I was wondering how long crickets live. I was going to buy a bulk pack of them. What do they need to live a long life and how long would they live if I took care of them. I was going to buy 250 of them. That would last 20 days for my Beardie. Would they survive 20 days or more?
Your beardie is only eating 12 crickets a day? I buy them in bulk - even if some do die - it saves me money. We were spending about $7.00 a day - and we can buy 1000 for $14.00 - so we decided it was better worth it. I know you can get them to live up to 3 weeks or something like that - but right now - I'm fine with just living with what we end up with. You may wanna try feeding your beardie a few more - I thought 25 for both my beardies each feeding was enough - and then all of a sudden they were eating 40 at each sitting!! EACH!
Ill try feeding him more. Everyone tells me that I shold feed him 12 crickets a day. WHAT DOES HE DO WITH ALL OF THEM? :shock: lol
That's only about 12 crickets a day. Is that all your beardie will eat? When my baby was small he's go trough about 500 a week. How big are the crickets you're offering, are they smaller than they space between his eyes? Are you offering them more than once a day? 12 crickets a day is not much at all. To answer your question though, yes they will live for 20 days, they can live over a month. However, in that time they will also grow too large for your beardie to eat. I recommend ordering them a bit smaller than you need to give them a little time to grow and still be small enough. Even so, if he only eats 12 a day 250 will be too many. You should probably find out why he's eating so few.
Sorry, looks like I was late to post on that. When you say "everyone tells me to feed 12 a day" do you mean the pet store? Unfortunately pet stores will often only offer enough to keep them alive until they sell, to save money. Then the employees who don't know any better pass on that info to the buyers, not really knowing it isn't the right way. Sad, but true.
Ok. What would happen if I just put 250 crickets in his cage with him. He can eat them when he wants. And when he eats them all, I buy him another 250. Would it be ok to put all of them in there? Do Beardies stop eating when they are full or would they eat until they die of over eating?
Bad idea. If you were to put them all in there - then while the beardie sleeps, the crickets can knaw on the beardie since they are such sound sleepers. Only feed them what they can/will eat in a 10 minute period of time.
NO! Not only will it cause him enormous stress with crickets crawling all over him 24/7, but they can and WILL bite him and cause nasty infections. With that kind of stress he will surely NOT eat. This is a great caresheet for you to read. I recommend reading the whole thing, but I'm also showing it to you because there is a picture of a dragon with infected cricket bites on it. Not pretty. http://www.kakadudragons.com/caresheet/ You need to offer him crickets 2-3 times a day for ten minutes each time. When those ten minutes are up you need to remove every single cricket from the cage that he didn't eat. Keep the crickets in a seperate rubbermaid container. Something around 15 gallons should do. You can feed them scraps from the greens when you make his salads. I just cut off the green part of the leaf for the lizard, then throw the stems to the crickets. I also give them orange slices for moisture (you don't want to give them water, they will drown in it.) I also occasionally give the crickets dragon moistened pellets, carrot slices, powdered milk, and baby cereal. If you don't want to mess with all of that, you can buy a gutload formula from http://www.cricketfood.com/ You'll still need some orange slices for moisture, though.
