This video is showing the good things about African soft furs and hopefully debunking what I think are some myths, the main one being that African soft furs are aggressive and bite a lot!
After we edited this video and went through it we realized that the video was kind of shaky in a few spots and we thought about not uploading it but we decided to go ahead and put it up anyway to get the information out there, maybe one day in the future we can do another one!
Hi Mate, thanks for the video. ASFs can be a real pain if you mix colonies, keep them heavily overcrowded or dirty or if you do not feed enough protein. If you don't check all these boxes you are good to go. You are doing great with your rodents. Keep up the nice work man!
Great video man and very informative. I’m going to give you a shout out on my next video that was gonna be about mice, rats, and ASF’s. You nailed it with the asf info man. Love it.
ASF are not born with hair, they're tinier than pinky mice. I have a leucistic genetic that I have bred for temperament. Mine are white with one black ear & have come a long way through selective breeding from agoudie/wild type. You might have a long domesticated genetic that gets fur early... I give ASF pinkies to my neighbor's tarantula. From my first set, pups are pink for a week.
15:40 "They are much more nutritious than a rat or a mouse..." I agree 100% observed by the growth/tone of BP's and their poop, which looks different and is not nearly as odorous as when BP's are fed Norway's. Two quick questions: 1) that XL RBI tub that you have on the floor - can your ASF pups squeeze out thru the wire top? We had to put hardware cloth on ours. 2) What kind of lab block are you feeding? Our Norways did good on high fat block but our ASF's have gotten a very greasy coat with it and do better on low fat.
Yes I agree I think asf's are great I'm not anti rat or mouse but I do have to say I prefer asf's for feeding and to take care of So the lab containers I may have had one or two that got out but for the most part they did pretty good for me but I've since sold them off and got different racks which I showed off in my last video with different wiring and I will be releasing another video soon about my feelings on them which spoiler alert I love them lol, and as for the food I feed Mazuri 6f rodent breeder I've had great results with it
Got one as a small rodent pet, little male grey dude, he's chill the pet store said they may be skittish but if you interact with them enough they warm up to ya. He isn't aggressive but if there are other animals near and i pick him up he does try to bite. after a few hours, he didn't freak out as much. is there any foods for them you'd recommend?
That's awesome, they can be a little skittish when it comes to continuous handling I was more referring to them just on a day-to-day breeder rodent interaction but if you've got it to where you can handle it for long periods of time that's pretty good, as far as food I just feed rodent feed "Tucker milling brand from tractor supply to be specific" with ASF you want a little bit higher protein but there are a wide variety of things you can feed them I'm not a complete expert in, there is a group on Facebook called "African Soft Fur (ASF) Breeding Hub" I would look it up there is a ton of info on there! facebook.com/groups/asfbreedinghub/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT
Nice! Very informative and i learned alot! I actually have the same temperament results with my rats and mice as far as males and females being housed together. As long as they grow up together I can mix the sexes. One question, whats the gestation period for ASFs? Are they like rats where they have a 24 hour period where they can get pregnant again right after giving birth?
ps ASFs are from africa and idk why anyone would say otherwise as there is plenty of evidence online! They were discovered in 1834 in Benin (west africa) :) case closed lol but i like your points! if we feed them mice or regular rats what's the difference!
Hey thank you so much for coming and watching! Their gestation period is usually no more than 21 days which works out because the babies are weaned in about 2 to 3 weeks, of course there's always a couple stragglers that need a little more time but if you do like me and keep multiples together you'll still end up with different stages together sometimes, but that's no problem either like I said in the video I can take babies and put them with another mom and she'll adopt them immediately, I'm not sure on the exact time of how long they can get pregnant after giving birth but I think it's within the first couple of days because I know they can have another batch 24 days or so after giving birth
I'm currently using a bigger rack and don't have that one anymore that one had ARS 55s the one I currently have it is ARS 50s and I have to say I like the 55s better!
the reason why the African people did not recognize the picture Dave Kaufman's showed them is because asf that we have in America is because it was mixed with some other species to be sold as fancy rat for pets and even thought it's the same species they do not look like the one's we have in America and they are called Natal multimammate rat, the common African rat and that's why you some time get one that is all brown with black eye's so in a way he was right because the asf rat that we have don't look nothing like the ones that they see in Africa but good video Great information keep up the good work 👍
Your best bet is to find some local reptile or ball python groups on Facebook and join them and then post and ask if anybody has live asf's available. That's the quickest fastest way to find them in your area, hope this helps, good luck on your search!
Man I hate to hear that I was surprised to find out how many states they're illegal in 😞, it is said that they're more nutritious but it's not like you're going to notice a difference if you feed one or the other, rats are just as good of a diet, it would be like saying would it be more healthy for me to hamburger everyday or hot dog, the hamburger would probably be better because you have more protein and vegetables on it but if you ate a hamburger everyday or a hot dog everyday you're not gonna see any difference at the end of the week but it doesn't mean that one isn't technically still better for you or gives you more
@@williamzendejas6452 well you know how people are they think if there's any chance of them surviving in your climate they don't want to risk them getting loose, I know I can't lie I've definitely had a few get loose myself 😅
@@KeeperCain116 I mean what dose the apparatus look like? I take it part of it is a tank of CO2. Do you have a tub or a small aquarium that you use to contain the gas until it does its work.
