ASF Size Chart

[Mike Cavanaugh]

Hey Mike can you post the ages of them too? that would help a noob asf breeder like my self to see if Im getting good growth.

IMHO, that would be hard if not impossible to do because I have found that growth rate varies greatly depending on a few key things:

1.) litter size. When a female has really big litters, it takes a longer period of time before the babies mature enough to be weined. I am guessing the bigger the litter, the less milk mom has to offer to each kid... Make sense?

2.) Number of litters in the tank. Often times if there are two different litters in the same tank, one of the moms will get lazy, and let the other mom do most or all of the feeding for both litters. Once again, that means less milk per baby so it takes longer to grow and develop.

3.) The mom and dad themselves... Some parents simply take better care of the babies then other moms resulting in different rates of growth.

4.) Once a baby is weined and thrown into the grow up tubs joining older same sex generations, some catch on faster then others. Some will immediately eat and drink and grow quickly... Others are shy and timid and take a little longer to get the hang of things without mom. Obviously they grow at a slower rate then the confident siblings that eat and drink and play with the others immediately.

5.) Genetic differences. Just like people there are some ASF's that just don't get as big as other ASF's even when comparing siblings. I have 4 unrelated lines right now. Some seem to grow faster then others, but the others that grow slower seem to get to a bigger size then the ones that grow quickly.

6.) Sex. Females take twice as long to grow to large size as males do. I have found that a female simply stops growing right around the medium / large size until she gets pregnant. Then she gets much bigger. I have older females in the grow up tub right now that have never been introduced to a male since being weined, and they litterally stopped growing right around the medium / large size.

7.) Diet! of course what you feed them has all kinds of impacts on sex ratios of the babies and growth rates. Connie is much more knowledgable in this area then I am so hopefully she can chime in.

Having said all that, now I will guess on the averages. Again, these are ROUGH guesses because of all the factors listed above.

pinky - just born
fuzzy - 1-2 weeks old
weinling -3 weeks old
small - 4 weeks old
Medium - males about 5-7 weeks old /// females about 5-10 weeks old.
Large - Males about 2-3 months old /// females if not bred may not even get this big.


Hope this helps. Not trying to make it look overly complicated... but bottom line, when trying to figure out age to size ratios, it is that complicated!