Transcription
Hey YouTube, Courtney from CD Exotics here. And today, we're gonna do another video on ASF rats. So, I've been getting a lot of questions on how I breed my rats, my ASF rats in particular. There doesn't seem to be a ton of information out there, a lot of mixed information. So, I just want to kind of go over how I breed my rats. I am, I feel like I'm pretty successful with them. I mean, right now I have a ton of grow-outs, they breed really well. So, I just kind of wanted to explain the way I breed my ASFs.
Alright, so it is cleaning day today. So, I do apologize that some of these tubs are a bit messy, but I just want to kind of show you guys. So, here's one of my breeding colonies. You can see there's a ton of babies in there. These guys are about, I'll probably wean these guys today. They're about three, four weeks old. But you can see, I keep three females to one male. I'm not sure this, they don't escape. And I weaned the babies at around three or four weeks. I just kind of go off of the size that they look like.
So, here's some, here's some other babies in here. These are a bit younger. These guys are probably, and I probably wean them here. But you can see, this was my original breeding rack that I built. And these are V18 tubs. So, you see what I find you said, this is, it's cleaning done. So, there's a couple more babies. Um-hmm, good, good one. To sure, of course, I can't. Um, okay. So, this tub only has three females in it, but the back of it is kind of right there. You can kind of see it. They don't have tons of space in these. These are kind of smaller, but they do fine. I do still run three females to a male in those. But I do prefer tubs. Sorry, this is dirty in here. There's a lot more space in here. I mean, you can see all four, but the adults are up here plus a ton of babies. And the tubs only half pulled out. So, there's a lot more space. They have a little bit more headroom, which I kind of like. The V18s, I think are great for mice. And I said, I mean, they're working, but I'm not gonna be building any more of these V18 racks.
Um, so over here, I want to show you out on my tub setup. So, this is the Reptile Basics 11-quart tub. See, in the bottom, I put Sweet PDZ. I get that from Tractor Supply. And that helps with some of the ammonia smell. And then I put in these pine pellets. They are like an equine pine bedding. And when they get wet, they expand and kind of turn into sawdust. You can also use wood stove pellets depending on the time of year. And then this is just a kiln-dried pine shavings. And I just, I normally don't, you know, I normally spread it out. But I get this at Tractor Supply too. This is the bigger flake. I don't like the real fine one. I like the bigger, bigger flakes. Hassium here, they're pretty big. I prefer those. So, I just kind of do, that's way too much in here. I usually do half of a two-ounce Solo cup, little portion cup of the Sweet PDZ. So, about an ounce of the Sweet PDZ in the bottom. I do an eight-ounce Styrofoam cup, the pine pellets. And then I just do a couple handfuls of this. And I put way too much in here. I do maybe about an inch layer in here. Something I see it. So, you can see, I mean, it's, it's not very deep in there, but that works pretty good for me. I was originally breeding in these bigger tubs here. And now I just use it for grow-outs. So, these guys here in this tub, they're gonna want to escape. I actually, I wasn't paying attention, not paying attention, but I was keeping track of when, how long it was taking me to grow them out. So, this, it's been down here that I was just showing you. Um, so that bin, they were born on March 7th through March 14th. I don't have exact dates when they were born, but I did wean them all on April 4th. So, they are now, I think, six to seven weeks old. And I just weighed one yesterday and it was 42 grams. I think 42 grams. Yeah, it was 42 grams. So, that is a small, small rat. Um, so six or seven weeks to get to a small rat. Last week, they were the size of weaned rats. They were between 30 and 35 grams. Um, so, and that was at five to six weeks old. So, a regular weaned rat is, you know, three. But three weeks old is about that size. So, they are a couple weeks behind. But honestly, it was better than I thought. I kind of thought it was taking them a lot longer than that just because I don't pay attention to, uh, to when they're born and when I pull and everything. I just put them in the bins and when they get to the size that I need, then I feed them off. So, but I am trying to keep track of how long it is taking me to get them to size that I can feed my breeder females. And that's usually between 70 and 80 grams is usually when I, when I feed them to my breeder females. And I have been, I just started feeding two. I know a lot of people have been, you know, during the breeding season, they say they feed two rats to their females. Um, you know, if I was feeding a medium rat, I don't know if I would do that. But these guys are a little bit smaller.
