Food for a garbage disposal...

I'm a bit late on the thread and see you've already got some good husbandry advice so I'll offer some roach feeder tricks of the trade. The only good thing about crickets is they tend to stay out in the open making good hunting opportunities for your pets. When thrown into an enclosure roaches will often freeze(no movement, no attraction) then dig down into substrate at the first opportunity and stay there. A good way to fix this problem is to crush the head on the roaches before you feed. This basically just slows them down, it doesn't kill them at all(roaches will definitely take over the world some day). They will eventually die of starvation of course if not eaten since they can't feed themselves with the mangled head.. With a crushed head you can leave them on their backs and they won't right themselves but continue kicking their legs for many days. You can also just toss them in with crushed heads and they'll do their scurrying around thing but it'll be slow motion and they won't dig down as quickly if at all. Make sure you do a thorough job on those heads though, I've found perfectly mobile, normal acting roaches weeks after tossing "incapacitated" feeders in an enclosure.

Roaches are illegal where I live so I am going to breed Black soldier fly grubs (aka Phoenix worms) I believe they are one of the highest source of calcium, of any insect feeder. Something to think about anyway.

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Originally Posted by John1982

I'm a bit late on the thread and see you've already got some good husbandry advice so I'll offer some roach feeder tricks of the trade. The only good thing about crickets is they tend to stay out in the open making good hunting opportunities for your pets. When thrown into an enclosure roaches will often freeze(no movement, no attraction) then dig down into substrate at the first opportunity and stay there. A good way to fix this problem is to crush the head on the roaches before you feed. This basically just slows them down, it doesn't kill them at all(roaches will definitely take over the world some day). They will eventually die of starvation of course if not eaten since they can't feed themselves with the mangled head.. With a crushed head you can leave them on their backs and they won't right themselves but continue kicking their legs for many days. You can also just toss them in with crushed heads and they'll do their scurrying around thing but it'll be slow motion and they won't dig down as quickly if at all. Make sure you do a thorough job on those heads though, I've found perfectly mobile, normal acting roaches weeks after tossing "incapacitated" feeders in an enclosure.

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Just curious, do you know why or how roaches are able to survive for days without heads lol?
I know chickens can survive for a bit running around with their head cut off...

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Originally Posted by Mike41793

Just curious, do you know why or how roaches are able to survive for days without heads lol?
I know chickens can survive for a bit running around with their head cut off...

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I don't actually remove the head, I just thoroughly crush it with a pair of tweezers. It doesn't kill them but they can't feed and it seems to get em good and addled. They eventually starve to death if not eaten and can survive quite a while in this zombified state. I have 3 in with an enclosure right now that're still on their backs kicking their legs, put them in last week.

Another way to prevent your roaches from disappearing is putting them in small glass salsa dishes or small glass candle holders. Whatever is trying to eat them can easily see them and it prevents escape without having to crush each and everyone’s head. When trying to feed 16 geckos that can become incredibly time consuming, the glass dishes save me so much time and I don't have to worry about escapes.