For small collections breeding your own feeders isn't practical, there will be little savings when you factor in the time and hassle required. But there comes a point when you can see a large savings over buying feeders, you just have to pay for it with a bit of sweat equity. And with a good rack and auto-watering setup, the daily maintenance can be quite minimal. Mine are set up so that they could go up to 2 weeks without any attention, even though I never leave them unattended that long. Just makes it easier for the kids or pet sitter when I go on vacation. I also take advantage of those times when production is high to build up a stock of frozen, which recently paid off when some family issues made it impossible to keep the rats breeding properly and I had basically no production.
Now as for asf's, I actually kind of think of them as a little magic bullet for BPs. I've been able to use them many times to jump start a problem feeder where nothing else was working. But everything said above is also true about them. They will be very bitey until you have a chance to cull out those and get the non-biters breeding. They are big time chewers regardless, I actually sell my extras to a friend, and noticed one trying to chew a hole in the BOTTOM of the transport tub.
For those using mortar tub based racks, a small piece of aluminum flashing and a couple rivets will more or less chew proof those annoying holes. Just cut a square about 3", bend a quarter inch or so of one end around a stiff piece of wire to make a kind of hooked end, slide that over the outer edge of the tub and roll the rest to the inside, then just drill and rivet it into place. Whish I had a picture to post, never had a chew out where that was done.
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