On Breeding Crickets as Feeder Prey

By Catherine E. Rigby-Burdette

Last revised August 1997

There is a more extensive document on how to raise crickets in another fashion by Ian Hallet. Here is the way we’ve been doing it seasonally. (The Ian Hallet method also works, we have tried it!)

We now keep our box indoors, and required additional heating via a human heat pad due to AC.  If you keep it ourdoors you may skip the heat pad in summer, but have to be very careful with other insect pests and roaming herps looking for a free meal. When my farm was kept outdoors, a smart little tree frog took up residence in my porch near the farm to catch escapees and the invading insect pests!

Cricket Housing Supplies:

• corncob bedding
• potting soil
• 4 McDonald’s drink trays minimum
• one 20-gallon long Critter Keeper tank (other 20 gallons are fine, we just like the sliding lids on these)
• one human heat pad
• digital thermometer
• 2 books or board or other suitable objects for raising the bottom of the tank
• one plastic shoe box that has been denoted the "egg box"
• one plastic shoe box that has been denoted the “holding pen”
• soddering iron
• a piece of window screening that is as big as the lid of one of the shoe boxes
• some bug repellent or cedar litter.

Cricket Egg Box

Take an ordinary Rubbermaid plastic shoebox and lid. Poke a lot of holes in the lid for ventilation. (I like the neat round holes made by using a soddering iron. )About 2 inches from the bottom of the box on any side make a 1 inch square opening. The crickets get in and out through this “cricket door.” Fill the shoebox with potting soil just shy of this cricket door level. The cricket will lay eggs in this dirt.

Setting It Up.

Place 4 cardboard drink trays back to back vertically in one end of the cage. They will fit into the tank perfectly for the sides of the tank will hold them steady! (Place so the edges of the trays standing up are parallel to the longer sides of the tank!) To secure them further at this end, secure by placing the shoebox in the tank pressing up against the trays. (The shoe box will only fit with it's longest sidesparalllel to the long sides of the tank.)

Now fill the bottom of the tank with some corncob litter. Be careful not to let the level of the litter block up the entrance to the egg box! On the remaining free end of the tank you will be placing the food and water items.

The tank has to be up off the floor, so place it on two books, or two boards or something equally suitable. In between the two boards underneath the tank you will slip a human heat pad for providing the warmth needed for the incubating of cricket eggs in the egg box that is in the middle of the tank. Set the pad on medium.

Spray the outside and bottom of the tank with bug repellent to keep ants from getting in and stealing the baby crickets. I have had more problems with invading pests than with getting the crickets to breed! Another solution was when I lay the tank in a bedding of cedar. Cedar is a natural pest repellent and most bugs won’t cross a bed of cedar. A fine mesh screen will keep flying pests out and the crickets in.

Food.
Feed the crickets oatmeal, bran, dog kibble, fish food, vegetable scraps, etc. in a small dish or bowl set into the litter. Remember to put a small jar lid of food in the egg box for the hatchlings that have not come out of the box yet.

Water the crickets by providing a small jar lid of water with gravel or cotton batting in it so the crickets do not fall in and drown. You can also provide them with water by giving them a potato or apple or other water-rich food.

I have found the smell associated with crickets comes more from this rotting food than the crickets themselves. To limit the smell, I do not give them water this way! But if you do, rather than cut the fruit and exposing so much of it to air and spoilage, cut slits on the fruit instead. This way, the crickets have access to the insides of the produce for their watering needs, and it will not spoil as fast or be so smelly or attract other bugs.

We water our crickets with a hamster water bottle! We take an old soap dish and set a folded sheet of paper towelling in it. Then we hang the water bottle on the side of the tank so the tip touches the paper towel. The paper towel draws the water out of the bottle and becomes moist. The crickets drink from the moist paper towelling, and it does not dry out because it keeps drawing water out of the water bottle.  When the paper towel is soiled, replace, when the bottle needs refilling, refill. There. No rotten potato smells!

If cricket poop smell bugs you, then change out the entire box contents more often than once a month. You could also mask the smell by putting cedar chips in a baby food jar with holes in the lid or a pomander ball in the tank, but do not let this cedar come in direct contact with the crickets or it may kill them.  The oils in cedar are a natural pest repellent and will affect the crickets too!

Gut Loading.

At least 24 hours (prefarably more) before feeding the crickets to a herp, they ought to have been gut loaded with something better than the regular cricket food. Either feed them fish flakes, or a commercial cricket gut loading formula.

These crickets on hold for gut laoding should be put into the “holding pen” which consists of a plastic shoe box with holds in the lid for ventilation. If you are holding particularly small crickets, tape a piece of window mesh to the lid as well as poking the holes for ventilation with the soderring iron. A large cricket cannot get out through the holes, but a smaller one can!

When feeding crickets to a herp it is wiser to feed him a lot of small crickets rather a a few large ones. Crickets have exoskeletons, and the especially tough exoskeletons of adult crickets may be hard for the herp to digest. (A savannah monitor once under my babysitting care had become impacted with too many of these cricket hulls since his owner was not aware of this potential cricket problem.)

Remember to dust the crickets with calcium supplement before giving it to the herp!

Cricket Notes:

Toilet paper tubes and paper towel tubes are great cricket toys, and you can shake them out of these tubes easily into bags for dusting with supplement before serving up herp dinner.

Female crickets have ovipositors -- they look like they have "a long stick coming out of their butts!" (This is how a herper friend of mine described it and it made me laugh. )

Male crickets do not have this appendage.

Removing the back legs of a cricket may help smaller herps catch them more easily since the crickets then will not be able to jump.

If the herp does not eat all the crickets you give him, provide the crickets some food in the herp's house before the crickets get hungry and try to prey on the herp!

Do not give the herp more crickets unless he has eaten all the ones already in his tank.

Maintenance.

Check the cricket farm daily for pest invasions and food and water levels.

Every few days change the cricket water and food for fresh even if there is still food there. (The nutrition given these crickets is the nutrition passed to your herps, so don't be lazy! Malnourished crickets given to a herp means a malnourished herp!) Also, lightly mist the dirt in the egg box if it seems dry.

Once every two weeks, respray around the bottom of the tank for bugs or change the cedar bedding you set the whole tank onto. Be careful not to contaminate the crickets inside the farm!

When the drink trays get terribly soiled with poop, go to the nearest McDonald’s or other fast food joint drive thru, and order a large drink and request 4 drink trays. They might give you a strange look, but they probably will give you the trays without any other problem. We started using these trays instead of egg crates because they fit into a 20 gallon long without any needed trimming!

Once a month, throw everything out and replace the dirt in the egg box, the corncob, the cardboard drink trays, disinfect and wash the tank, etc.

That is all it takes! Now all you need in to put in the crickets! (At least 300 to start a colony going -- depending on how many herps you need to feed this initial “seed” number of crickets may need to be more.)