Cricket breeding for fun and profit

Crickets are one of the most popular foods for your reptile and amphibian pets. They move very fast and capture your pet’s attention. Crickets are very nutritious and you can give your pets as many as they can eat.

Adult crickets grow to about an inch long. Male crickets are smaller than females and can be easily seen in a colony as they are the ones making the noise. You can tell female crickets apart by their ovipositor, a long needle-like structure used to lay eggs.

I have raised crickets several times and discovered these basic tips to help you grow your own.

· Crickets need heat.

· Crickets need food and water.

· Crickets need a place to lay eggs.

The first thing you need is a container to store and breed your crickets; it can be a plastic storage container with a snap-on lid. Take the lid and cut some 3-5 inch square holes and hot glue some screen over the holes, this will provide ventilation for your crickets. Use some ground up corn cobs as a substrate for your habitat and place about an inch of this in your container.

Put your container in a warm area; you may have to provide something to heat them up. Crickets like to be around 85 degrees.

Make your own watering dish, this can be as easy as taking a plastic lid from a peanut butter jar, cut a sponge to fit inside the lid and soak it with water. You will have to add a little water every two days.

Crickets need protein to eat, I would feed my crickets cheap dog food cornmeal and oatmeal. Your crickets will also need some fruits and vegetables, you can chop up some apples, carrots, celery, lettuce and even potatoes for them to eat. Keep citrus away from your crickets.

Set up some egg-laying containers for your habitat, use some foam egg cartons, not the paper ones; Fill a couple of egg holes with sand at least 1 inch deep. You should keep the sand moist but not wet and the female crickets will lay eggs in the sand. Put them in the habitat where you can reach them and keep them moist. Put other egg cartons in the container for the crickets to hide and explore.

Give them a few weeks to lay their eggs and remember to keep the sand moist. You can move these egg laying areas to a new container and keep them warm and the baby crickets will hatch. Make sure the babies can get some water and food by burying their dishes at the level of the substrate.

When the babies are born they will be just a miniature version of the adults. They will shed their fur a couple of times and sometimes you may even see a white or two and this is normal.

Keep a few crickets of different ages in separate containers and you shouldn’t run out of fresh crickets for your pets.