Quote Originally Posted by frankykeno View Post
With my regular rats I don't allow the males to stay with the females but with the ASF's everything I've read or been told is to leave them in their family group. From what I've seen in my original trio the females handle the litters communally and the male is a very good parent, often helping with keeping the smaller ones warm and licking them clean while the females are off feeding and resting. The females give birth regularily but seem to regulate both frequency of litters and size of litters so they don't lose condition at all from what I've seen. They are very quick to toss big daddy ASF off them if they don't want to bother with him LOL.

I do find the ASF's really like multiple hides in the large 30 gallon I keep them in, seems to make them more relaxed and less aggressive to have somewhere to stash their babies and retreat into. I also provide multiple small feeding dishes rather than one large one so everyone can easily access food without any crowding or tussles for something to nibble on. The females love to use these same dishes to park babies in (handy dandy ASF baby rat playpens apparently LOL). I actually had one smart mama who emptied out the food dish last month and very neatly delivered her litter into the now empty dish.
Feeding the same food as regular rats right?