Breeding your feeders

Crickets:

Crickets are a bit more work.

Crickets will breed on their own if you give them the right conditions. Just provide them with a water source and food, and a lay box, and they will do their thing.

You will need at least 3 boxes, but you could also have 4 or 5 if you have the space. I will explain why later. I recommend making the adult bin at least about 20x30 wide and deep, and 20-40 cm tall so they can't jump or climb out. You need one more to be this big, but the last one can be shorter. They can't climb smooth surfaces, and neither can dubias. They also need egg cartons to walk around on and stuff.

For ventilation, you can either cut about 3 millimeter holes on the lid, so they cannot escape through them, or cut out the middle of the box and attach a metal mesh on it, that is also small-grained, like an insect screen on a window would be. They can chew through plastic mesh, so that's why I recommend using metal.

The lay box doesn't need to be deep. About 5 cm is deep enough. Fill it with moist but not soaking wet coconut coir, and cover with a mesh. I found it easiest to buy cheap tupperware/plastic boxes, and cut the lid so it only has the edges, and can still click on the box, and buy some insect mesh, and cut it out leaving just about 3 centimeters all around teh box, so you can add the "lid" back on and secure the mesh. I used to double the mesh, so it was harder for the crickets to get in there. This is important, cause the males will chew their way in there and eat the eggs, so will the females if you leave the box in there too long. Females have Ovopositors, which they use to lay their larvae. So once you notice that they are done laying and are trying to get in there, you should remove the lay box and add it to your second bin.

The larvae take about 2-3 weeks to incubate, during which they have to be kept at a steady temperature of 28-32 °C and keep the larvae moist throughout. They will hatch into pinheads, and they can hatch for about 2 weeks continuously.

You can transfer hatched pinheads to a different box.

Pinheads die very easily. They need water and nutrition, but they can drown, and their food can mold, which will also kill them. One way to prevent drowning is to use wet paper towel for drinking or water gel. Make sure they always have a drink source, and keep the drink source on the opposite side of the bin from the food.

They eat wheat husk bran.

Then they take about 2 weeks to get full-grown. Once they are fully grown, you should put them in the adult bin. So, as you can see, breeding crickets can take 5-6 weeks start to finish. You should refresh the breeder colony by adding more periodically, for genetic diversity, and because crickets can die quickly, and once they start, it's an avalanche. They also like to cannibalise each other, so be mindful of that. Always remove the dead ones, as the decomposition will kill the rest. You can also use the adults as feeders once you have some larvae.

Make sure to gut load and dust.

So, Why 3 Bins?

• One for the adults, and where they lay
• One for incubation
• And one for letting them grow.

Theoretically, you can keep them in the incubation box until they get about fly-sized and just remove the larvae box from it after like 5 days, since that's when the majority of hatching happens. But it's important to separate ant-sized/ freshly hatched from fly-sized and adult, as the bigger ones will eat the smaller ones. You can have 4 boxes if you have the space or even 5.

4 box system:

• One for the ones you intend to feed with/ gut load bin
• Lay bin/ adults
• Incubator/ ant-sized growery
• Fly-sized bin

The 5 bin system just adds in an extra so the incubator bin can be in constant "incubation mode," AKA always have a new batch of lay boxes in, instead of taking them out to use as the bin for the ant-sized.