I'm certain folks have heard of the cricket shortage in North America. (I myself had to hire the neighborhood kids to collect bugs for me...between this and the extreme heat here in Omaha...)
Anyway, what exactly was the cause? I keep hearing and reading "VIRUS!" But when I ask "Which virus?" no one seems to know. After hearing of cricket farmers "burning their barns" and other, crazier things I became quite curious as to the nature of this "plague".
Oddly enough, I have not been able to find much of anything on the subject.
Watching FrogTV because it is better when someone else has to maintain the enclosure!
When I first heard of this "virus" I ramped up my own cricket production to compensate. After much research I ended up with the same questions as you.
So, an experiment!!! Muhahahahaha
I have an extremely clinical and clean breeding operation so very few die from hatchling to adult. I put one colony aside and didn't keep it very well and neglected the cleaning and just kept throwing food and water in there. They all died. This is a small example to be sure but it leads me to blame poor husbandry at the cricket farms to be the cause.
I think what you want to know is here:
TITAG / Education
Founder of Frogforum.net (2008) and Caudata.org (2001)
I read about this in Reptiles some time ago and I still believe what people are thinking is a virus is actually poor husbandry pratices.
I think there really is a densovirus which is decimating commercial cricket farms. Poor husbandry would not seem to be a factor in a commercial operation which is the bread and butter of the owners.
Ii had an odd thing happen with my crickets; during early spring I forgot to hold back any breeders, so had to go out and buy some crickets at a petstore for breeding. Those crickets did not do too great, producing only one decent hatch in April, and that hatch subsequently began slowly dying off when they got to slightly over half grown to almost full grown. I wound up feeding out this entire hatch to my toads mainly to get rid of it. My own crickets have matured and are breeding gangbusters, and the adults are not dying. So this was something affecting just that batch I had to buy. I am not going to buy any more crickets from anywhere outside. I think I dodged a bullet on this thing!
I have a robust colony of gryllus black field crickets as well. I am also considering growing Turkestan Roaches - Blatta lateralis. That way I wont have all my eggs in one basket! Currently the only other thing I have to feed my toads is pinkies, and they only get those as a special treat. Catching bugs is too much work to feed my big knot of toads. One year I did catch grasshoppers for my fence lizards, but having to hunt every day for the grasshoppers took so long that is why I got into growing my own crickets.
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