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Okay so you want to breed your own crickets.
Firstly ask yourself why, do you have enough animals that warrant the time and effort of breeding crickets? Like anything breeding crickets is not an over night process it does take a fair while for
you to have a constant supply of adult crickets, it does take time.
Crickets make great feeders as they are active enough to get the animals attention but do not run away hide like roaches and are much more active then meal worms if you are struggling to get your animal to feed all it may need is that bit of movement to get it to want to “hunt” down the crickets.
There are two species of Crickets the Grey Acheta domesticus (most commonly used in the pet trade as feeders) as well as Black Crickets Gryllus bimaculatus ( used mostly for fishing ) which grow allot larger then the grey crickets but also have a harder keratin layer
The first step of breeding crickets is of course getting animals to start off with there are numerous companies who sell ready to go packaged crickets at most pet shops like Crickets For Africa and a few others.
I suggest you find out when your local store gets their delivery of crickets in as I am sure anyone who has bought crickets in the past the longer they sit in the store the more dead crickets you land up with.
Firstly How To Tell The Male And Female Crickets Apart.
Only The Male’s “Chirp” which can get quite annoying when you have a few hundred
Male Adult Cricket Pictured Below.
Of Course You are not going to be able to breed crickets without females the females do not “chirp” and have a long “stinger” called an ovipositor
Adult Female Cricket Below.
Fat Calcium Phosphorus Protein
kcal mg/kcal mg/kcal %kcal
Cricket 44 0.2 2.6 50
As per http://www.sa-chameleons.com/silkworms.html
Choosing Your Crickets
When buying your crickets take a little time looking in the box give it a gentle shake to see what ratios of male to female crickets there are in the box in my experience there are normally a decent ration of females to males say 60/40 but of course this is subject to vary.
Hydration , Feeding and Housing
When you get your crickets home it is vitally important to hydrate them as you will find in their box they come in there are usually, pellets or cricket feed but no water. But there is a reason for this.
Crickets will often drown if you provide a water dish sow hat I do is place slices of cucumber ( about 1-2cm thick) in the box for them they will go right at it and eat it. It is important how ever to remove the “old” cucumber as it will go mouldy and mould is no friend of crickets or your herps So you need to make sure that your crickets always have a source of water in the form of fresh fruit or vegetable matter like cucumber , halfed button mushrooms , butternut slices and carrots (sliced), I also use a very shallow pot plant water dish (pictured below)
with a small cut out section of sponge which I spray daily enough so no water is excess and in the dish as this will cause the smaller crickets to drown.
I have found best when feeding your crickets is fish food flakes these are high in protein and easily chewed up by the hatchling crickets as well as adults in addition I use normal rodent cubes like EPOL mice cubes these work great too as well as the fresh fruit or vegetable matter like cucumber , halved button mushrooms , butternut slices and carrots (sliced) as mentioned above.
Housing your crickets is fairly simple I use 2 ft fish tanks ( although I have used plastic wheeley storage containers in the past) with Canadian peat as a substrate although I’ve used saw dust too and I’ve seen some people use nothing as a substrate use what works for you but I use the Canadian peat ( you can get it at almost any nursery) stacked with egg boxes either horizontally or vertically it makes no difference. You need to ensure the crickets can not climb up the walls of the glass so I use about a 5cm wide seal of Vaseline all the way around the tank to prevent your house becoming a cricket breeding facility , in addition is made a lid out of a fine steel mesh which the crickets can not get out of if the manage to reach the lid.
For heating on the colony I use a standard 60 lamp with I place above the cage over the one side on for most of the day between 8-10 hours.
Finally Breeding And Egg Incubation.
When you purchase the crickets from the store they have usually by this time mated and are ready to lay their eggs ( a few hundred at a time). You can see when the female has eggs inside her as the abdomen swells greatly when compared to a normal cricket.
Pictured below
You will need again the Canadian peat ( heavily moistened but not having excess water) place this peat in a small transparent container similar to what most people sell meal worms in or even the bottom of a 2l Coke bottle cut off to about 5 cm high.
Canadian peat
Place ONLY the females in another empty container as litre ice cream tub works well in this place the little cup with the moisten peat in it leave over night, remove the crickets and place them back in the main enclosure, what I do is get an additional plastic container ( the same as what you used for the crickets to lay the first set of eggs in) and leave that in the main enclosure so they can lay eggs in there at their own leisure.
Once you have removed the plastic egg laying container you need to expose it to a heat source in order for them to hatch , I use a normal reptile heating pad (the silver foil ones) I actually set up a spare enclosure where I place the plastic egg laying container now with its lid on with small holes drilled in it , place this inside the two litre ice cream tub you used previously or something similar
(Pictured below)
into the enclosure where the heat bad is place your plastic egg laying container (which is now inside the larger container partially over the heat source).
The eggs need moisture so check daily the peat is moist not swimming in water but moist.
The eggs do take quite a while anything from 7 – 14 days, don’t give up if they have not hatch they may take longer according to the temperature.
When the crickets hatch like the adults care is the same but I feed exclusively on fish food flakes as well as the fresh vegetables.
From Here it is just repeat and repeat I try have a constant supply of eggs in the incubator incubating as it does take quite a while for the crickets to get to an adult size at least 30 days but if you have smaller geckos or lizards having a ready supply of small crickets is a huge plus
Conclusion
I gather it may seem like quiet a bit of effort in the whole process but I have tried to include as much detail as possible, as I said in the begging of this care sheet if you have one or two geckos or lizards it is not really worth your while to “breed your own” but if you have a large collection it is going to save you money in the end
ALL IMAGES FROM GOOGLE IMAGES
