African Soft Furs Are The Best Rodents

What's going on, Keepers? I'm Kane, and this is Noodle. And today, I'm going to tell you why I think African soft furs are the best rodents. And we're going to break down some myths, so stick around and see what you think.

[Music] [Music]

All right, so like we stated in the title, I want to go over African soft furs and why I think they're the best rodent. So while we're talking, I guess we can kind of look through some here. I'm sure you already know what they look like, but you can get an idea of some of the different ones. These right here are some albinos that I'm working with.

Some of the things I want to show you is how friendly they are. You know, a lot of people say that African soft furs are very violent and they're bad to bite and they're aggressive and everything else. But I can show you time and time again, I'll handle these and I'll get no issues out of any of them. None of them ever try to bite me or offer to bite me. Honestly, for the most part, they don't even care sometimes if you pick them up. You know, especially if you're picking them up by the tail, which is generally how I do. And sometimes they, you know, they act like they don't like it. Of course, if I got picked up by the tail, I guess I wouldn't either.

There's some almost freshly hatched babies. They're not quite brand new. One thing about African soft furs, they come out with a little bit of fur on them. Super cute. And as you can see, the moms don't even care. I'm over here messing with their babies. I can pet them, I can grab them. They don't bother me at all. And it's funny because people talk about African soft furs like they're just terrible. Look at my hand, right? All in these babies right here. They don't give a crap. The moms aren't vicious. Like, you can just see every one of these tubs. I get in these, these are just some friendly, all-around good animals. I mean, they, they don't seem to care whatsoever. You know, sometimes you'll get one or two that's skittish that'll run, but other than that, they just don't give much issues. I, I personally love African soft furs.

So we'll go over a few of the things and then we'll check out some different sizes. One thing I love about them is, for starters, they never get too big. So we all know if you breed rats, there's an issue that once the rat gets so big, predominantly people that breed also breed ball pythons, and then the rat is too big for the ball python to eat. One good thing about African soft furs is they never get too big for the snake, which is awesome.

Another thing that is a perk is sometimes people wait for rats to go from pinkies to fuzzies or pups before they start feeding them because they say the snake needs some kind of hair on them. Once we showed the babies in there, one thing about African soft furs is they come out already with the hair on them. And we'll go ahead and switch over here. I'll show you some more babies while we chat. These are a little bit more mid-sized. You can see I've got some albinos in here I'm working on. These are some really good ones. It's got the, some people call them the saddleback or some people might also know them as pied. This is a regular pied right here. You can see it's got the patch on its back, but it's white. You can tell these are, they're albino, but in the rodent world, they call them amber eyes or cinnamons. You can see a few different variations. This right here would be the head for the pied. It's only got the stripe on the head, but it's not got the full white patches like these. As you can see, I'm just combing through these things and they're not the least bit aggressive. I've been bit one time since I've been keeping African soft furs, and it was because it was a pregnant mom, and I picked her up by the tail, and it was uncomfortable.

This one right here is really cute. This is a solid cinnamon with the ruby eye. But you can just see how chill these are. I mean, just in the matter of moments that we've been videoing, you've probably watched me handle over a hundred rodents and not one has attempted to bite me. That's one thing, the main thing I want to get across in this video is ASFs are not aggressive. Now, if you got an F1 line, F1 meaning they're close to wild or they're fresh from wild caught and they have them worked for generations, maybe they are aggressive. With that said, but if you get something like mine that's been worked multiple generations and used to people, I never have any issues with them.

So we'll go over some more things that I like about ASFs. Another thing I like is I have no issues with getting my snakes to eat. I mean, any snake is like, we're going to fast at any time, but one thing I can say for sure about my ASFs is my snakes are always ready to eat. So it's great for that because we all know how ball pythons are and sometimes your snake just goes on a fast and you can't figure out why you can't get it to eat anything. Now, I do a lot of live feeding, which also encourages eating, which is frowned upon to a lot of people, but I enjoy the feeding response. I don't enjoy the killing of a live animal, but I do enjoy the results of my snakes always eating.

But we'll go on and move on to another thing that I consider a myth that people say a lot about African soft furs. They say, "Once your ball python starts eating African soft furs, you'll never get it to eat anything else." I also think that's a bit of a myth. We can look at some more here while we're talking and I'll talk about these. As you can see right here, every one of these right here is the albino, I think, except for maybe this one, unless it's just a darker coat. I'm really starting to like to work with these albino, more amber-eyed is what a lot of the others call them. You can just see how chill these are. But yeah, so people say, "Well, you can't get your, you can't get them off of the ASFs once they start eating them." Well, here's the thing, we gotta remember, a snake can go long periods of time without eating. People have talked about snakes going a whole year without eating. Now, you take something that can go an entire year without eating, and then you try to feed it something different for a week, two weeks, a month, and people say, "Well, I tried for a whole month to get my snake to eat something else, and it wouldn't eat, so I had to go back to that." When you're talking about an animal that can go a whole year without eating, and when I say a whole year without eating, I don't mean a whole year and it's almost starved to death. People have had a snake go a whole year fasting with no food and have, and have almost no weight loss. That means these animals are conditioned to go the long haul. So yes, if you switch it to another food that it's not used to eating, be prepared to spend a good amount of time to get them transferred over. But that being said, I've had my snakes eat frozen frogs, I've had them eat rats, I've had them eat live, I mean, live rats and frozen thawed rats, and I've had no issues getting them to eat anything. Now, of course, we're not going to have video proof here, and I don't do live feeding on camera anyway, so you'll just have to take my word for that. But I'm not here to make it up.

