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Cricket Raising Q&A
Here I am posting questions I receive via email regarding
raising crickets so that others can benefit. If I post your question
and you don't want your question posted, please just let me know.
Jump to: Q1 Q2
Q3
Q1:
My question is this. What are your experiences with getting
the crickets to grow to large sizes. I have found that I can
get pinheads by the gazillion rather easily (as i am sure you
have experienced) but growing them up can be a problem. I have
a lot of small frogs so I can use the smaller crickets, but with
my bigger herps, I have found it to be more economical to buy
them in bulk (i go through about 8000 per week of all sizes)
Basically, my six week old crickets are no where near what the
farms claim 6 week old crickets to be. I know what my problems
are for the most part. Not warm enough, not enough food, but
do you have any other ideas for getting growth on quickly. I
have access to pounds of powdered rodent diet which is my staple
diet for them, I also throw in freshh greens.
A1:
I have found that heat is the best way to get the crickets
to grow fast.
At first I tried to put the container next to the floor heater
in my
house. It turned out when I put the thermometer down on the floor
by the
crickets, it was roughly the same temp as the rest of the house.
I think
it is very important to get the heat under the crickets because
heat
rises. Another interesting thing I have noticed with my setup
is, when I
have two upside down egg cartons, the crickets tend to flock
to one or the
other, I am speculating that this is because one is slightly
higher in
temperature than the other one. I think you are on the right
track, my
crickets get pretty huge pretty fast, and they don't start dying
off until
they are about 3 months old. I would work on the heat first,
then try to
get a variety of food, I've found the crickets I raise will go
for the
pellet shaped rabbit food before they go for the cat food I give
them.
Maybe you could take a small batch of crickets and try a small
quantity of
two types of food in their container to see which one they eat
more of
first.
It seems like crickets will eat most types of animal food. I
have read
that foods high in protein is the key for crickets.
Q2:
The only thing I am still wondering about is do you use any
soil at all in the rubbermaid container? I noticed that there
seemed to be a little bit of dirt in
yours (I'm not talking about the dish for egg laying). I guess
my
question is will the crickets be okay with no substrate at all?
A2:
It is my experience that the crickets will be just fine without
any dirt
in the bottom of the container. When I check the egg laying dishes,
some
spills out and I don't think the crickets really care one way
or the
other. They spend most of their time hanging on the inside of
egg
cartons.
It is important to try to clean the container between generations
though. The cricket droppings build up after a while.
Q3:
1. Do you leave the lid off of the 18 gallon Rubbermaid container?
2. Is the Rubbermaid slippery enough to keep the crickets
from climbing out?
3. Do you put the lid on the egg laying container once you
remove it and place it in the rearing container?
A3:
Yes, I have tried leaving the lid on the container with just
a little
crack open, I found that it makes it really humid and then it
starts to
stink. But it does shut them up when they are noisy. I got paranoid
that I
would kill them by making it too humid so I left it off.
Yes, the container is slippery enough to keep the crickets
from climbing
out. The babies are a lot better climbers than the adults, but
I have
found that if babies makes it to the top, they decide to turn
back because
of the lack of heat as they start to climb. I think I have only
had one
cricket escape from the Rubbermaid container, I think that is
because he
jumped.
I don't put a lid on the egg laying container. The only reason
for the two
different containers is to keep the adults from eating the babies
once
they hatch. On my last few generations, I have just fed all the
adults to
my toad and left the egg laying dish in the main container and
not used a
rearing container.
For comments or suggestions, Email
Jeff Mucha.
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