Cricket epidemic? CA only?

[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.