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My African Soft-furred rats...

Velvet

Velvet

Totally corn crazy!!!!
AKA "Natal Rats" and we call them Multimammary mice or "super" mice here...lol

Here are Boris and Doris! lol No referrence to any movies or anything, the male just looked like a Boris and Doris rhymes...lol

Doris had about 8 pups there other day! Her first litter!!! I am so so excited!!! Keeping ALL the females and at least two males. :)
 

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lol thanks Gene!!!

I am sparing most, if not all of the first litter so that I can get a few more colonies of these going. :) But the rest are going to be "Mouse Burgers"...Gourmet mouse burgers actually, these guys are pretty darn expensive here if you buy them from a petshop!!
 
Be careful, once the pups are scooting around they will be able to get through that mesh easily.
 
Too cute! I am looking into buying a trio or quad group of breeding mice or asf rats. Finding them is near impossible and I already have one hatchling who is due to shed :( I had a question for you? Are the babies/pups small enough for a newly born cornsnake hatchling? Thank you, Lindsay
 
ASF rats don't really work for hatchling corn snakes, newborn ASF rats are about the size of a 2-3 day old mouse pink.

If you're going to have hatchling corn snakes, mice are best.
 
Here are the 1.2 colony starters, plus babies... I also added a #2 pencil so you can see the size of the pinks... about the size of med mouse pinks...
 

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I'm fastenated by these afs. Do you enjoy having them? I understand they tend to bite, is that so? I'm afraid I'd get a set up and then bounce them off the wall.
 
I set up 2 groups of 1.2 in March. They have had LOTS of babies since then! I also raise domestically bred deer mice, so tend to compare them to the deer mice, and to regular mice and rats. I set up the ASF rats in the same mouse tubs (kitty litter pans) that I normally keep 1.6 or 1.8 or so mice in.

Although the soft furs do tend to be more defensive of their babies, and they tend to give more "curiosity nips" than mice, they don't tend to jump a lot and bounce off the walls like the deer mice often do. I have been told that some strains of ASF are tamer than others, though. They supposedly live in colonies in the wild, like to burrow, and don't fight as much as mice. So I plan to experimentally set up a larger colony (with 2 males) in one of the 2' x 4' rat colony cages I use. I am thinking of using aspen, which they can burrow better in than pine, and see what happens.

I am also curious to see if they will fare better or worse than regular mice and rats over the summer. It gets REALLY hot and humid here, and even with an exhaust fan, my rodents don't breed much during the summer. I usually thin out the colony to a bare minimum, and then get started again in fall. It would be great if the soft furs could do better during this time.
 
They are so adorable!
Velvet - those pics where they are standing up I can almost hear them saying "Please miss - can I have another?" - LOL!!

I bought our trio from a guy at a reptile show. They were not handled much so they are a little nippy but he told me if you handle them from a young age that they do tame down pretty well. He would pick them up at the show (and they were bouncey!!) but once they settled in his hand - they were fine.
 
wade said:
I'm fastenated by these afs. Do you enjoy having them? I understand they tend to bite, is that so? I'm afraid I'd get a set up and then bounce them off the wall.
Click to expand...

I think they are pretty cool, but they were already sub adults when we got them. The male has chased my hand before so I avoid him, but I've pet the females a couple times, even tried to hold one, but she leapt from my hand and I spent 15 minutes chasing her around the reptile room. They can jump! and fast too... They love the wheel and all three can be found trying to run together on it, so if you keep them in tanks, they're fun to watch.
 
I'm checking around, I think I might have found a source close enough to drive to. I'm going to get some and try it out.

I'm being nervous a little because I don't have much patience for bitey or flighty rodents and I'm kind of getting the idea these fall into that catagory. I'm hoping I can breed that out of them in a few generations. ??? maybe.
 
You might luck out and get some relatively tame ones, but mine haver ALWAYS been nasty biters and nothing seems to help it. I've tried handling pups daily from birth and it made no difference. I'm on probably the 6th or 7th generation bred here, but that made no difference either.

Any time I clean the cage or even just open it to throw in food, I have to be very careful or I get one of them leaping up and biting deep into my finger and not letting go.

Production has dropped off on mine as well and I'm thinking of just feeding off all of them and clearing up the space for nice tame, prolific mice.
 
Flagg said:
You might luck out and get some relatively tame ones, but mine haver ALWAYS been nasty biters and nothing seems to help it. I've tried handling pups daily from birth and it made no difference. I'm on probably the 6th or 7th generation bred here, but that made no difference either.

Any time I clean the cage or even just open it to throw in food, I have to be very careful or I get one of them leaping up and biting deep into my finger and not letting go.
Click to expand...