So, all right. So, you can kind of see here and there's not, it's not a lot of food. I've said, today's cleaning day, so I gotta fill up the food. But this is a quarter-inch mesh. And I did finally get them eating through it. For the longest time, they wouldn't eat through it. And I was having to like, put scoops of food in the bins every day. And that's a giant pain. But now they are eating the food. I mean, see, this is kind of a small, small kibble food. So, they are eating that through the quarter-inch mesh. And, you know, back here, I have quarter-inch, one-inch back there. This, I built this a little bit differently. I build it for, I had Missouri up here. And I don't like, I don't like the Missouri. I feel like my guys don't do great on it. Um, they do kind of take some of it off. So, I have to, my son loves doing this job, pushing all the food back, back in. That's his favorite thing to do. And it occupies him. But you can see, I put the food all up here. They all have water nozzles. So, I have some over here on this rack. And you can see this is the half-inch mesh. And I feed them the bigger, the doggie bag over here. So, doggie bag in here. And in this trash can is the food I feed my ASFs. My said, he's a small kibble. I get it from Southern States, which is local to me. So, I'll try to, I'll try and put that link in the description. I wish I had a bag because I would take a picture of the bag and let you guys see the nutrition facts on it. But I will try and find it on Southern States' website and put the link in the description. So, check that out below. If you don't have a Southern States near you, you should be able to find something similar. It's just a dog food. It's a 21% dog food with 9% fat. And they do, they do great on it. They don't eat a ton of it. They probably eat, I don't know, maybe a cup and a half a week per colony. Because usually, they might eat two cups a week. I usually can put about a cup and a half, two cups up top here. And you can see at the end of the week, how much is left. So, that's not too bad. The rat, the bigger rats definitely weigh more. And you can kind of see, you know, I mean, these tubs are a lot smaller. They use probably a third of the bedding that I use for these big concrete tubs. And it's, I mean, I get the same number, same number of rats out of it. So, I mean, that's, you know, I feel like I'm saving a lot of money using the ASF, even though I do have to grow them out a little bit longer.
So, I start my hatchlings on weaned ASFs. If I have a really tiny hatchling, I will feed it a smaller one that maybe isn't quite ready to be weaned, like a hopper size. But for the most part, on my hatchlings, I start on freshly weaned ASFs and they do great on them. Said, they do grow slower. But I mean, sometimes that's a good and a bad thing. I mean, it's great if you have a bunch of hatchlings, you know, then your stuff isn't getting too big after just one week. You know, you can kind of stretch it out a couple weeks. So, these are one of my grow-out bins. If I showed this one earlier, but I do not sex them. I leave them in here. Try to stay close. This before they state. I leave them in there. Start another one until I either feed them off or I go ahead and make new colonies. And the nice thing about that is I kind of make new colonies based off the ones that I see they're pregnant. So, it does take them a little bit longer to be ready to breed. Like I said, I haven't been keeping track of how old they are other than these has been here down here that I was showing you guys earlier. I just, you know, usually by the time they are ready to feed off to my breeders, some of the females are already pregnant. Occasionally, I will have them have babies in these grow-out tubs. And I mean, it's really not a big deal. I've let them raise them up in there and that's worked out. Or if I have some fresh pinkies in another one of my breeding colonies, I will go ahead and pull the babies from the grow-out tub and just kind of sprinkle them in some of the breeding colonies. And, you know, they, they raise them. There's no problems because I, I do, I find that, you know, some of them to kind of get eaten if you leave them in the grow-out. And I feel like those are just kind of bonus babies. So, said, it makes it easier because I don't have to try and sex everything. You know, and I don't have to have a bin specifically for, you know, females that I'm holding back. I just, you know, by the time they get to a breeder size, you know, that's the size I need anyway. So, I'm growing them all out to that size basically. So, it makes it easy. Said, with the other rats, you've got to have a separate bin because they need to be a lot bigger to breed. That I would actually feed off to my females. And also, the great thing about ASFs, I feel like people don't mention this enough, is that they will never get too big for your ball pythons to eat. So, I mean, I could have, you know, it's not like with the regular rats, like I have to keep on top and putting them in the freezer. And if I don't do that, then they're gonna be too big. I do have a boa. So, at some point, I'll put her in a video. But, you know, she can't eat stuff that's a little bit bigger. But right now, she's still only eating like large rats. So, I mean, if I have a bigger breeder rat, she still doesn't eat them. I mean, I kind of put them in the freezer. Maybe one day she'll eat them. But I said, these guys will never outgrow your ball pythons. So, I mean, if I had extras, I could just keep feeding them, you know, until I need them. Or I could put them in the freezer if I don't feel like feeding them. But I usually just keep feeding them because at some point, I will use them. And they said, they, they really don't eat much food. These colonies go through, they go through. To show you this bowl, I fill this bowl up. I have no clue. I have no clue how much this holds. But I do fill that up, probably one and a half fits back here. Um, and they can kind of see, they eat that in about a week, which is less than what the other rats eat. They eat probably about two of those a week for a breeding colony. So, I said, I tried Missouri. My ASFs would not even touch it. And my regular rats didn't really eat it well either. And it was a giant pain. My Tractor Supply had to order it in special for me. It took weeks to get it in. It was really expensive. I mean, it's, you know, it was like $35 a bag or something. And I pay $19.99 for the, the food I feed my ASFs, this little, little kibble dog food. And then I pay $13.99 for the doggie bag. And I don't supplement either. I, I don't do any kind of sunflower seeds. I don't do any kind of supplementing other than if I have scrap vegetables, you know, if I have like some carrot peelings or anything like that, I will feed that to them. But I don't supplement for protein or anything like that. And it's just, you know, fresh, fresh fruits and veggies depending on what I have that week that doesn't go to the roaches.
