Hello…
I have started 3 colonies of ASF, one male to 3 female, and they are VICIOUSLY attacking me! Are they all evil?! I dont understand how tf im supposed to clean n feed things that are attacking me! What am i doing wrong?!
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Cull, Cull, Cull.
Do not use them as your breeders. It sounds like they were bred for quantity over quality. Try to find some pet quality ones and restart your colonies. They will be more expensive but it is worth it. Do not breed any with an attitude towards you or other ASF.
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Hard agree with @logar, I’ve heard (so take with a grain of salt), that things like aggression are at least partially genetic in some rodent species, especially maternal aggression. So def cull since I can only assume the females will get WORSE once you have pups drop (and then those pups will likely grow to be mean too either genetically or through social learning)
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Breeding rats, I get rid of any that show aggressiveness. I do not know if the babies will also turn out the same way, but I don’t take the chance. One bad one can wipe out an entire bin.
I have to agree with @logar & @cmills.
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Here are two peer reviewed articles that suggest that aggression in rats at least can be explained at least partially through genetics (just so I didn’t leave my claim from before unfounded). All the more reason to cull
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Even with mice who are usually nippy when I go to grab them… If any of them are actively coming to me to bite and attack? Cull.
Not only is it dangerous for you (with potential rat bite fever), but dangerous to whatever may be fed. I always advocate for prekill or f/t but sometimes you just get those fussy live eaters. I have one mouser I’m trying to wean off live right now and on to f/t rats. =_=;
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You can get them a little bit better but they are not as domesticated as the Eurasian rodents most people are used to breeding. Even domesticated animals can be q challenge to clean up through selection. My feeder company also livestocks guinea pigs and hamsters to the pet stores we supply. We’re several years in to trying to make hamsters less of dumpster fire and have made very little progress.
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Hamsters are so much work. At least with the other rodents they’re naturally social. The antisocial nature for most hamsters really makes it all a hands on socialization for each one. And even then you get some that just stay solitary.
I had 3 survivors from a litter of a cannibalistic hamster (no surprise 9_9) raised by a sweet rattie mom. They were slightly more social but you can still see how much they disliked doing anything with the adopted siblings and just preferred to stay alone.
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Yeah they’re terrible. We’ve had ASFs for several years too at our partner facility in Oregon and they don’t bite as readily but a lot of them still bite. Flighty is about as good as it gets with 95% of them.
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I think the only way would be to import the high-end pet European lines of pure Campbell’s or Djungarians—not the hybrids—that can actually tolerate being groups/pairs in captivity to a degree. If the only feeders are Syrians then I don’t envy that challenge. 99.5% of domestic hamster stock is garbage to work with regardless of species anyway.
I know Syrian hamsteries have worked out methods to avoid the cannibalism and group-rear until about 28 days, but I don’t know how excited they’d be to share their in-depth processes with feeder breeders 
Most of them seem to be space-prohibitive for large scale operations as well.
We’ve personally shelved our own hamster breeding projects due to 1. moving in the near future and 2. needing to import from Europe as well since it doesn’t look like anyone else on the continent still properly works with our species of interest, but maybe in another 5-10 years I’ll have better insight.
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Yeah ours are Euro hybrids. The pet stores don’t really pay enough for us to justify stepping it up anymore so we just passively address and deal with the attrition. If only gerbils were legal in California this wouldn’t even be a thing with the hamsters lol.
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Yeah. That was one of the things I hated most about moving to CA. Hahah.
I had gerbils for years as a kid.
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