Lol, well these haven't lunged at my throat yet, so it's all good. Rats are smart though and I only have one albino rat that doesn't mind me taking her babies, but she's the only one I consider a pet. All the others have figured out I steal their babies, so they're defensive when I reach in :grabbit:
 
I have bread ASF rats for about 8 months now. I have found that they are fairly tame till you let them breed. Then they get down right nasty. I have to use long tongs to get out the babies or else they WILL bite. Heck they try to chew at the tongs as soon as I put it in. They do have alot of babies though and I have had no problem feeding them to hatchlings. I got my first 1.4 group from a friend that owns a pet store and he nick named them devil rats because of there temperment. My original group is now 1.3 because after one of the female had her litter they all seemed to beat her up after that. I pulled her out the next day( as soon as I seen what had happened) but it was to late. She died the next day. I have a second group of 2.10 that is doing fine but I pull the females out as they get pregnant and put them in a different cage to have her pups. This seems to work just fine. The males dont fight I guess because there are so many females to breed that they dont have time.:)
 
I have 2 colonies of these going, the second colony is an off shoot from the first. I'd have to say the older colony was bitey, but not so much now as when I first got them. I received them from friends who also had a colony established. I put down much of their bitiness then to the fact that they had been hand fed...why, I have no idea.

It was very hard at first to remove the babies and young ones from the viv. I now wear thick leather work gloves after my first bite occur. These guys hang on when they bite, not like mice. I find the off shoot colony much tamer. The adults actually run to the other end when I go into the nesting boxes. Removing the babies is quite easy.

I thin the colonies each week whether I need them for feed or not. I have found this has reduced any fighting between the males. I always leave about 3-4 pinkies each clean out just so the females have something to nuture. I allow those left behind to grow up to the size for feeding to my adult corns as a treat, then remove any extra males at the adult mouse size.

The only negative I have found with ASFs...their faces are just to darn cute! :)

Ruth
 
I just have the two at the moment (with the 8 new babies which do not look as if they are of this earth! lol), I have heard reports of them being very aggressive and nippy but so far I have only been bitten once and it was after a rather traumatic experience for the little rat (he escaped and was chased down by my cats and myself and finally cornered and caught and the poor little chap bit me) but other than that, I have not found them to be aggressive at all, they are MUCH jumpier than mice or rats and tend to flee or cower rather than fight, whereas the rats I had would GO for you!

My two were completely unhandled when I got them and they were almost adult size already. I am now able to stroke them and pick them up and hold them without them freaking out so they are definitely tameable. I am certain that if they were handled from birth, they would be great pets!

My female Doris, had a litter of squids about a week ago and so far she has not been aggressive, I used a stick to move her out the way to see the babies in the beginning and she didn't go into "attack" mode as I expected her to, she just pushed the "nasty, dirty stick" away from her children gently but firmly. I can put my hand in her nest and stroke her and she doesn't seem to mind this. I haven't been pushing my luck though and usually wait for both parents to be out of the nest before I pull the nest box out and look at the babies. (Alien little things! lol)

Someone i know has HUGE colonies of these with multiple males and females and he says that he hasn't had ANY fighting or ANY deaths, so apparently they do well in large colonies.

Personally, I think these guys are the greatest thing since sliced bread!!! lol BEST of all is that they don't seem to smell at ALL!!!! I forgot to clean their cage one week and it STILL wasn't smelly!
 
Yesterday I cleaned all of the rodents (I HATE that job, especially when it is SO HOT like it will be until early Nov now!). My two trios of ASF rats were just FULL of babies - I hadn't thinned them for awhile, so they were a bit overcrowded. Plus I had another tub full of weaned babies from a few weeks ago. So I had quite a few weaned ASF just from those two bins. The 3rd bin has a pair I bought from a different dealer for new blood. But they seem to be ragged out old breeders - nothing from them, and they have that "geriatric" look to them now. They just looked like typical adults when I bought them a few weeks ago though.

I had lots of weaned males that I set up in a "grow tank" to become feeders for adult corns or ball pythons that don't want regular rats. I have never tried to feed them off yet (didn't have any extras until now), but I hear that BPs go crazy for them.

So I set up ALL of the female weaned soft furs in one of my big 2' x 4' rat cages. Plus I put in 3 males. I didn't count the females - I will have to remove a few yet because I have promised some pairs to a few local people. I want to see them established locally so I can get more if I should have any catastrophes here.

They are not old enough to breed yet, but it won't be long. At first, I will just leave them together. Maybe put some nest boxes in. I don't think I will be able to remove pregnant females to a different place though - I don't have the time and space for that. I will just thin down the numbers if they don't do well in this setup.

After cleaning the adults and juveniles, and removing all of the weanlings, I did not have one single animal try to bite. If they will continue to produce over the long, hot, summer, I will be very pleased with them.

Will let you know how the big colony works out after a month or two.
 
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