Possibly starting an insect feeder business

[ChrisS]

Ive been tossing around the idea of possibly breeding insects and selling them. I just started my dubia colony back and am getting hissing cockroaches as well. I could very easily get super worms, meal worms as earth worms too. I would really like to be able quit my day job and do this but realisticly it would only be supplementa income. So, would it be worth having all these different feeders on a large scale, or would I just be stuck with a bunch of feeders I can't sell? Other than creating a web page and shows what are some other outlets for selling? What are some good ways to get my name out? What are some possible obsticals that I might face other than the insects not selling? Any and all advice is welcome.

[Mike41793]

You could also advertise selling worms to fishermen and to people to put worms in their garden. I know ppl feed chickens and birds mealworms too. You would have to research the market some more to figure out who else you could market them to.

I think your biggest problem would just be not being able to sell the bugs. As fun as it sounds i would definetly NOT quit your dayjob. It could be a good way to supplement your reptile hobby though!

[Don]

Look into soldier grubs too (Phoenix worms). They are super easy to raise and a fantastic feeder.

Starting a feeder business is going to require a lot of capital, but it can be done. Good luck!

[1nstinct]

You can do it just do not quit your day job. i would say see if you can sell some of the dubia first, and see how that goes. i know a few people who breed dubias on a large scale(sell 1000-5000) a week but do it as extra reptile money. all he does is count them out the night before and package them in the morning and drops them off for mailing on his way to work 3 times a week. but he has also converted a room in his house to keep the dubias. start small and see how it goes first because you don't want to end up with 1000 female and 100 male dubia adults and find out you have no where to all them too.
Tom

[ChrisS]

I know I could never quit my day job, just dreaming lol. And I'm sure with just dubias I would never have to worry about having too many. If they didn't sell I'd just feed them to my chickens before I had too many. Now I'd not be able to do that with multiple insects as I don't have that many chickens. So, I'll have to keep my others on a much smaller scale or not do them until I have clientele to justify doing them. I called my lps to see if they would be interested in any. They said they would be interested in trying either dubias or hissing cockroaches but I'd have to be producing a high volume in order for them to consider.

[Mike41793]

Well thats good. I would start out with just dubias then. Once you get them going you can probably churn out a high output pretty quickly. To my knowledge once you get a colony established and a good cycle going i think its fairly easy to produce alot of them.

[ChrisS]

Well thats good. I would start out with just dubias then. Once you get them going you can probably churn out a high output pretty quickly. To my knowledge once you get a colony established and a good cycle going i think its fairly easy to produce alot of them.

Yeah, I had colony about 2 years ago that I traded for my female pastel I have now. I started with 1 male 2 females and 20 assorted nymphs, that I purchased at a show for $20 and when I traded about 10 months later I had close to 35 females and probably 10 males and an ungodly amount of nymphs. And right now I have 1.5 adults and 30-40 assorted sized nymphs probably 1/3 of them a molt away from being adults. So, within a year I should be producing around 6000 a month maybe more.