I am looking to possibly raising them. I have chickens and will be getting quails started by next year. I have been trying to decide what snakes to raise. I really like the African House Snake. It just makes sense to feed them African Softfurs. I also like the egg eaters but getting finch eggs for babies is hard.
@@leekestner1554 if you watch the video I break down every single item you need to build your own setup and even provide links for all the products in the description 😁
@@leekestner1554 hey so I know this is a super late reply but I was looking back through some of my comments and noticed when you were asking about CO2 Chambers I assumed that this was my CO2 video and just simply stated that I listed all the instructions in the video without realizing this was my ASF video I apologize it was by complete accident if you're still researching the matter here is a link to the video I did about CO2 Chambers and how to build one it also lists the amount of CO2 to use. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--mAc-Uzm69w.htmlsi=4-xe_Dq88CjBQkrA
For me they are my number one choice. I breed rats, mice, and asfs. My snakes accept all 3. I also feed f/t rodents to a large part of my collection. All of my snakes will accept any live food offered. All but 5 of my snakes will eat f/t mice. About half will eat f/t rats. About 1/3 will eat f/t hamsters. I keep 36 snakes, 5 dif species. Keep 4 colonies of asfs, 2 colonies of rats, 1 colony of mice. Supplement with f/t mice, rats, hamsters, quail. I like what you put in this video. My only issue with asfs are folks claiming "pet quality". They are the most fight or flight of any rodent I've worked with and get sketched out quick. Rats make great pets, mice can be manageable pets, asfs don't make good pets.
Sounds like you're doing a great job with your snakes a wide variety is always going to be the best for any animal, it takes a lot of work and dedication to provide an extensive diet like that!!
Sorry I'm in East TN and don't ship asf's but if you do find somebody you're going to be a lot better off doing one male to three females imo, if you do a pair the female gets way too much attention and has to carry all the load, it's better to have 2-3 females to spread out the males pursuit
Well it's all opinion based some say that asf's are more nutritional and it's nice because they never get to big to feed, but in all honesty they are both fine choices for your snake, I just personally prefer asf's as a good foood source and working with them opposed to rats
@KeeperCain116 that's wut I want, I want better for my pythons, I'm gonna start off with three females and one male for now, thanks, I'll keep in touch, 👍🏾
Dont feed your ball pythons with these unless you have a good source to provide you with at all times! They go crazy for them and once they've had a taste for them they wont want to eat anything else! I switched all my pythons on to them and now I cant get hold of any!
Sorry sir but this is 100% false news I've easily switched ball pythons off of these myself all the hatchlings that I've sold have been on them and I've never had a complaint from a buyer about getting them off of them and I know multiple other people that have switched them off easily, if a ball python is a picky eater it's just a picky eater it's not because of the item at ate, and if all your ball pythons aren't eating it's more than likely an issue with its environment not its food source
@KeeperCain116 I've been in this game for 34 years, mate! There is nothing wrong with the environment!!! And where did I say my snakes are now not eating!!! Ball pythons get into a habit of eating the same prey item! I did have trouble switching many of my B pythons back onto normal rats! And I know many other breeders who have had the same problems with AFS. I'm putting it out there so beginners don't run into thr problem!
@@waynekieft4952 I didn't say that you said your snakes wouldn't eat you said once they eat them they won't eat anything else AKA they won't eat and I'm sorry whether you've been in the game for 34 minutes or 34 years there is tons of people that do this for a living and have also done it for years that would disagree with you those are your opinions but I strongly disagree with them and I think that you are misleading people to be afraid of trying a food source that they shouldn't be, the rodents themselves are not addicting it is just to prey type ball pythons don't have addictions to certain types of foods they just eat or they don't they're picky or they're not, it's not going to turn a non picky animal into a picky animal, I don't want to make anybody upset but want to State publicly since you commented under my video that I 100% disagree with your opinion and would say that it's false
Great to see you share your passion. But, you generalize these behaviors based on your own limited collection of animals. You really need to do some research and do away with your myth-busting based on your limited experience. You will tend to turn off people to your channel that know better.
I live near Knoxville and we have quite a large sized community when it comes to reptile keeping and people that work with rodents and I have to say that the majority of people I've reached out to and done business with have the same experience as me with asf's, I think it's the opposite I think everybody that has had good experiences needs to speak up so all the old heads with their past experience doesn't scare everyone off, unfortunately experience is just that it's your personal experience, most people would consider ball pythons harmless and I would generally agree but I've got one adult girl that's went for my face a few times doesn't mean that all ball pythons are that way though, same thing with Asf's I've had great experience with them and personally know many fellow hobbyists that have the same, it's time we stop demonizing them and telling people that if they feed them to their ball python they'll get addicted and never eat anything again and that they're all aggressive and bite
