I have been keeping ASF since January this year (started with 2 young females and one young male). My original male died of wet-tail as it is very hard to detect in soft furs (they don't waste lots of moisture in urine as hamsters and mice do) but I saved the pregnant female and litter with medication (lost 7 out of 9 babies though). I was trying to see if they would smell more if I left cleaning for 4 weeks or more. The smell didn't change but they got sick
The other female was 'rejected' by her sister before the wet-tail happened. I had to separate her out because her sister was biting her more and more often with blood being left on the food dish and such (this is VERY odd for family members to do). She lived alone till I picked out a nice male for her a month later (some sort of hypo, red eyes anyways). She has had one litter with him so far.
After the original pregnant female's next litter was born and raised I was stuck with trying to add a male to an establised group (I didn't think holding on to a son was a good start to a colony - I am trying to avoid inbreeding). So I chose a full grown male from the store I work at (he was living with 3 other males of varying ages). And put him in a small container within the colony tank for 24 hours (this can work for gerbils so I thought soft furs would take to it as well). Well, it sort of worked (I also cleaned the whole tank out before adding him). I say sort of because the top female didn't kill him. However she did bite him once, very hard which put him on the defensive (biting any female that came near). Everyone stopped trying to bite each other after another 48 hours. It's been about 5 weeks since they were put together and no one seems to 'like' the male I chose. They will occasionally nip and wrestle with him and will not let him sleep with the babies (the original male was a fantastic dad that sat with the babies more often then the female did). But maybe pregnant females are just moody? There's been 2 litters born so far and another to come soon so perhaps they are feeling crowded (it's a 20 gal) but my snakes are hungy so that shouldn't be a long term issue :laugh: Every tank has one or two 8" running wheels so I find that they don't chew anything - even cardboard because they prefer to run.
I am feeding them: horse pellets (apple cinnamon crunch or something), parrot mix, rodent blocks (much hated by all), gourmet seed mixes made for rodents, bunnies and cockatiels, spray millet, mealworms, kingworms and crickets, occassionally crested gecko diet, alfalfa hay, quality cat crunchies (Arcana, Eagle Pack).
Bedding: a light layer of pine shavings covered by ultra carefresh, changed weekly.