Another great thing about ASFs is if you've ever had a rat or a mouse, you already know they can get stinky quick. And my wife can just pan around here. If you didn't know, my wife does a lot of my recordings, but she'll just spin around here and show you some of our reptile room. We keep our African soft furs in the house, which, you know, is not desirable, but unfortunately, that's the only place we have to keep them. We don't have an outdoor shed. And so rats and mice can be very odorous, and so can any rodent or any animal if you don't keep it up. But one thing about ASFs is they don't hardly stink as bad. They, and another thing is, just like mice, pick one corner and they use the bathroom in that corner. So do ASFs, whereas rats will just use the bathroom anywhere in their enclosure. So it helps with the smell and it helps with cleaning. It's a lot easier to clean.

So to me, that's already a few good factors here. They come out born with fur on, which is good for feeding. Ball pythons love to eat them, and I have no troubles feeding them. They don't get too big. They don't smell bad. And another thing, you may have seen in the video that you've been watching here, is just like this trio right here. These are males and females living together. And not only just a male or female, you can have multiple males and multiple females in one group. You can't do that with a lot of other rodents. You put a lot of other male rodents together, and you're going to have some fighting.

Now, I will say this, just as a disclaimer and for a factual piece of information, you're going to need to know if you do plan on doing ASFs and you do plan on keeping multiple males together or females. There's a funny thing about ASFs. As long as they grow up together, just like these right here, you can see I'm about to have to split these up. There's just about too many in this tub, but these are all males and females. Now, of course, they're babies right now, but if I let all these grow up to adults with each other, they will be perfectly fine. They won't fight, they'll get along, they'll do great. You can keep a hundred ASFs together, no problem. You're gonna have more breeding than you know what to do with. But I'm just saying you can do it.

Here's the thing though, if they don't grow up together, once they get to a certain age, if you try to put another one in there, they'll fight it to the death. They could live with a hundred of them, but you put one stranger in there they don't know of, and they're like, "I don't know you," and they'll, they'll literally, it's sad, they'll, they'll chew it to death, literally. Maybe today. So sometimes if you have babies like what I'll do is, say in this instance, we'll come back over here. Say I have these babies right here, okay? These are still pretty young, and the moms don't have that much to take care of right now. We're gonna go down here to where these are obviously a little bit bigger of a size. And so if these moms were to have some babies, I would want those babies to make sure they're getting fed good and they're getting plenty of nutrition to where there's so much competition in there, they might not do good. So what I'll do is I'll take the babies and I would put them up here with these moms because they don't have a heavy load to carry. And that's another cool thing about them, they'll just adopt them. They don't know the difference.

And the other point I was getting to is you can put babies together if they're not used to being put together. Even when they're this size right here, even at this size, I could take these right here and I could put over with these, and I would have no issues. But once they start getting a little bit of size to them, don't try to mix them. Trust me, I've learned that lesson the hard way. Even I thought maybe, you know, I had some females that had grew up together, and I took the one female out to raise some babies just for a week, just for a week. I put her back in, had to pull it right back out. That was a long story to let you know that the one good thing about them is you can keep them in big groups and you can keep males together, which isn't a thing you can do with mice and rats a lot of times.

So we've covered quite a few reasons why I think these are better. They stay the right size. They're easier to keep up with. You can keep them in large groups. People say they don't breed as good, and I will admit rats, they grow fast. You can grow up rats two to three times as fast as you can ASFs. But unless you're a big guy, if you're like me, I don't need that much and I don't want to keep up with that much. I do good just to keep up with these. We currently have this set, or this 10-tub rack right here, and then we've got these lab tubs and a few more up here, and that's all I run. And for me, it's all I can do just keep up with these. So I wouldn't want the more growth. They feed great. They're very friendly. People say they're aggressive. I don't know. Maybe theirs are aggressive, but I've literally handled hundreds and hundreds of them and I've only ever been bit one time, and it was kind of my fault for picking up a female by the tail that was way too pregnant. She gave birth the next day, and so it was probably just very uncomfortable for her and she was probably scared. Who knows, maybe she wanted to give birth that night. But other than that, I've never been bit. I never have an issue. They're great animals. They're really beautiful, I think, and friendly. And, um, I sometimes I just pick one up and they don't even run. It just sits there in my hand.

