Can African soft furs take the place of mice?

[Sasha2]

I really need to breed mice but hubby is severely allergic. So I was thinking about the African soft furred. What size are the pinkies as compared to mice and rats? I know adult ASF are a smaller species of rat.

Any pics of litters? Could they be fed to corn snakes?

[reptiledude987]

They could be. theyre pretty much the same size as mice. The only thing i use asf for is picky BPs or my file snake as theyre species native to africa and its their natural prey item. I dont know if there would be any difference as far as alergies go...?

[ManSlaughter33]

Why don't you try hairless rats?

[Minkness]

There are hairless mice too.
Most allergies are caused by dander though, and even hairless animals have dander.

[pitontheprowl]

Yes, they are about the same size as mice.
I had two problems.
1-Keeping them from eating litters
2-They chew everything and I do mean EVERYTHING.

That being said They were great on odor. I cleaned them every 5 to 7 days just because that's when I did all my other rodents but I never smelled them.

[Sasha2]

Im pretty sensitive on the smell thing. I may have to try a trio just to see how it goes.Im sure something I have will eat them if I cant get them to breed.

Hairless rats are soooo gross. Anyway I have to keep them in the basement so I would think hairless would get cold, it stays around 60 down there.

[pet_snake_78]

If the basement isn't finished, it may help to build a closet down there and put them in that. If you google diy basement room or something, you'll see it's pretty easy to do. Then inside that, you could probably do some kind of air filtration.

[pet_snake_78]

I also wonder if there is a shot or something to counter the allergy.

[Minkness]

You could also look into girbils. Not sure on allergies, but they don't smell, atr a size between mice and rats, have smaller litters so you don't get overwhelmed. Only draw back is that they have more dense fur and they apparently can be addictive, especially to snakes like BPs, making it difficult to switch the snake to different feeders.

Just another option.

[ManSlaughter33]

Why not get frozen rats/mice? then you don't need to deal with smell or hair.

[pet_snake_78]

Two problems with frozen is a lot of younger snakes want live prey to get started and the cost of large rodents is pretty expensive. Still not enough to make me want to try doing it myself for anything other than live pinks but if you have many large snakes, wowa those food bills get high quick... not sure how much you can save by diying but presumably you could save a bit.

[Minkness]

I weighed the costs out since I breed mice, and because of how I choose to take care of them....it's not a big savings for me. In fact, I probably spend more since I also have to buy frozen as well...buuuu....

[ManSlaughter33]

I agree I will be breeding my own rats here because of costs, having a few snakes who take medium - large rats, but Alllll of my snakes willingly accept frozen thawed. I guess I am just lucky. This is also because I'm around the 25 mark for snakes. so all frozen thawed is too much moolah

But for someone who only has a handful and is allergic I figured frozen would be the way to go. They never stated they COULDNT and no one suggested it yet so hey :P

[Minkness]

Yeah. I'm only at 8 snakes and 5 (all the hoggies) refuse live! So they will always need frozen =/

I do kind of look forward to breeding rats in the future though, and will have snakes that will be able to eat them. For now, trying to dwindle down on the mice until I get down to just a few I'd rather keep as pets, then get a rat or two and see how that goes.

Sadly, until it's food, all the rodents are treated like pets....so it can get exhausting and expensive to keep alot. I'd like to just order f/t online, but I have minimal freezer space....buuu....