ASF: Introducing new members to a colony?

[MikeMars]

ASF: Introducing new members to a colony?


Hello there,

I have heard and read that ASFs tend to kill new members of an already established colony new, with that I mean when a female has had her first litter. I saw a video a while back whereby somebody had a solution, I placed a dividing screen in a box. Which created two separate sections in that one box. And he would place the entire colony into one section and the new member into the other. They could interact with each other through the screen, i.e. seeing, hearing, and smelling each other. But they could not hurt each other. After 1 or 2 weeks, he would remove the screen and by that time the new ASF could be integrated into the group without any violence/killings.

The person used normal boxes, I have lab bins so I can not put a screen in the middle of the bin, as I have a hopper feed. This makes things complicated, so I was thinking, what would happen If have two lab bins, one with a colony let's call that one lab-bin-A and another lab bin with different AFSs that I want to introduce to lab-bin-A let's call the second one lab-bin-B. I would have my new ASFs in lab-bin-B for a week or so, letting their oder soak into the substrate then I would remove those new ASFs from lab-bin-B and place the colony of lab-bin-A into lab-bin-B and let them roam in the used substrate of new AFSs. The new ASFs would be placed in lab-bin-A with fresh substrate and after a week, I would do the same thing again. Removing the new ASFs and placing the colony into the "dirty"/used substrate of the new ASFs


By doing this, I would try to familiarize the colony with the scent of the new AFSs and thus hopefully, get them accepted by the group. Then after 2 or 4 weeks of rotating the ASFs I would introduce the new members to the group.

What do y'all think about such an operation, would I succeed?

[Lord Sorril]

What do y'all think about such an operation, would I succeed?

That all depends on your colony and their temperament.

I bred ASFs for years as feeders and the rate of murder/cannibalism within my colony was staggering.
I tried different diets, enrichment toys, light cycles, and selective breeding, but, their productivity was unreliable compared to rats and mice.

Eventually I had all of my breed age Multi's separated and single-housed. I would rotate a single male through the females enclosures on a daily basis.
(So every 7 females would have 1 male-the male would get a day off when there was a female expecting or with a litter)
If a female killed the male then she would get fed off...this solved the murder issue, but, females would consume their litters unprovoked-even at wean age-this made them unreliable-and costly.
I would make sure that a female with a new litter would not have her cage cleaned for at least two weeks.
However, sometimes it didn't matter, walking in to find an entire wean age litter slaughtered was a huge downer...I tried to selectively breed this out-and did not succeed.
I'm glad I don't have to deal with them again...

[Bogertophis]

That all depends on your colony and their temperament.

I bred ASFs for years as feeders and the rate of murder/cannibalism within my colony was staggering.
I tried different diets, enrichment toys, light cycles, and selective breeding, but, their productivity was unreliable compared to rats and mice.

Eventually I had all of my breed age Multi's separated and single-housed. I would rotate a single male through the females enclosures on a daily basis.
(So every 7 females would have 1 male-the male would get a day off when there was a female expecting or with a litter)
If a female killed the male then she would get fed off...this solved the murder issue, but, females would consume their litters unprovoked-even at wean age-this made them unreliable-and costly.
I would make sure that a female with a new litter would not have her cage cleaned for at least two weeks.
However, sometimes it didn't matter, walking in to find an entire wean age litter slaughtered was a huge downer...I tried to selectively breed this out-and did not succeed.
I'm glad I don't have to deal with them again...

That violence & loss would get old very fast.

I raised a few gerbils in the past & they're nowhere near as bad as ASFs, but they would viciously attack any "outsider" so it wasn't like with my rats, mice & hamsters, where I could avoid inbreeding. The only way I got them to accept unknown gerbils was to give them a 10 gal. tank full of soft dirt to dig in, & which they found irresistible, so they all ended up smelling the same (of dirt, lol).

I only raise mice these days- & while they're very docile (they're affectionate with each other, & I never get bit when handling them to clean cages etc), once in a while one of them (almost ALWAYS a male) will decide to savage the same mice he had previously been living peacefully with right after I clean their cages- as if they're no longer recognized. The "offenders" thereby "volunteer" to become snake dinners. Happily it's far less an issue than what you described with ASFs.

[MikeMars]

Hey thanks for your reply,

I had heard a lot of stories about ASFs that bite
After I heard that I bought stainless steel mesh gloves.
I thought I would be safe, which it kinda helps but last week when I what to take them out of there cage. One bit right through the glove and drawn blood.

But what I wanted to ask you, I noticed that the majority of my ASFs 96% (I bought 12F/4M for the purpose of placing 4F/1M per lab bin, 6 died within a week due to stress) so 96% are non bitters when I pick them up.


After a 1, 5 months so that's around last week, I got my first litter and two days ago I saw another litter, both were 5 pups. It seems that I can grab the pups while to mother is on top of them. That surprised me as I would have assumed she would viciously defend her younings.

Based on this information would you assume that my ASFs will kill males or younings?

[nikkubus]

I'm not sure why you want to combine them in the first place, but I wouldn't risk it. I would just grow a colony larger by keeping some holdbacks if you want a larger colony. They are temperamental enough without newcomers. That's just me though. I had the best success with 1.3-5 groups. When one was getting up there in age, I'd let a young one stay in there and feed off the adult that was ending it's reproductive usefulness. 1.1 or 1.2's seemed to have a lot of cannibalism for me.

[MikeMars]

(eventually) I want to bring new genes into my colonies as I heard that prolonged inbreeding will decrease litter sizes.

[nikkubus]

(eventually) I want to bring new genes into my colonies as I heard that prolonged inbreeding will decrease litter sizes.

I think your best bet to accomplish that is to place a freshly weaned ones together to establish new colonies rather than trying to introduce outsiders to established adults. I was able to do it with young ones like that with some level of success.

[MikeMars]

I was able to do it with young ones like that with some level of success.

Yes, I heard that before I was planning to use that method as a primary way of dealing with this subject. But wanted to know alternative approaches as well. However, I will experiment with the method I outlined in the OP. Anyhow, you saying you had some level of success does not sound like it worked 100% of the time. Could you elaborate on that?

[nikkubus]

Having bred rats, mice, and ASF's, I think ASF's were the hardest to introduce by far. I've never had young rats or mice introduced and anything serious happen. They might do a little bit of bickering to figure out who the alpha is, but it's not usually bad until they are a bit older. With ASF's they still can get a little out of control even when pretty young sometimes, and I've had to break up fights. These were ones raised in colonies inches away from each other, so they should have been used to the scent of the others to at least some degree. After separating them and trying again, sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't and I had to give up with that set. Keep in mind, this all happened when they were a lot newer to the hobby, and yours are likely a bit more domesticated, but domesticated to humans doesn't always translate perfectly to better temperament with each other so I'd still be careful. I generally would introduce them into a brand new tub with no scents at all so there was less to get territorial about, and keep a spray bottle with cool water and something to divide them handy ready to intervene if necessary.

Best of luck!