How to set up a breeding colony of crickets?

[jfreels]

IMO, they are about the worst to breed. I gave up on my second incubation term. Anyway, here's how you can go about it....

You'll need

• 3 - tubs (breeding, rearing, hatching)
• Deli cup
• Ecco-Earth or some type of moist bedding (vermiculite, organic pesticide free soil, etc.)
• Food/water dishes. I use plastic petri dishes
• 100-300 large crickets
• egg crate or fast food drink holders...needs to be cardboard .
• food, I use gutload. You could use cat/dog food.
• water, I use water crystals and carrots

Setup your breeding cricket bin...

• Add egg crate
• Add food & water sources
• fill your deli cup with moist bedding of your choice then place cup in breeding container
• add crickets

Leave the crickets alone for a couple weeks, just make sure they always have food and water. After 3-7 days you should be able to start seeing the eggs in the deli cup. If it's slammed full of eggs, take it out and put it in the incubation tub. If there are not many eggs, then leave it in there for up to two weeks. If you don't see any after two weeks, something is wrong with your breeding container (temps wrong, not good food/water sources or maybe sterile crickets).

After placing the deli cup full of eggs into the incubation tub, make sure the tub stays warm and the soil stays moist. Not sopping wet though. I would spray the soil every time it started turning lighter.

After a couple weeks you should now have a lot of pinhead crickets. Make sure they have a little bit of egg crate, not much though since they don't need much. Make sure they also have food/water like the adults.

Return the deli cup to the breeding container and let it fill with eggs again. You'd think I'd instruct you to move the pinheads to the rearing container now, but you're wrong! I tricked you. It just became the rearing container and now when you get your second batch of eggs, the unused container will be the new incubation chamber.

Repeat the process, though I can tell you it's not as fast as it sounds. It's really easy to do, but you'd have to do it on a large scale to make it worth it. Unless you only had a couple mouths to feed.