 without issues for years. You can't throw gerbils together like you can rats. They must be raised up together in most cases.

Good point. You can't just throw ASFs together like you can regular rats too. There's a big chance they'll kill each other. So, it's better to raise them up as a colony.

[Egapal]

I ran 1.2 and 1.3 without issues for years. You can't throw gerbils together like you can rats. They must be raised up together in most cases.

I will have to admit to following what I have read and not testing it too much. I can say that I have accidentally bred a 1.2 group when I mis-sexed or more likely I sexed them fine and just put the gerbil in the wrong tub. Point is it didn't go well for me and that reinforced what I had always read. That one female gerbil will be dominate and make it hard to run a successful treo. Good to hear that others have had luck. I don't need much production so my pairs are fine.

I heard this from a lot of people, but I have to say, my experience doesn't support this. All my snakes are on ASFs. I had my first clutch this year and I have a hatchling that was hatched on 7/31 and UNTIL TODAY is still being assist fed. He struck and coiled an ASF on his own on the first week of November but hasn't done it ever since.

I have to say I have had the same response with my snake and gerbils in that everyone says that snakes just get addicted to gerbils and mine could care less. I wish mine was a little more addicted. She eats fine for a few weeks then takes a few weeks off. Not a real consistent feeder on frozen mice, live mice, rats, or gerbils. I have come to terms with her being a picky eater though and at the end of the day gerbils are a dream to raise vs mice or rats. No experience with ASF's