Cricket epidemic? CA only?

[bad-one]

Well, looks like my colony has it. I had upwards of 60-80 I'm down to less than 20, looks mostly male so at this point I don't really have a viable group anymore. I've had consistent die offs, particularily in almost adult stages. There are 3 dead today with 2 more that are super lethargic and dragging their back legs.

The back leg dragging has been a consistent thing with the dying crickets.
:/ I guess I'm gonna go feed off the rest since by the time they reach adulthood they'll almost all be dead.

[2kdime]

So whats everybody doing about their crickets?

Are there still facilities that arent infected?

Id hate to think people couldn't get their crickets anymore

[MissDixie]

From what i've heard most but Gann's has the virus and it's going to be hard to obtain crickets for the time being. I would suggest swapping over to superworms, mealworms, or pheonix worms (depending on your reptile's pallette that is).

[Foschi Exotic Serpents]

Well, here is what I have done.. Today I just received my starter colony of Dubia's. Roach food, dry water crystals, egg flats. They are set up in a large tub in the snake room which stays around 80* at all times. They sent me 75 young Dubia's and 2 pairs of adults. So it wont be long before I will be over run with plenty of constant Dragon food. Tarantula food for my sister and food for my scorpions

That is what I have done. I said the heck with crickets. I just had to order a thousand pre wing crickets because everyone else was out of large. These horrible things never NEVER stop chirping! They are driving me nuts. So I figured if I cant order my large silent crickets without worrying about them being sick then I'm moving on up in the bug world and cultivating my own

[Jeanne]

Wow..not good. I am glad that I no longer feed any of my bug eaters crickets. In fact, I have not used crickets as a food source for a few years now due to losing animals that had eaten crickets when an issue like this happened before. I have been raising superworms for a bit, and have many different sizes for my bug eaters, and they do wonderfully on them. In fact, I am over run with superworms to the point I have taken to feeding off bunches of them to the wild bird population on my property since I really have no other way to get rid of the extras I dont need/use. Although, recently, my hubby told me I should put a listing on CL and try to sell them locally in Arizona to others.

[bsash]

Well, I don't feed anything crickets anymore, but the stores around me have been very low on their crickets. A friend of mine had fire belly toads, and after she fed them crickets, they died shortly after... I wonder if it was because of the crickets. I was totally unaware of this problem, I guess I should be happy about not feeding crickets anymore, huh?

[cinderbird]

i don't deal with crickets anyway, i started a dubia colony back in january and its taken off.

I haven't heard anything about the cricket virus being transferable to other species though. I'll ask around at the next reptile show i go to.

[Alice]

Last week there was an article in the paper about a very large cricket farm here in Florida that had millions wipped out due to the virus. They were now declaring bankruptcy.

[CA cowgirl]

The Ghan's link shares that the cricket virus epidemic is strictly affecting crickets, not the animals that eat them. Kinda like if I had chicken pox, and a bear ate me for dinner, it wouldn't get chicken pox just because it ate my arm that was loaded with the itchy rash.

I just sold my dwarf geckos and now only have rodent eating snakes. A little bit of relief is found with downsizing, even though I didn't experience any real troubles with acquiring crickets.

[ice#1]

i just bought 5 dozen for my Tokay's last week-end and they had just got 10 or 11 boxes of crickets in that morning

a few years ago i used to breed my own crickets and found i always had some dieing off so i started getting the wild black crickets and putting them in with the others after about 6 months there was tons of crossed crickets and i quit loosing any others then what i used to feed. wild crickets get immunities cause they aint sheltered indoors.outdoors where natural selection lets only the most healthy survive