So, another thing that I will say about the ASF rats, and I feel like I don't know as I've heard anyone else really talk about, is the fact that I keep, I keep all my rats in my snake room. Which I would prefer that I didn't. But honestly, it works out really well for the ASFs because they prefer the higher temperatures. So, I keep my snake room around 80. Which is like max that I can go for the regular rats. If I kind of get much above that, I start losing some of the pregnant females. You know, if I, if it spikes and, you know, if something I have any kind of little hiccup and it's, it's getting up to like 84, I have dead rats. But the ASFs, they do awesome at those higher temperatures. They breed better at those higher temperatures. I feel like it may not make sense because, you know, in Africa, the ball pythons live in the termite mounds and in these ASF burrows. So, it would make complete sense that they would do better at the higher temperatures. So, that's really nice for some of the smaller breeders like me that don't have two separate buildings. So, that way I don't have to keep my snakes colder than I want to, you know, for the ambient room temperature. I don't have to worry about my rats getting too hot. They just breed better at those higher temperatures. So, I might pop my room up to like 82 once I get rid of the regular rats. I'm not sure. I might still keep one colony of regular rats. I haven't decided. But that way I can kind of feed a couple hatchlings, you know, a rat or two before they go out the door. Just so I know that there won't be any issues switching. I've never had an issue switching. I've never had a customer say, hey, I can't get, you know, I can't get this snake to eat mice or rats. Honestly, I feel like ball pythons get stuck on mice way more than ASFs. I just feel like ASFs aren't as common and people don't know as much about them. And they just know this stigma. Back in the day, when I'm super hard to get them and everyone said that they were, you know, like crack for ball pythons and your ball python would never touch anything else if it ate an ASF rat. So, people still freak out. I don't feel like that's true. I can flip-flop no problems. I haven't been the last couple weeks just because I've been cutting way back on my rat production. And I've actually been putting out quite a few of them in the freezer. My cats eat the rats too. They eat them frozen. So, I've been kind of trying to stock the freezer for those just because big, you grow quicker. You know, I can put them in the freezer for the cats and, you know, for weeks they eat smalls.
So, I hope that kind of covered some of the questions that everyone has been asking about the ASF rats. If you do have any other questions, make sure you leave me a comment below and I will do my best to answer. Said, I feel like I covered most of the common questions that I've been getting about them. I don't feel like my ball pythons get stuck on them. They do eat much better. I can take, you know, if a breeding female and she is kind of picky on food, you know, on and off because the time of year, I can put a regular rat in there and she doesn't, she's not even interested in it. And I can take that rat out and I can put in an ASF and usually immediately she will hit it. So, they just eat better. And if they're eating better, they're growing better. And I mean, that's what we all want. We all, all the breeders, we want our, our ball pythons getting bigger so that we can breed them. I also do, I feel like a lot of mine, even my pastels that I have bred and that they have been fed only ASFs, I feel like they are holding their colors really well. I have a couple pastel orange dreams that the orange is just so vibrant. And I, I don't know if that's from the ASF. I know other people have, I know Gavin from Both You Balls Too talks about how he thinks the colors stay a lot better with the ASFs. So, I mean, you know, that might be true. Maybe I should have tried to do an experiment there. But honestly, I just think the ASFs are better. I think they eat better. And I just want my snakes eating so that they will get bigger and I can breed them. Bugs. Said, if you have any questions, make sure you comment below. Like, share, subscribe. And I will see you next time.