For some reason I am having a hard time establishing breeding groups of these things. I have had them for a year and a half now and still just have around 20 animals. They are producing sporadically. It seems every time I set up a new group, the male is picked on and killed by the females. They usually go for his ears/head and I will find the males later pretty jacked up. I am not even sure I have a male, except for juveniles. Is this a common problem and how can I correct it? Thanks for the help.
Justin

What are you feeding them? How/when are you setting up the breeding colonies? What size breeding colonies are you using? I've set up hundreds of colonies from my ASFs and had maybe 1 or 2 rats kill each other...

I have the problem of to many. Maybe its the line you have. I keep the separate by sexes/ When I have a need for a new colony I just place 1.2 in a mouse tray and it seems to work. I feed them Southern states Hog Chow. And supplement with seeds

Feeding rodent block. Sometimes I throw in some dubia roaches for them, which they seem to enjoy. Putting them together about 2-3 months old. I put 1.3 together last time in a mouse bin and the females ended up nearly killing the male, so I fed him off. It may be that I am setting them up too old or too many to a bin. I guess I might have to start supplementing with more protein or something.

I have two tubs of em, there really nice, I've had like three die.

I have yet to have such a problem.. If anything I have males that attack each others genitals when they start getting some age in the grow out bin.

As far as I can tell the asf's are female dominant. I have tried to shift males thru the tubs and when I switch the males the females begin to fight each other ( over the new male I guess). To me it sounds like the girls may not be ready to breed so they are beating up the male to keep him away.

If I had your problem I would grow up a male to be pretty big, 50g+. Put him in a bin and let him be for a day (long enough for him to sent the place). Add a few younger(smaller) females a few days later.

Other than that I would try to get a new source to get a starter group from.

I always had issues adding them in later, if they grew up in there they were fine but if we added males later it would end horrible...

All mine start out at 1.2 colonies and the I just pretty much let them grow out from there, when we would add new blood I would start out with just weaned trios..but bloodlines do die...I had to liven up the lines here last year because they just quit producing :dunno:

I set them up 1.2.They seem to do better with a more grain based diet. They lpve insects and seeds