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Dissapointed in natal rats

I think it depends largely on the "line" you get. A friend of mine has recently got into these and hers breed very, very well. The guy she got hers from ONLY breeds ASF, he's phased out his mice and rats completely because his ASFs are breeding MUCH better! lol WIERD!
 
batwrangler said:
My full-term females weigh between 90-100 grams and drop to about 60-70 grams post partum. The adult males tend to weigh between 60-70 grams.
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That agrees with what I see in the females, possibly slightly larger, but I find my adult males average around 120g fully grown.

Ssthisto said:
I wouldn't use dog food for Natals myself - I find mine won't eat it - they leave the dog food in my homemade mix and eat the rabbit mix and wildbird mix instead.
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I have the same experience, they are omnivorous but given the choice they will ignore animal protein. Mine are fed almost exclusively on grains and vegetables, with a decent handful of seeds and nuts ... instead of adding dogfood to the dry mix, I give them parrot food. I also give them sprigs of millet at regular intervals - millet is without a doubt their favourite thing in the world ever.

If I didn't enjoy keeping mice so much I'd replace them all with multis - I find them much more productive and a better size...
 
Velvet said:
I think it depends largely on the "line" you get. A friend of mine has recently got into these and hers breed very, very well. The guy she got hers from ONLY breeds ASF, he's phased out his mice and rats completely because his ASFs are breeding MUCH better! lol WIERD!
Click to expand...

Is your friend also in Africa? One of the problems people in the USA have is that we are all working from lab stock imported about 60 years ago and are not allowed to import any fresh stock. :(
 
toyah said:
That agrees with what I see in the females, possibly slightly larger, but I find my adult males average around 120g fully grown.



I have the same experience, they are omnivorous but given the choice they will ignore animal protein. Mine are fed almost exclusively on grains and vegetables, with a decent handful of seeds and nuts ... instead of adding dogfood to the dry mix, I give them parrot food. I also give them sprigs of millet at regular intervals - millet is without a doubt their favourite thing in the world ever.

If I didn't enjoy keeping mice so much I'd replace them all with multis - I find them much more productive and a better size...
Click to expand...


Your adult males are bruisers! None of my ASFR are more than about 6-months old. Maybe they will get bigger. :)
 
They are bruisers, but it suits me fine - the big adults are far too big for corn snakes of course, but my royal pythons love them, and I prefer feeding them multis to rats anyway.

Waldo, before you cull off the multis I would try ditching the dogfood and giving them a cheap rabbit food with some parrot food added, plus millet. See if that gets their production up. The rate of growth you're describing screams out malnutrition to me, these guys simply do not grow if they don't like the food they're given.
 
I've tried other food, they don't seem to like anything except dog food and sunflower seeds. I'll try to get them eating better food though.
 
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