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Switching to ASF's?

Wyldrose

Wyldrose

Addicted to corns!
I have bred mice for over 5 years now and the smell still bugs me. Currently I have 2.20 plus some pinkys/fuzzys. I picked up a pair of asf's a couple months back and they just had a litter of 1.5 I culled the male and kept all 5 females. Finding a female asf here is almost as hard as a needle in a hay stack, I managed to talk the owner of the petshop in to letting me buy one(I wanted 2). So I hope to start a colony of them soon. The pinks are the same size as mice. They are also desert animals and don't drink as much water so urinte less then mice. So basically smell free like gerbils.

Now if breeding works out with my gang will there be any issue switching from asf's to mice if I sell baby corns off to people? I know the only petshop who sells asf's usually only sells live sub/to adult males as feeders. I could always reduce the number of mice and just make sure I have mouse pinks for baby snakes until they are sold and just feed my stock asf's. I also ordered in a stock of frozen mice and am expecting another order next week. Mice didn't do much this winter, they had babies and ate most of them...

I know corns are basically garberators and will eat anything you put in front of them.

My son said this is his fav smiley: :bounce: lol
 
"...and just make sure I have mouse pinks for baby snakes until they are sold and just feed my stock asf's..."

ASFs are a great food source, especially for Ball Pythons. The problem that has arisen when feeding them to BPs is that they are like Crack Cocaine, a very difficult habit to break (the same issue is seen with feeding them gerbils). As you stated, corns are not as fussy an eater as Bps so maybe it won't be an issue. The NB ASFs are slightly bigger than mouse pinks and have a light fur covering too. They breed like crazy so keeping up with demand once a colony is started has never seemed to have been an issue. Give them lots of things to chew so they don't destroy their housing, etc.
I'd love to hear your progress should you choose to continue down this track.
Good Luck!

Terri
 
Thank you Terri! I do plan to get a BP in next little while, rats(norway/black) are banned up here, you can buy them frozen, but not live. So I had planned to feed asf's to the BP if my breeder friend ever gets some eggs lol! Petsmart had a huge normal boy in for $95 and I almost snatched him up lol! If I can get one through a breeder I will! My petsmart corn was full of worms when I got her, she's finally worm free and eating good now.
ASF pups look like wrinkly old men with their gaurd hairs lol! She had a small litter, but this was her first.
I just hope I can get them to switch between asf's and mice, I have 4 hamsters now, 1.1 syrian and 1.1 dwarfs, so if they give me babies I can feed them off too as some thing different.
 
small word of the wise, i used to breed ASF's and discovered that they are MASSIVE chewers, anything they can get their teeth on can and WILL be destroyed. so make sure their bin is tooth proof lol

Bobbis001005.jpg


these pinks are about 2 days old, and they already have a bit of fur. I'm new to corns but i've read somewhere that fur can be a bit of a problem. other than that though i dont see a problem with them at all.
 
I keep them in aquariums with mesh lids and glass water bottles :)
I hope I get some litters that size! lol Fur is not digestiable, since they have such a small amount I don't think there will be an issue, they transition well to peach fuzzys and regular fuzzys. Just bigger poo lol!
 
this is from a trio, they always have them all in one big pile and its a total team effort to take care of them, its really cool to watch how well they all work together, even dad gets involved, cleaning them and keeping them warm :) I kinda miss having them around SOMETIMES lol but they are absolutely NOT hand trainable lol trust me i tried! :p
 
do AFS smell? I raise rats for my Ball Python and I have 9 pet rats many I had before the Python and can totally deal with the smell. I bought a colony of 6 mice.. EWWWW!!! they are nasty smelly creatures! and have given me only two litters that they did not eat! spoiled monsters that would prefer to run on their wheels, eat and play then take care of their young!
 
I keep ASF and mice. but I really only feed the asf babies to any snakes that will not take f/t or live mice. They are my last resort food item for snakes that won't take anything else that I am worried are losing weight. I just worry about being able to switch them back to mice if I give them ASF all the time, but they are great for getting difficult feeders eating. Mice are smellier, but I really enjoy keeping them more. The downsides of keeping ASF is that they don't really get tame and will bite especially when there are babies around. Also adult ASF are too big to feed to most adult corns so only the babies are that useful as food. It feels wasteful to me when it's time to cull the older adults because I don't keep any species that will be able to handle that size food item.
 
They are finally breeding like crazy now :
009-17.jpg

I counted 39 before the last litter was born. So far the corns that ate them have also ate mice and rat pups. I tried mixing up all 3 and they don't appear to be picky. Except one of my males. 3 year old Striker coiled "killed" it and then didn't eat it. I'll try again with him next week. I do plan to keep a smaller colony of mice on had too. Maybe 2-3 10 galls with 1 male and 3-4 females.
 
i'm recently new to the forum and was reading all of the new threads...sorry if this is a really silly question, but what does ASF stand for? >.<
 
African Soft Fur.

Although... I live in Africa... and I only breed fancy rats. Its the smell of those darn mice that does it. I'd rather buy pinks when I need (Jade is th only one that small at the moment)
 
Chibsters said:
i'm recently new to the forum and was reading all of the new threads...sorry if this is a really silly question, but what does ASF stand for? >.<
Click to expand...

ASF = African Soft Furred
also known as a multimammate rat

ghosthousecorns said:
I keep ASF and mice. but I really only feed the asf babies to any snakes that will not take f/t or live mice. They are my last resort food item for snakes that won't take anything else that I am worried are losing weight. I just worry about being able to switch them back to mice if I give them ASF all the time, but they are great for getting difficult feeders eating. Mice are smellier, but I really enjoy keeping them more. The downsides of keeping ASF is that they don't really get tame and will bite especially when there are babies around. Also adult ASF are too big to feed to most adult corns so only the babies are that useful as food. It feels wasteful to me when it's time to cull the older adults because I don't keep any species that will be able to handle that size food item.
Click to expand...

I had read and heard the same thing several times before I picked up a breeding trio a few years ago. Most adult corns will handle most adult ASFs just fine. I have only had a couple retired breeders that I felt were too big for a corn but my Dumeril was more than happy to pick up the slack there. :licklips:

ASF's have an advantage over both mice and rats. If you end up having too many, they wont outgrow corns like rats would and with minimal smell they wont overpower you in that sense like mice would.
 
I have 2 male ball pythons so I have a use for the large adults :)
Rats are illegal here so I like that I can breed lots of asf's if my bp's need 2-3 a feeding.
I counted last night 44 asf's that started with 2. Mice on the other hand have eaten more babies then they have allowed to lived.
 
I used have 4 1.4-5 mouse colonies back in the day. I really couldnt get them to keep the hand full of snakes going back then. They were nice to have when I had picky baby corns though. I have recently thought about getting into mice again because now I am up to 50+ corns and almost 100 eggs about to hatch soon. But I just dont see me talking the girl friend into keeping the stinky things. Maybe ASF's are my out though. How hard are they to get a hold of a couple?
 
Reptileman81 said:
I used have 4 1.4-5 mouse colonies back in the day. I really couldnt get them to keep the hand full of snakes going back then. They were nice to have when I had picky baby corns though. I have recently thought about getting into mice again because now I am up to 50+ corns and almost 100 eggs about to hatch soon. But I just dont see me talking the girl friend into keeping the stinky things. Maybe ASF's are my out though. How hard are they to get a hold of a couple?
Click to expand...
Josh - From everything I've read, you've got to find someone who has them, pet stores don't seem to have them, or very few have them.
 
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