Keeping Crickets? | Breeding Crickets?

Since my worm farming is going well and I can now produce a steady supply of worms for my growing Oscar I want to move onto breeding crickets. Does anyone know of someone locally who has accomplished this and created some kind of noddy guide regarding this? Most of the international websites only give me details on exotic crickets that we dont get here, and most local websites try and pedal me a book about farming crickets.

I have figured out what they eat and how to give them water so they dont die, so the next logical step would be breeding them if anyone has any idea or point me in the right direction it would be really helpful thanks.

 

I'm guessing you'd do best with some sort of terrarium, with fine mesh or sponge on all the openings. Feed them whatever it is they eat, and give them a source of water. I doubt crickets are that hard to breed.

Maybe contact the people that sell them to the pet shops and see if they have a breeding kit? Or use Google's scholar search for research papers that might detail how they're bred for research.

 

I had bearded dragons and I was breeding with crickets once. You put small containers inside a big container for example a butter container with vermiculite in the small bucket and grid over the verculite. The grid must be fine enough so that the males can't get to the eggs which the females laid in the vermiculite. As soon as there are some eggs, take out the containter and close it and put it on a snake heating pad. Don't put it directly on the pad, because it gets to hot. After 11 days you will have a lot of babies. Put some bran in for food and waterballs for a water source. The trick is to get the babies big. It isn't easy to get them to grow. Hope it helps a bit. Good Luck!

 

Hi Larch

I have been breeding crickets for a while now-but have stopped because it is easier to get from a pet shop.

This is what I discovered: The adults make a noise "Chirp City!!", but it becomes white nose after a short while. Apart form what Michelle said, the substrate where the eggs are laid has to be kept moist. I used a plastic bottle 250ml with a sponge inserted into a hole in the lid. The sponge made contact with the potting soil and kept it wet. I did not use a heater pad. If it dries the eggs die. As stated above, they do grow slowly which promted me to rathe buy some once every second week.

The problem with crickets is the terrarium needs to be kept clean i.e. no rotting food. The mold will kill eggs.

Cheers
Vince