Raising Crickets

This page describes a method of raising the standard house cricket available at any pet store. I took pictures of just about every step in the cricket raising process. I have found several resources on how to raise crickets and I have had mixed results from what I gathered. The most important facts that I have learned from experience are:

A. Crickets need warmth.
B. Crickets need food and water
C. Crickets need a good place to lay eggs.

If you are having problems raising crickets to feed your amphibians or reptiles, or if you are just interested in starting from scratch, give this method a try!

My setup for raising crickets:

Here are some pictures of my setup for raising crickets.
Notice how the Tupperware bin is on top of the stereo amplifier for warmth. 

The basic elements to this setup are, the Tupperware container, the water feeder, the egg carton, and the breeding dish.

Building the water feeder:

Take a plastic party cup and mark it up like shown in the picture.

Bend out the flaps created. This provides a ramp for the Crickets to get to the water.

Cut a notch in the bottled water container about ¼ inch deep like in the picture.

Fill the water bottle with water and put the cup on it. Turn the whole think upside down and the water will fill the bottom of the cup to a shallow level.

Take some cotton balls or roll up a paper towel and press it into the bottom of the cup. There shouldn't be a pool of water accessable to the babies. The towel will get moist and the crickets will be able to suck on the paper or cotton like wet washcloth.

Take a piece of Duct Tape and place it on the side of the cup, this will keep the cup from falling over and creating a cricket flash flood.
 

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Setting up the breeding dish:

Take one of the Zip Lock plastic Tupperware containers and fill it up with dirt. I went into the back yard and scooped up some bark dust. I have had problems using some potting soils. Some of them have anti-insect chemicals in them. I would reccomend using some form of Turf Substrate that you can get at pet stores. It usually comes compressed into about the size of a brick, you add water and it expands into dirtlike brown stuff. The good thing about this is that it is designed with your pets in mind and will produce consistant results. It says on it that the pet can eat it without harm, which is good!

Fill the container with water until you can see that half of the dirt is saturated. You will see the water line on the side, it will be about ½ inch deep.

Setting up the Environment:

Put the breeding dish in the Tupperware container.

Take the bottom off of one of an egg carton and place it in the Rubbermaid container upside down. Place it near the breeding dish so they can crawl up onto it to lay their eggs.

Take another party cup and cut it really shallow for the food. Any kind of little dish can be used, the picture shows a dixi cup. All that matters is that some kind of small cricket could find its way in and then out again so use your own judgment.
Use cricket food or chop up veggies and put it in with cat food if you don't want to use store bought cricket food.

Place the cricket food in the dish of choice and place it in the big Tupperware container like shown.

Put the water feeder in like shown.

Your habitat is now complete!

To complete your setup for raising crickets:

Put the bag of 30 or so Crickets from the pet store in the habitat. As soon as the females stems are as long as the one in the picture at the top of this page, they are ready to lay eggs.
 
 

Put the container on a heating pad set on low, or that old piece of home entertainment equipment that gets warm.
 

You are now set, wait for a while and put up with a lot of chirping.  If you have a thermometer, try to keep the habitat around 85 degrees, don't go over 95 or under 70 if you want the crickets to live.
 
 

Once the crickets start chirping and the females have long stems coming out of their abdomens, chances are they have fertilized eggs ready to lay.

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Eggs will be laid:

Give them a few weeks, If you rub your finger into the dirt, you might be able to see some of the eggs, they are about 1/8 of an inch long and 1/32 of an inch wide they deposit them up to an inch deep. Make sure the dirt that the eggs are being laid in doesn't dry out, if it does, the eggs probably wont hatch that get real dry.

After you are sure that the crickets have laid some eggs, remove the breeding dish from the main container, put it into something that has slick walls so that baby crickets can't climb out. They can climb, but not very well
 

Babies will hatch!! 

When the babies hatch they will be about the same size as the egg (imagine that!) Crickets don't go through any worm-like larva stage, they just pop out and start running around. They will shed their skin a couple times and after the last shedding they are considered adults. Don't worry if they turn white when they shed their skin, this is normal.

At some point you will want to put the crickets into the big tub so that they can grow If you don't have any more adults to feed to your pet, the babies can be hatched in the main tub, you want to avoid having adults and babies in the same container.

Before you know it you will have hundreds of babies running around.

This concludes my Breeding Crickets Page. With any luck you should be able to achieve the same results that I did and breed plenty of crickets for what ever reason you have to breed crickets.

Read some questions people had after viewing this page in the: Question and Answer Area

Last modified 11/28/07

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