Keeping and breeding Crickets is actually fairly easy. It might be a little noisy though - especially at night as that's when Crickets are awake and start chirping. Below you'll find a step by step list that will help you keep crickets at home thus lowering the cost of feeding your reptiles and amphibians. Breeding seems to go along with keeping crickets as it happens without trying really - but you'll find some detailed information about breeding crickets below as well. Good Luck! Keeping- 1. large deep Tupperware or deep rubbermaid container 2. Put lots of air holes in the lid, or cut out a large portion of the lid and use a hot glue gun to glue some fine window screening material to the inside of the lid around the hole. 3. Fill the bottom of the container with a substrate of rolled oats or bran- couple of inches deep. The crickets will eat this. 4. Put one or two small shallow dishes in the bottom of the container - I use the tiny tinfoil pie plates. Fill these dishes with a half potato, a chunk of carrot and if you like a 1/4 to a 1/2 of an orange. Other veggies can be used- they will eat these and get their moisture from them so you may want to also sprinkle the veggies and fruit with calcium and vitamin supplements so that the crickets will be a wonderful healthy meal for your animal. 5. Get several pieces of old egg crate or even old toilet and paper towel rolls, put them in the container- these will be places for the crickets to hide. Its a must if you want the crickets to not fight and eat each other. Also the egg crate etc. can be lifted out of the container when the crickets are in the container and you can just use a piece of the egg crate to shake some crickets either directly into the dragons enclosure, or into a plastic bag to coat them with vitamins and calcium. 6. Now add your crickets to the container- they should be able to stay alive for quite a while when kept this way with proper ventilation. 7. Change the veggies every couple of days- they will go bad and mould- mould and dampness will kill the crickets. Breeding Crickets- As I said above it's fairly easy to breed crickets. Those of you who have reptiles or amphibians that don't eat all of the live crickets that you put in their cages probably find that they eventually have a few baby crickets running around the cage after a while. Baby crickets are quite tiny and might be mistaken for a bug infestation in a herp cage - do check carefully if you see bugs in your herps cage and see if they really are crickets. Below you'll find a detailed list for those who'd like to breed their own crickets. I do not recommend breeding them in the cage with your reptile or amphibian as your pets could be injured. Please breeding crickets in separate containers or bins as suggested below: 1. You can add a dish of moist soil to the container above- but you must keep the container of soil moist. The crickets will make a mess of this too and soon you will have soil in the oat or bran substrate- creating a breeding ground for moulds etc.. 2. You can remove 6 to 10 crickets from the container and put them in another one that has soil that has been dampened in it. The crickets will mate and the females will lay up to 500 eggs each in the damp soil. After a week or so remove the adult crickets from this container (oh you should have been feeding them some veggies or fruit while they were in there too). 3. After the eggs have been laid keep the soil moist. 4. I think it takes about two weeks before you will start to see tiny little crickets emerge from the soil. 5. Make sure to provide food for the young crickets, and you can put some egg crate or toilet paper rolls in the container too for hiding places. 6. About three weeks after the small cricket first emerge they will be about half the size of adult crickets. You may remove them to another container at this time and start the breeding process with some adult crickets again if you like. Anyway- breeding crickets is easy- moist soil is the key. All credits to www.triciaswaterdragon.com
Its not really your guide if you've nicked it from someone else! I mean this site has a great guide anyway - http://www.reptilerooms.com/index.php?cate...template=Simple
I have a question, would it be possible to keep this deep Rubbermaid container outside on a balcony or so, or do they require certain temperatures? I'm not sure I would want so many of these in the house all the time, especially when getting some out for feeding and have escapees running around the house. asking for future possible plans
Cold is NOT good for crickets I keep mine in my room depending on how cold it gets where you are you might be able to pull it off.
Well I'm sure during the summer it would be fine but in the winter no matter where I am I will probably have to move them in then.. maybe I can just take it outside when I'm opening it up, so if they escape they escape on the balcony When I would possible be doing this would be when I move to Holland later this year. Winter there is a bit warmer than here in Ontario but still fairly cold, and the winter just past lots of snow too, but the balcony is covered above.