The only thing I will say about ASFs that I, I will admit might be a downside is these things can jump. And I've had them jump. And the adults aren't too bad. I'll give you an example here. Let's see. We use this type as an example. When I'm cleaning my racks, sometimes what I'll do is I'll sit my tub right here, and then I'll grab a tub off the ground and I'll stick it up. Now, as you might be able to see here, this is what the adults will mostly do. They'll mostly just pick their head over the top and kind of be like, "Hey, what's going on?" They won't generally jump. I have had an adult jump, but for the most part, they won't make the jump. It'll get you is these little skunks right here. And when you go to transfer them over and you're trying to move them from one tub to the next, or you even have to be careful just sitting in your tub for a moment when you're cleaning, those things will jump. And so you almost kind of have to develop a skill at transferring them to one tub to the next. But really, I mean, that goes with about any rodent. Rats will definitely try to escape, right? Rats will. They will try to figure out ways to get out of their tub. ASFs will jump. You have to be careful of that. I have had them jump out of a tub into the floor. Usually, if they do, you've got a few seconds because they're kind of stunned to hurry and grab them. But you know how it is, if not, then the race is on. Mice, mice aren't too bad about that. Really, that's one of the only downsides I can get about ASFs though, is that they will jump. Other than that, I think they're the perfect rodent. They are, they're much more nutritious than a rat or a mouse. A smaller ASF carries a lot more nutrients than a bigger rat, so that's a good thing.

And finally, we'll go over what I consider to be the last myth. Now, I personally think, as the name states, African soft fur, it is native to Africa. But there is rumor and videos, and I won't throw names, but I'm sure anybody that's knowledgeable knows the names, it says that they've asked people in Africa and they never saw an African soft fur. Now, I'm going to tell you why I think that's not true, and then I'm going to tell you afterwards why I don't care if it is or not. But from what I've seen, the picture that they took around showing everybody in Africa was kind of like this right here, one of the saddlebacks, one of the pies, which is a morph, if you will, it's a fur coat. But this isn't a natural fur coat. This is a recessive trait. You have to breed that into them. I don't know if I have one right here, but we'll look and see if I do. Sometimes I do have some that run through my batches. But for the most part, most of my, okay, I think right here we may have one. Now you can see these guys jumping just like I was talking about. So you can see this guy right here, he's one solid color and he's got black eyes. There's no white on him. And when he grows up, he'll be a solid brown rodent with black eyes. It'll almost just look like any regular old rodent. I feel like if he was being honest, he should have showed the natives that picture, and maybe they would have noticed it and been like, "I have seen those here before." But nonetheless, a person went to a few spots in Africa and showed a picture of an ASF, and people said they'd never seen it. So the rumor is, they don't really come from Africa, so we shouldn't be feeding them to our snakes.

I personally think they do come from Africa, but let me tell you why I don't really care if they do or they don't. On average, people feed either Norwegian rats or lab mice to their snakes. You know what else doesn't come from Africa? Norwegian rats or lab mice. So why is that the, why is that the standard? Well, it doesn't come from Africa. That's not what they eat in the wild. You know, one of the things they eat in the wild are these giant rats. I can't remember what they're called because I've never kept them, I've only seen them in videos, but I can tell you ain't nobody breeding them around here. So to me, I don't understand why people worry about that, whether they do or don't come from Africa. The facts are, they're more nutritious for the snake. The snakes are ready to eat them. People say, "Once you eat ASF, they're hooked on them." Well, I don't believe they're hooked on them, so to speak. I think you can get them back off of them, but nonetheless, they obviously want it. It's easier to clean. It's easier to keep. You can keep them in groups. They're friendly. They're cute. They don't get too big. I don't see what's, what you could find wrong with them.

So these are just a few of the reasons. I could go on longer, but for sake of the video and time, I'm not going to. But nonetheless, this is why I believe that African soft furs are the best rodent on the market and is the only thing that I choose to breed and feed my snakes. Enjoyed today's video. I know I've been looking forward to making a video on ASFs and hopefully we debunked some myths today. And if you take anything from today's video, I just want you to take that African soft furs are not aggressive. They're very friendly, very sweet, and I actually really enjoy them. And as you can see, even by the thumbnail, I had to hold one to take that picture, and they're just great animals. Uh, one thing I want to address, if you notice some of these tanks look a little empty and kind of rough, I've been breaking down these tanks and we're going to set up a new system. It's not going to be in the next day or two, but we'll talk about that more in a later video. Otherwise, I just want to thank you guys for being here and, um, hopefully you took some stuff, some information, and you really enjoyed today's video. Let me know down in the comments. But as always, remember, your hobby can bring you joy, but only Jesus can bring you peace. I hope to see you guys in the next one.